The Doe’s Latest Stories

"Tantra" is a Sanskrit word that means “woven together.” Tantra is an ancient Indian practice that dates back more than 5,000 years. Hindu meditation practitioners use the sexual union of tantra sexology as a metaphor for weaving together the physical and the spiritual, humanity to the divine.It is slow, non-orgasmic sexual intercourse. It brings together spirituality and sexuality and emphasizes the importance of intimacy during a sexual experience. The larger purpose is to become enlightened and find mindfulness. It’s not just about bending into strenuous positions. It’s about being close to your partner in a way that’s comfortable for you.Individuals have the freedom to move and touch however they and their partner decide is best. Tantric techniques include breathing, yoga and meditation that then can increase sexual energy. A common misconception about tantric sex is that it involves wild, uninhibited sexual experiences. While techniques can open you up to new sensations, tantra is as much a mental and spiritual practice as it is a physical one.

It turns those who practice it into adventurous explorers.

Tantra Is About Synchronization

Before practicing and teaching it, I studied tantric sex for five years, which involved learning about the human anatomy, different bodily sensations and their impact on the mind. The practice makes one learn empathy, patience, mindfulness and curiosity. It turns those who practice it into adventurous explorers. Tantric practices start with two people facing each other, with their clothes on, gazing into each other’s eyes. The goal is to focus on one’s partner’s eyes to keep them intimately exposed. Next, one must synchronize breathing with one’s partner. Breathe in together, exhale together. That transitions into breath exchange, in which one inhales when another exhales, then exhales when the partner inhales, as though couples are breathing each other in. This practice needs to happen for at least ten minutes.When I teach tantric practices to couples, what I hear the most is that it cultivates great sensual pleasure and a profound and loving sense of “dissolving into each other.” And though many couples practice tantric sex together, it also can be an individual practice.These days, tantra is gaining popularity. Couples who come to me show a curiosity to learn about it, especially because life is getting increasingly disconnected. When the emphasis in relationships is on making money or raising kids, intimacy becomes a renewed goal.

Tantric Sex Has The Feeling of a Typical Orgasm

In sexual tantra, couples do the same process but with their clothes off. They have to sit on their partner’s lap and wrap their legs around their partner's waist and continue breathing exchanges, this time by caressing and kissing their partner’s skin. The key is to maintain eye contact and to continue to focus on breathing. During this, there are all the feelings of a typical orgasm, but lasting for many minutes (or even hours), which leads to profound sexual and emotional merging. For individual movement, one lays flat on their back to let go of tension. As one breathes, they need to arch their back and lift up their pelvis, repeating this to create a rhythm to let go of stress and to start connecting to one's body and emotions.

During this, there are all the feelings of a typical orgasm, but lasting for many minutes (or even hours), which leads to profound sexual and emotional merging.

Tantra Has Created Many Healthy Relationships

When people first meet, every date is an adventure, carefully planned for maximum effect. For wild passion, the most important elements are newness and surprise. Hence, it’s important to create a complete scenario that includes something new, something out of habit, something that stimulates both conversation and opens our bodies and hearts.Couples tend to ask me a lot of questions during instructions. Their sheer curiosity drives their imagination and desire to unite their heart, body, mind and soul. I feel really appreciated when people share how this practice helps them maintain a healthy relationship. It brings them a sense of freshness and adventure, a sense of knowing oneself in a new way every time.

The strangest thing about living in New York City is the frequency with which you see people suffering in public. There's nothing like walking out of a coffee shop where a small cappuccino with regular milk costs $7 and coming cheek to cheek with someone defecating in the street between parked cars because the restrooms in this city are for customers only. It's not a rare occurrence— sidewalks and subway stations are littered with turds that are too large to have come from any dog. Pay special attention to where you step during sandal weather. A few months ago, I was on the J train, coming home from drinks at a friend’s apartment in the Financial District. I got on the train and had the car completely to myself. Typically, this would be a nightmare scenario for me—one is the loneliest and most vulnerable number, especially on the subway at 1 a.m. I decided to hold my breath and cross my fingers that either no one else would get on my car for the rest of the journey or that a lot of people would all get on at once. Safety in numbers.

Most likely, this subway car was his bedroom for the night.

