The Third Gilmore Girl

by Kelly Bishop

I even loved wearing pointe shoes so much that I used to put them on and run around the neighborhood on my toes.

So she bartered that talent to pay for my classes, and at the age of eight, I began studying at the American Ballet Theatre in Denver,

sometimes serendipity shows up in our lives disguised as the worst news you can possibly imagine.

Back then, there were two kinds of ballet dancers: the “soft” ones and the “hard” ones. The soft dancers were the lovely, gentle ones whose movements were slow and delicate. The hard dancers were the ones who excelled at jumps and turns.

Radio City Music Hall called a day or two after the audition to welcome me to their corps de ballet, and just like that, I was a real, live, professional dancer.

Right or wrong, it really does turn out to be not what you know but who you know.

I’d had the guts to try, they’d taken me seriously, and it meant the world to me and my confidence.

Day by day I was depleting my leotard wardrobe until I finally got down to one I’d bought years earlier and hadn’t worn in ages, because I hated it.

And that’s how Sheila’s costume was born.

could still be Carole Bishop onstage, but for any TV and film work that might come along, I had to become someone else.

adopted alter egos with made-up names. Mine was “Kelly Westbrook,” a spoiled rich girl. I started being called “Kelly” more often than I was called “Carole,” and it seemed to fit me like a glove.

I’m a dancer at heart, though, and dancers know about discipline.

it turns out pacemakers explode during cremation.

I was always Team Logan.

And as for Lorelai, I was definitely Team Luke

But once I started showing up, as Lee put it, in people’s living rooms, I became “part of the family” and much more approachable; so I get to hear fascinating feedback up-close-and-personal.

Emily was and always will be “the third Gilmore Girl.”

there’s something I’ve known about myself since I was a little girl who was falling in love with ballet: I wanted to be a performer, but I never wanted to be a star.

As I told her one day, “I’m not sure what I’m getting out of this, but I know I’m enjoying it.”

I was starting to like spending time with me again, and I wanted and needed to keep that healing going.

I grabbed my car keys, my purse, my Kindle, and my phone, and drove myself to St. Barnabas Hospital.

Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone. Smile because you had them in the first place.

strongly believe that there’s a satisfying field, a job, a career for everyone—it’s just a matter of finding it, and the best way to do that is to head in the direction of what you love,

Aren’t we lucky that there’s such a wide variety of dreams to choose from, and so many people who choose them?

I’ve lived a life I’d envy if I weren’t me.

And as I launch into a whole new decade, with a healthy mind and body, it will still never cease to touch me to my core that every minute, behind me and ahead of me, started “at the ballet.”