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Dancing with the Stars‘ Cheryl Burke has returned to the reality dance competition she first joined in 2006, and is blogging about season 23 exclusively for PEOPLE. Follow Burke and her partner Ryan Lochte, both 32, on Twitter!
It’s Most Memorable Year week at Dancing with the Stars, and that’s always a roller coaster. It’s great because you get to know so much more about the celebrities as they share a pivotal time in their life, but emotions always run high.
For Ryan, that year is 2008. That’s the year he won his first individual gold medal and he broke a world record at the Olympics. That was an important accomplishment for Ryan because he’s always had an uphill battle against his own feelings of “Am I good enough?”
Ryan has had a lot of ups and downs over the years and has spent a large part of his life under the scrutiny of the press and having people judge him – and that was all before what happened in Rio.
Through all of this, his mom has been his backbone and has lifted him up. She’s always believed in him, never judged him and has been his rock. When the protesters came out the first week of the season, you saw his mom bawling in the audience. So tonight, we will be honoring his mother.
Ryan’s mom had always wanted him to do Dancing with the Stars, and he actually had been asked a few times before but I think this was the right time for Ryan to be on the show because he wants to crawl into a dark hole and hide from reality. Going on this show gives him no opportunity to to hide. He’s pushing himself past the negativity to keep his head up and move forward.
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You’ll see this theme in our modern dance tonight. I’ll be playing a sort of motherly figure who is trying to teach him to keep his head up through all the trials and tribulations he will go through in life. Ryan struggles in the beginning, but by the end he learns to stay positive and stand on his own two feet.
Ryan is working really hard on the dance, but at the end of the day it’s not about the steps but about tapping into the raw emotion of the inspiration. That said, this is not a dance we could have done week 1. It has a lot of dangerous lifts and the fact that we are able to do them means that Ryan and I have developed a trust. I literally am putting my life in his hands during one of the lifts.
Ryan wants to get the dance right to honor his mom, but there were also some other things going on this week … as in, he was getting ready to propose to his girlfriend, Kayla.
It feels like since the moment I met Ryan, he’s been talking about the perfect proposal to Kayla. He definitely put a lot of thought and planning into making the evening perfect and creating a special moment for both of them.
I knew Ryan was planning on proposing this weekend. In fact, we made sure we had a shorter day of rehearsals on Sunday so he could pop the question.
He definitely was nervous but also extremely excited. I can tell he’s excited to start this next phase of his life with Kayla, and I couldn’t be happier for them!
I hope we end the night with a great dance so he has even more to celebrate.
Season 23 of Dancing with the Stars airs Mondays (8 p.m. ET) on ABC.