Unhoused People Are People Too

Instead, only one person got on at the next stop, the worst possible outcome. It was a man, maybe my age or a few years older, wearing a green puffer jacket and cargo pants. He was carrying a small backpack and, at first, he didn't see me. He looked around the car with satisfaction, but when our eyes locked, both of our faces fell. I lowered my gaze, taking in the stains on his clothing for the first time, the broken zipper on his jacket. He was wearing sandals with socks in winter. Most likely, this subway car was his bedroom for the night. The doors closed behind him, and he wearily grabbed the nearest subway pole for support as the train pulled off. “Hey,” I volunteered, “Do you want me to move to another car so you can have some privacy?”My fellow passenger looked surprised. “Oh no, don’t worry about it; I’m good.”His curly hair wanted a wash and stood straight up from his head. He didn't have a mask on, so I could see his whole face. “I’m not crazy, by the way. Just homeless,” he smiled wryly, finally choosing a seat opposite me to rest on. “OK,” I chuckled awkwardly. “Let me know if you change your mind.”There's something really intimate about seeing another person in deep sleep. Not just nodding off during class or a meeting but laid out flat, doing those little subconscious sleep twitches that people do when they're dreaming. It's amazing how much a grown man's hands can look like a baby's hands, balled up into fists and tucked under his chin in slumber. Except that his hands were caked in grime from days without access to running water. It's even more amazing that someone can find such deep sleep under the watch of 10 to 40 strangers while the train screeches around corners and shudders and rattles between stops. Seeing someone in deep sleep should be a privilege reserved for the people who love them, and witnessing such intimacy makes me feel shame.

I wonder where everyone has gone.

Poverty and Need Are the Elephants in the Room (or on the Subway)

As the subway rumbles along the elevated track during rush hour, a man slips into the space between cars and relieves himself onto the sidewalk 15 feet below. Make sure to carry an umbrella.Subway rules are similar to elevator rules. You’re intolerably close to people you don’t know (near enough to count individual eyelashes and smell their laundry detergent), so logically, we all pretend that those other people aren’t there. It’s the only way to keep things civil, until someone clears his throat, steps into the middle of the car and gets ready to ask for money. His hands are covered in small cuts halfway scabbed over. Silently, all eyes (including mine) snap to a phone, a book, a hangnail, preparing to deflect pleas for help from someone who really needs it.“I'm gonna have to start stealing some purses, man. I asked this whole car full of people to help me, and no one's even looking at me! I'm gonna have to stop being nice. Gonna have to take some purses. You don't have to give me money, but you do have to be a decent fucking human being! I'm gonna have to start robbing people. I'm dying of liver cancer!” We all stood there, tightfisted and packed in cheek to jowl as he made his appeal. There was no place to go if the purse snatching policy went into effect immediately. I hated every second. I hated myself and the $5 still sitting in my wallet as he got off the train empty handed. The city of New York has recently rolled out initiatives aimed at reducing the number of unhoused people taking shelter in the subway system, and I have personally observed a decrease in the number of unhoused people living on certain subway lines. The decrease is worrying to me because the city has only planned to build 500 individual housing units as a part of the effort. I imagine there are many more than 500 unhoused people in New York City. I wonder where everyone has gone. Every so often, I used to catch glimpses of green-jacket guy in subway stations around the Lower East Side. Lately, I haven't seen him.

Wars can be terrible for the supply chain—there can be disruptions and shortages, the biggest example being oil and energy right now. At the first sign of war, oil prices began soaring. But in Ukraine and other European countries, many different commodities—especially wheat, sugar and cooking oil—are also at stake. I work for a company that exports wheat and other food grains across the world and, honestly, right now, we’re making huge profits from the surging prices and food demand. As a result, we have ramped up our production to the fullest capacity and are compensating our farmers more so that they’ll collect a high yield of grain on their farms.

Right now, we’re making huge profits from the surging prices and food demand.

For Many Companies, War Is Great Business

Russia is the largest exporter of wheat, which makes up to 18 percent of its global exports—and it climbs to 25 percent when combined with Ukraine. When this supply chain is disrupted, shortages and price inflation of food grains are seen in every part of the world. Ukraine has already banned the export of food grains, and Russia has also announced a temporary partial ban on the export of food grain for Eurasian countries, meaning a quarter of the global supply disappeared overnight. Together, Ukraine and Russia also make up to 60 percent of the global exports of sunflower oil, and since the Ukrainian invasion, the supply has fallen. Compared to last year, sugar prices are up 20 percent globally, and the war is fueling more uncertainties and increasing prices, all because these commodities are staple goods. Wheat, oil and sugar are part of every humanitarian aid shipment, too, and top every family’s grocery list. Still, many industries—metal, fertilizer, palm oil, coal and, of course, U.S. defense—are managing to reap profits during times of crisis. With the soaring price of wheat and its high demand across the world, my company’s profit is surging with a huge backlog of international orders. Similarly, companies in other sectors are making record-breaking profits with the global inflation. War is a great business. You can sell more weapons to more people, and dozens of countries have already promised millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine. The weapons industry is worth more than $110 billion worldwide, and even before the war, some of the top defense and arms manufacturing companies boasted that Ukraine-Russia tensions would be a boon for business. They were predicting this war and planned to make millions out of it as more European countries increased their budgets for defense spending.

