Dance Again.

Dana Dinnawi

Aug 09, 2026

∙ Paid

I found something this week.

Not in an old journal.

Not tucked inside a drawer.

But on a shelf in my office, hidden between books I’d long forgotten.

A little white hardbound booklet.

On the cover, written in pink pencil, were the words:

Dance Again.

By Dana Dinnawi.

I smiled before I even opened it.

I’d completely forgotten it existed.

Five years ago, I was at a business retreat.

On the last afternoon, after four days of talking about marketing, messaging, offers, pricing and all the practical things that go into building a business, our mentor gave us one final assignment.

She handed each of us a white, hardbound A4 booklet.

A box of colored pencils.

And ninety minutes.

“Write a children’s book,” she said.

You can imagine my reaction.

What on earth does a children’s book have to do with building a business?

Most people think business retreats are about strategies, branding, launches and spreadsheets.

And they are.

But the best ones are just as much about the person building the business as the business itself.

Because eventually you realise that every business problem becomes a personal problem.

If you’re afraid to be seen...

your marketing reflects it.

If you don’t trust yourself...

your pricing reflects it.

If you’re constantly performing instead of telling the truth...

your message reflects it.

This assignment wasn’t about children.

It was about stripping away everything complicated until only the truth remained.

The only rule was that whatever we wrote had to be simple enough for a child to understand.

No jargon.

No cleverness.

No hiding.

Just the truth.

I cried.

Not because I didn’t know what to write.

Because I didn’t want to find out.

For the first time during the entire retreat, I refused.

Internally, at least.

I told myself I wasn’t going to do it.

I wasn’t going to sit there drawing pictures and writing some sentimental story about myself.

Unfortunately...

not doing it wasn’t one of the options.

So ninety minutes later...

this is what I handed in.

I haven’t changed a single word.

Reading it now, I realize that before I was writing for women...

before I was coaching...

before The Quiet Return...

I already knew exactly what I wanted to say.

I just hadn’t realized it yet.

Dance Again.

By Dana Dinnawi

Dedication Page:

To Malak, Nour, Youssef and Karim

Always and Always

Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Dana.

Dana loved to dance and act and be on stage.

She loved dancing because the music and movement felt amazing. She loved acting because she got to pretend to be funny, or serious, or both.

But what she loved the most was how she felt on the stage. She felt ALIVE.

She danced and acted every year until she was 18. And she was accepted into a school for the performing arts.

Until her dad, who was a doctor, said: “Dancing and acting won’t make you any money. You need to go to a real school and have a real profession.”

Dana didn’t understand this. Why couldn’t she do what she loved as a profession? And why was dancing and acting not “real”?

But Dana listened to her parents. Because she was a good girl.

She went to the real school and learned how to be a journalist. Because that was a real profession.

But Dana didn’t love it. Not in the way she loved acting and dancing.

So Dana did nothing. She decided not to have a profession.

She decided that since she couldn’t do something she loved, she would do nothing at all.

Then one day, Dana got sick. Not SICK SICK. She didn’t have a disease. She didn’t need to go to a hospital or anything.

But she was just always tired. She felt like she couldn’t get out of bed in the morning anymore. She took a lot of naps during the day. She couldn’t exercise as much anymore. One day she was happy and then the next day she was sad.

And once a month, her body hurt. A lot. And she would cry for no reason.

So she decided to go see a doctor to see if he could help her. The doctor told her not to worry. He told her everything was ok and what she felt was normal.

He told her to take some medicine when she feels tired or her body hurt. And he told her she would probably feel like this for many years. But that was ok, and normal, and not to worry because there was nothing she could do about it.

Dana believed her doctor. Her father was a doctor. And so she knew doctors are very smart and they don’t lie.

But after many more months, Dana was still not ok. Nothing changed. So she decided to go to another kind of doctor. He wasn’t the same kind of doctor you find in a hospital. He didn’t wear a white coat and he didn’t give anyone any pills. He called himself a healer.

He asked Dana a lot of questions about how she was feeling. Dana was surprised. No doctor had ever asked her so many questions before.

When she finished answering all of his questions, the healer told her that her body and mind needed to rest. He said her body needed to have different food.

Dana didn’t understand. What was wrong with the food she was already eating? The healer told her that some foods are super strong and powerful foods; and some foods aren’t really food at all. Her told her our bodies want the really strong, powerful foods, not the fake ones.

So Dana asked him: “What are the super strong powerful foods?”

He said “That’s easy. Anything that comes straight from the farm. All the fruits that grow on the trees and all the vegetables that grow in the ground; and all the animals that eat these foods.”

So then Dana asked him: “What are the fake foods?”

He said, “That’s easy. All the foods that are made in a factory or come in a box.”

Then he told Dana to eat A LOT of the super strong foods and none of the sad, fake foods.

So she did. And after that she had a lot of energy. She slept really well. She felt happy every day and her body stopped hurting once a month.

One day a few months later, Dana had a dream that she finally DID have something she loved. She LOVED the idea of showing other women how to feel good too, just like she did.

So she went back to school to learn how to become a healer. Just like the man who helped her heal. It took her awhile, but she did it.

And now Dana wakes up every day to help women everywhere help themselves heal.

She found a profession that makes her feel like she’s dancing again.

She found a profession she loves:)))

THE END