War is a great business.

My Company Has Promised a Cut of Its Profits to Aid Ukraine

To help support Ukraine financially, my company—and many of our employees—is pouring money into Ukraine government bonds. The company’s founders organized a meeting with all of our team members to share our moral obligations and ideas to contribute aid to Ukrainian refugees by using our last two quarterly profits. Our company is also trying to educate and plan together with our partner organizations to do the same. I myself am using 20 percent of my monthly income to buy Ukraine government bonds while making small donations to refugees.While different governments are announcing humanitarian and financial aid for Ukraine, and individuals are starting fundraising campaigns for refugees, nobody is holding the big profit-making corporate companies accountable to share their profits and contribute financially in the Ukraine-Russia crisis. It’s not just the state government's responsibility to contribute resources for Ukrainian aid; it’s a collective responsibility. Governments, corporate giants, high-net-worth individuals and even the common man share the duty to contribute humanitarian and financial aid to Ukraine.This is the time for democracies across the world to unite in making big corporate houses and manufacturers in their countries benefiting from the war and the surging inflation to contribute with humanitarian and financial aid rather than continue to watch their pile of cash grow. I am hopeful that the world will gain greater empathy toward the suffering of innocent people and will stand together in the time of war to make efforts together in supporting the needy individuals and their countries.

It started when I was in fifth grade.It was early summer, and my family and I had gone to a small horse show near our town. It seemed like a fun activity, and I was excited to go. When the show started, I was enraptured instantly. The riders looked like the definition of grace, in harmony with another living being that didn’t even speak their language. I fell in love immediately. Little did I know that there was something rotten behind that flawless facade, something that would become a blight on my conscience and follow me every time I sat on a horse until I'd finally had enough.

The lessons did not go well.

I Entered the Equestrian World With a Radical Perspective

After that day, horseback riding quickly became an obsession. I begged my parents almost daily for riding lessons, but they were prohibitively expensive. With no outlet for my newfound interest, I turned to the internet, where, in the online equestrian community, there is a much larger breadth of opinion about horseback riding. Soon, I started seeing ideas that were considered to be radical. My YouTube idols were the people taking a stand against stalling (the widespread practice of keeping a horse in a solitary, small room in a barn, supposedly for “safety” and convenience), the use of particularly strong bits (the mouthpiece of a bridle) and the demanding, uncompromising attitude toward horses that is widespread in the sport. Though these online influencers faced heavy abuse for their opinion despite the countless scientific studies they had to back them up, the controversy only attracted me to them more. Because of my participation in this online movement, I entered the actual horse world with a much different perspective than most others. But I didn’t realize that lesson barns would likely disagree with my opinions, and any doubts I had were overridden by my sheer excitement about horses.Finally, after months of pleading, I convinced my parents to let me enroll in lessons at a local barn. This barn soon proved to be the epitome of the types of places my online heroes would stand firmly against. It had room to turn the horses out into pastures but still kept them in their little boxes. You could frequently see them swinging their heads up and down, pacing and chewing and sucking on the wood (these behaviors are literally called “stall vices”). My trainer was instructive but impatient and didn’t have much sympathy for my inability to put a halter on my horse, especially when he pinned his ears at me, so I recruited the more experienced riders around the barn to help me. I’ll always remember when a girl forcefully haltered the horse, dragged him out of his stall and gave him a swat on the nose. I watched open-mouthed and, when she noticed my expression, she gave me a hasty, flustered smile. The type of bit that my horse had was aptly called a twisted-wire bit, and it was as disconcerting to look at as its name is to hear. The lessons did not go well—I enjoyed them at first, but my lack of athletic prowess and the intimidating environment left me leaving the barn feeling discouraged and sullen more than anything else. I left after about a year, taking a long break before finding another barn. The new place was better—the instructor was much kinder and the horses were treated better—but she worked multiple jobs and was often too busy. It eventually fizzled out, and I took another break from the sport.

I Felt Guilty When I Whipped a New Horse

At my third barn, I thought that I had finally found a place where I could ride happily. It was focused on eventing, an equestrian sport that I had always been interested in. The paddocks were small there, just like the first, and the horses were kept inside too much, but at least they were turned out for a few hours on most days. My new trainer was friendly. For the first few months, everything was better. Of course, I saw the problems that I had so loathed at my first barn, but the lessons were going too well for me to care. I had just turned 16, and I progressed quickly. The trouble came when I got switched to a horse that was more difficult to ride. It was as if he was a robot—he just slogged forward, barely paying attention. One day, I spent almost the entire time trying to get him to trot to no avail. My instructor handed me a whip and encouraged me to use it liberally, urging me to “give him a good smack." I had never laid a hand on an animal in my life, and even as I willed myself to tell her I wasn’t comfortable with it, I felt so exasperated with the horse that I listened to her. “Trot!” I said to him. Nothing. Smack. Nothing. I clucked with my tongue. Smack. Still nothing. Guilt surged through me anew with every smack of that whip, but my frustration overpowered my conscience, compelling me to obey my instructor. I would later learn that what that animal was experiencing was a psychological phenomenon called "learned helplessness." Knowing that he couldn’t escape the unpleasantness no matter what he did, my mount had simply given up, resigning himself to his fate of endless demands by simply shuffling duly forward.

Guilt surged through me anew with every smack of that whip, but my frustration overpowered my conscience.

The Equestrian World Has Systemic Issues That Need to Be Addressed

That day was a turning point for me. I went home and hid in my room in despair. From that day on, I could no longer ignore my problems with the equestrian world, shove them into the back of my mind or selfishly enjoy the feeling of riding. Throughout each lesson, all I could see was the stall vices, the lesson horses looking miserable, the casualness in my fellow riders’ tones as they called their horses “stupid” and “naughty” and “disrespectful." On social media, I saw people joking about their horses’ stall vices and laughing as they whipped and scolded them. With each post I saw, I felt more shame burning in me, and I even left a few hate comments. In a diary I kept of my lessons, each entry is filled with only a few words about what I had worked on that day; mostly, they are disjointed, despairing rants. My parents grew sick of the long spiels I would deliver on the way home, and my twin sister commented that I never seemed to be happy after I rode. After significant dithering, I finally texted my instructor that I was quitting, citing a busy school schedule. I felt relieved that I was finally free, but crushed that I could never again experience the freeing feeling of riding—the rhythm of the horse beneath me, the wind in my hair—without feeling guilty. My experiences have convinced me that this is a systemic problem with the equestrian world, not just a localized thing. I know that the horse world teaches you to disregard not only your conscience but your plain old common sense—the kind that tells you that keeping a roaming herd animal in a tiny solitary confinement cage all day is inhumane and that yanking on a metal bar in an animal’s mouth is uncomfortable. The positive reinforcement movement, spearheaded by dolphin trainers armed with whistles and gallon-buckets of fish in the 1980s and 1990s, had smashed through the ancient barriers of tradition and superstition in the pet training and zoo worlds, becoming the dominant form of training in virtually every field that involved animals in educated countries—except for the equestrian community.

Equestrian Sporting Bodies Must Acknowledge the Problem

I’m not saying that riders don’t love their horses. Of course, they do. But the culture that surrounds them is so dedicated to tradition that they are never taught the truth. Discrimination, pretentiousness and cheating are things that impact every sport, including equestrianism, but this problem is unique to the equestrian world.I still love horses, and I always will. Maybe one day I’ll get back in the saddle, but for now, I stand on the sidelines. The thing that frustrates me the most is that non-riders have no idea that this is going on. If we had their support, we could put a stop to the cruelest practices by putting pressure on equestrian sporting bodies. If we band together, we can start making real changes in the sport for the better, but it starts by acknowledging that it is deeply flawed. Only then can we begin to change it for the better.

Travel has a way of opening up perspectives. But even if you don’t have the funds, flexibility or desire to travel, the same excitement and benefits can be found by hosting travelers in your own home.A few years ago, I was on a cross-country road trip when the weather started turning bad. Camping wasn't going to be a pleasant experience, so my travel partner and I decided to explore new methods of travel, one of which was couch surfing. The idea is simple: Host world travelers in your home for free with the expectation of cultural exchange. The arrangement often turns into weekends of adventure filled with hiking, meals, conversation, nights on the town and lasting friendships.After that trip, I was hooked. When I took a break from traveling and had a place of my own, I immediately began hosting travelers in an effort to give back to the community. While I may not be traveling as often these days, I still enjoy a healthy sense of adventure and “travel” through my experiences with hosting couch surfers.

I was hooked.

One Group of Travelers Convinced Me to Hike My Next-Door Mountain

Couch surfers usually visit my area to discover trails, restaurants, historical sites and national monuments. By joining them on their journeys, I have stumbled upon delicious food, ancient ruins, mountain peaks and so much more. These activities were right under my nose for years, but it took the curiosity of my surfers to help see my city through the lens of a traveler.One group of surfers inspired me to join them for a hike—not just any hike, but a climb up the tallest mountain in my state. I knew the mountain was nearby but had never made the effort to get out and hike it. One Sunday morning, the three travelers (visiting from France on a multi-month road trip) asked me to hop in their car for the ascent. As I looked out over my state from miles above sea level, I felt a sense of adventure that I had previously only felt while traveling myself.

It took the curiosity of my surfers to help see my city through the lens of a traveler.

Meals Are the Most Magical Part of Hosting Couch Surfers

For most people, food is an integral part of the traveling experience. Anyone who travels abroad wants to try authentic Italian pizza, sample a curry dish from India, taste sushi from Japan. When participating in couch surfing, that worldly cuisine comes straight to you.As a host, the meals are where the magic’s at. Most visitors have been road-tripping or hitchhiking (or just plain old hiking) for weeks on end. When they tell of recent meals, words like “Oreos” or “beef jerky” dominate the conversation. So when the opportunity arises to share home-cooked meals, they are happy to help in the kitchen (or even create a meal of their own).One pair of travelers had been hiking for weeks on end, primarily subsisting on tuna, tortillas and peanut butter. I picked them up from the bus stop, and a smell that can only be described as “hiker feet” filled up my car. The two young women were from Germany—one spoke great English, while the other required translating. They were enjoying a romp through the U.S. to celebrate their recent college graduation. Upon getting in my car, they made it clear that there were only two things on their mind: a warm shower and a fresh meal. They came to the right place.We stopped by the grocery store, and they grabbed everything they needed to craft a healthy meal—plus beer, ice cream and doughnuts (they looked like they had lost some weight from all the hiking). We arrived back at my place, everyone showered up, and it was time to eat. They insisted that I stay out of the kitchen and let them do the cooking—fair enough! I set the table, and a short while later, we were sitting down for dinner to a goat cheese salad, complete with cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, mixed greens and homemade dressing. Lecker, they informed me, was the German word for tasty.And lecker it was. I had just stepped into a culinary world from thousands of miles away. Whether or not it ended up being authentic German food was beside the point. Someone from a different culture, a different world, was letting me peek into one of their most personal habits: eating. I felt transported, whisked away to another time and place—certainly not my little home in the suburban city in which I grew up. No, I was in the German countryside with local folk, sharing in lively conversation and enjoying a meal that their grandmother had made for them decades earlier.

A Recent Healing Session Helped Me Embrace a New Cultural Experience

We travel in order to experience something new. Souvenirs can be nice, but they are just reminders of the eye-opening experiences we had while traveling. The architecture, the conversations, the landmarks, the people, the culture—these things are hard to overlook when we’re stuck in one place. But through the unique talents, passions and views of my surfers, I have been able to gain new perspectives and experiences that I thought were only possible while traveling.“Healing people is my life’s work,” one particular surfer said. “I can share a session with you, if you’d like.”Of course, I accepted.I laid down on my living room floor as she prepared a pillow for me. She flashed a piece of gold in front of my eyes. The shiny stone had come from a friend in Mexico, which she had mentioned earlier as she spoke of the greed and lust that gold inspired in men. As I lay on the floor, staring up at her comforting face, she slowly lowered the pebble of gold and placed it in the center of my forehead. My eyes slowly shut and serenity washed over me. Kneeling beside me, she continued to place objects onto my body. She infused a citrine crystal with her whispers and placed it on my chest. She placed large magnets onto my pelvis and under my back. Every few minutes, she would whisper some sort of prayer or proverb or message in one of the four languages that she spoke.She described her work as an amalgamation of different healing techniques and practices from around the world. She was well-traveled—not for pleasure but to continue to learn about her passion. And now, after years of gaining knowledge and mastering her craft, she was sharing it with me.After the hour-long session of magnets, crystals, gold, chants, oils and acupressure, I was in a sublime state of mind. The worries washed away. The stress left me. And I couldn’t help but appreciate the opportunity to embrace another’s culture, to share my space and, in return, receive experiences and perspectives that would be otherwise unattainable.

I have been told by many people there are only a few reasons someone could be a Christian.“You’re a Christian because you grew up in a Christian home,” someone has remarked. “You’re a Christian because you need a spiritual crutch to get through life and death,” I’ve heard. “You want to feel good about yourself and the world around you. That’s why you’re a Christian.” Or my favorite, “You grew up in America. If you grew up in India, you would have believed in something else.”These statements, and many more like them, have been hurled at me for the bulk of my life, but they don’t tell the truth as to why I’m a Christian.

The Church Was a Big Part of My Young Life

To begin, I will state that I did grow up in a Christian home. I was even a homeschooler, which means my prom consisted of a lot of corny Christian music and no one air humped on the dance floor the way the public school graduates were commemorating their final year of high school. And as far as I know, the virginity of zero graduates was lost that night either.And yes, the church was a big part of my life. My parents took me nearly every week. Mission trips were the norm, and I still recall building a church out of stucco and chicken wire in the middle of Juarez, Mexico, at the age of 15. That was, of course, two years before the drug cartels came in, took over and wreaked havoc in the same place we were serving.Suffice it to say, the church community and all things Jesus were ubiquitous to my experience growing up. However, I am now in my third decade of life, and I would genuinely contend I am not a Christian for the aforementioned reasons. That is, my conservative upbringing, my church attendance, my Christian education, mission trips, camps, etc. are not the reason I am a Christian today.It’s also important to mention that over half of the kids I grew up with, many of whom had the same experience and upbringing as myself, have either gone through a “crisis of faith” or have lost their faith entirely and claim to be agnostic or atheistic today.

My father darted for the bathroom, got down in front of the stall on his knees and asked the God he had spent all his life offending to forgive him of his sins.

My Father Found Jesus Through Eavesdropping

Let’s jump into Marty McFly’s DeLorean for just a moment. I want to take you back to the 1980s when my father was about 20 years old. He grew up in a home with a nominal Catholic religious influence. I don’t think it’s fair to my Catholic friends to say he belonged to that faith or had any religious beliefs himself. So, let’s just say he was a dude living for the next thrill. His gods were basically beer cans, girls and joints. Maybe not in that order.While working one day, he overheard a conversation between two co-workers talking about Jesus Christ. One of the women was proclaiming the gospel to another co-worker. She was talking about the sacrifice Christ made on the cross to pay the punishment for the sins of the world. My father was intrigued, so he continued eavesdropping on the conversation. He listened to what she had to say. It was as if the wind was blowing inside him, revealing the truth behind her words, and he was left with no excuse but to listen and believe what she said.Unbeknownst to the woman, my father darted for the bathroom, got down in front of the stall on his knees and asked the God he had spent all his life offending to forgive him of his sins. He then accepted and believed in the lordship of Christ.The next day, my father told the woman he had listened to her conversation and told her he repented of his sins and wanted to know more about what to do now with his life. Shocked, the woman confessed to my dad, “You’re the last person in this office I expected to know and believe in Jesus.” My father was considered to be a troublemaker, and most people in the office knew he had a reputation for being a scoundrel.Fast-forward about a decade later. I’m five years old, standing with my father by a fence in our backyard painting. Nice, little, innocent me, with a paintbrush in one hand and a Capri Sun in the other. My father then tells me the gospel of Christ. I respond by asking Jesus to forgive my sins and I recognize him as lord of my life.

Why am I a Christian today?

The Reason for My Faith Is Deeply Embedded

The dichotomy between our lives was vast. Our ages when we recognized Christ as savior and placed our faith in him were disparate, and our experiences in life had nothing in common. So, what is it about this religion called Christianity? Why am I a Christian today?For a simple answer, let me just say I am a Christian because the God of the universe made it so. As outlandish and potentially backward as that sounds, let me explain. All religions, including atheism (which ironically is a religion since it is the worship of the self), state that man must search for God. Christianity, however, is God’s search for man. All religions apart from Christianity look to the self for salvation. But the work of man never saved anyone. Only the work of Christ on the cross, through his death, burial and resurrection, can save a person. Christianity is not a club to join or a school of thought. It is a relationship with God, who created all things.I would in no way choose a God who demands my life and allegiance unless he was drawing me to himself. And that is exactly what he has done. Not by my own willpower and sheer determination did I approach God, repent of sin and become a Christian.I am a Christian because in the eternity of the past, this God chose me to believe in himself and I responded to his call. If that sounds crazy, I agree. It’s gloriously crazy.

Faith has been a constant in my life for as long as I can remember.I was raised in a Christian home by two parents who had practiced faith their whole lives. Both my mother and father grew up in Northern Ireland, a traditionally religious society where attending and helping out at church is a familiar pastime. They also grew up during the height of the Troubles, a 30-year period of civil unrest over the unification of Ireland, which commenced in the late 1960s. Though the Troubles were one of the most turbulent periods in Irish history, it led my parents to develop relationships with God in their young adulthoods. For them, faith was a constant source of peace and comfort during a time of utter chaos and upheaval in their homeland.

My Parents Experienced Near-Death Situations That Reaffirmed Their Faith

My mother was the youngest child of a police officer who served with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), a police force which was targeted at an unprecedented scale by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In total, over 300 RUC officers were murdered by the IRA over the course of the Troubles, and by the early 1980s, they were the most murdered police force of anywhere else in the world. In 1983, a police officer serving in Northern Ireland was killed at twice the rate of officers in El Salvador, the second most dangerous country for a police officer in the world. This relentless terror had significant implications for my mother as she watched her father suffer the loss of murdered friends and colleagues and fear for his own life. But these experiences only led my mother to lean on her faith for reassurance and guidance. She recalled sitting in the driving seat of her father’s Ford Capri at 17, praying that a bomb had not been planted underneath it as she switched on the engine. Over on the other side of town, my father was also affected directly by the violence of the time, and he drew comfort from his faith, too, as he watched his beloved home torn apart by war. On one particular Tuesday morning, my father was walking to work when he saw a parked car on one side of the street. At that moment, the vehicle exploded, catapulting a young woman and man out through the roof and into the road. My father ran to their aid, putting out the flames that engulfed the woman’s clothes, and carried both victims to safety before paramedics and the media arrived.Police who tended the scene believed it was nothing short of a miracle that the couple had survived, and it soon became apparent that the IRA were behind the attack, having targeted the man for being a police officer. For my father, this incident was evidence that God was present, even in the middle of a conflict zone.

Of course, I have many moments of doubt. Faith means faith for a reason.

Growing Up in the Church Inspired My Own Religious Journey

Faith was a steady constant in my parents’ lives even when they settled in England some years later. Though it was not overtly discussed in my household growing up, it was foundational to our family life. My parents attended church most Sundays, and we were often brought along to Sunday school. But from the beginning, it was clear we had a choice in whether we chose to pursue our own relationships with God. Christian principles were demonstrated rather than instructed by my parents. Both my mother and father were generous givers to charitable causes and invariably spent their weekends helping out an elderly neighbor, volunteering at the local sports club or making meals for the church’s homeless shelter. They never preached to anyone about their religion but exemplified how to be true and caring friends, neighbors and community members. Giving was a part of who they were, but they never did it for any acknowledgement or recognition. This left a huge impression on me, and gradually, over the course of my late teens, I tried to adopt the same principles. Ten years later, I still try to uphold the same teachings of love, and my belief in God provides me with a daily sense of security and calm. It also helps me cope with the uncertainties of life, whether that be the pandemic, job insecurity or family bereavement. In a very different set of circumstances to my parents, faith has been central to my own life and my understanding of the world. My belief in God was tested enormously during the height of COVID-19, but it became my saving grace throughout the U.K.'s successive lockdowns as we all tried to cling on to some sort of assurance of the future.For example, every Thursday at 7.30 a.m., I would join a Zoom call with fellow members of my church. At a time when we could only be out for an hour of exercise a day, seeing those familiar faces and listening to God’s prophetic words was the highlight of my week. Whoever would have thought that Zoom, of all places, would become a sacred space? But I longed for that precious 90 minutes, which reminded me that God was still there and still listening. I look back on the lockdowns as a particularly uncomfortable time, especially as the things that brought me security before—like friends, work, social activities and hobbies—were all stripped away. But the pandemic fortified my faith as I learned that God alone provided all the reassurance I needed. This was my main takeaway from 2020, and I’m constantly trying to carry the lessons with me as we emerge from the pandemic.

The pandemic fortified my faith as I learned that God alone provided all the reassurance I needed.

I’m More Confident in God Watching Over My Future

Learning to give my fears over to God is a daily practice, but I have example after example of how God has worked in my life, and for that, I feel entirely blessed. I find that God often works through other people in my life, and there have been many occasions when multiple friends have said a particular encouraging word or phrase, which I know is God speaking through them. It’s also funny to see how circumstances in my life have reflected God working out his plan, like an unexpected opportunity arising in a new city that led to multiple doors opening in different areas of my life. For someone who finds security in having control, there is huge comfort knowing that God has a handle on my future. Of course, I have many moments of doubt. Faith means faith for a reason. But I know with great certainty that my belief in God will never change. No matter where I go or what I do, I will always live by the inescapable truth that God loves me, and for that, I will forever thank my parents.

In 1989, a young Jewish man from the suburbs of Detroit asked a young Lutheran woman from an hour and a half outside of Chicago to marry him. The woman’s father made the man promise that any kids they had together would be raised in the Lutheran tradition—no mentions of Judaism, no participation in holidays or services, no education about this side of the couple’s religious background. The man agreed, knowing that this was his ticket to marrying the love of his life. And so, in the fall of 1998, I began preschool in the Lutheran educational system, which I would remain in until I was a teenager. I really believed in the Christian God at this time in my life. I memorized Bible verses every week like my eternal life depended on it. I clung to the teachings of my daily religion classes. When my class would lead Wednesday chapel, I always wanted to have the most lines. I wanted to be a shining example of a good and faithful servant. The particular church I grew up in leaned heavily into fundamentalist and evangelical ideologies. In youth groups and in the classroom, we were taught about modern martyrdom and how we should be willing to die for spreading the gospel. We learned about how modern missionaries were being hunted down and killed in China for telling others about Jesus. I knew every word of dc Talk’s song “Jesus Freak” and read the accompanying book to learn even more about martyrs. I was fully prepared to join the army of God and never look back.

I might have sat in the pew every Sunday and kept up the act, but that’s all it was: an act.

My Doubts About Christianity Started as an Adolescent

Then, I started public high school. My tiny Lutheran school with maybe 300 kids total gave way to a giant high school with around 4,000 students. For the first time in my life, I was interacting daily with people whose faith practices were different from my own. Public high school also opened the door to an education that was unclouded by religious bias. I fell in love with the sciences, feeding my curiosity about the world and the processes that drive life on this planet. It was here that I started having my first doubts about Christianity. At that stage of my life, science and God seemed incompatible. Science relies on evidence gained through experimentation. The “evidence” for God was a supposedly inerrant book. By the time I graduated from high school, I wouldn’t have called myself a Christian. I might have sat in the pew every Sunday and kept up the act, but that’s all it was: an act. I moved away for college, now fully identifying as an atheist. Some mental health concerns had given me the final push over the edge. How could the God I grew up with—the God I was willing to die for—leave me to suffer in my mental torment? I prayed to get better, to escape my anxiety and depression, and all I got in return was silence. I also realized that I’m a queer person. The church I grew up in was very anti-LGBT, and I didn’t want to be associated with that. How could I believe that this loving creator was ready and willing to condemn me for eternity for being authentically me? That shattered whatever little faith I had left. I remained an atheist until my second year of grad school.

I Joined a Christian Church Again but Still Questioned My Beliefs

In the fall of 2018, I met the woman who would become my wife. She studied opera, a world away from what I did as a sports medicine professional. In the gaps between audition seasons, she would be hired to sing at local churches. Because I loved her, I would sit in the back of the sanctuary and listen to her. One gig landed us in a church in the middle of Pennsylvania. I had gotten a job at a university there, and my wife found work singing for a United Church of Christ congregation. This church was unlike any I had ever been to before. The pastor was a lesbian who welcomed leaders from different faiths to co-preach with her every few months or so. It was at this church that I became open to the idea of Christianity again. I met with the pastor and explained my story and where I was in my faith journey. She told me that I was welcome to learn and explore in her church and that no matter where I was on the journey, or where I ended up, I could walk through those doors knowing that I would be surrounded by love. My wife and I ended up becoming members. When COVID-19 hit, the church stopped meeting in person and went totally virtual. We moved back home to Florida because I had a job opportunity lined up and we could live with my in-laws until we got on our feet. We still attended virtual services while I was waiting for my job to start and participated in whatever ways we could with the little family we had found in the mountains of Pennsylvania. But when my job finally started, I had to work on Sundays, and we stopped attending services. This left me once again questioning my faith and redefining what exactly I believed.

My Conversion Story Officially Began When I Connected With My Jewish Roots

In March of 2021, I was really feeling homesick for my family in Chicago, specifically around the time of Passover. My father’s sister-in-law would always cook a huge spread of amazing food. For the past couple years, I’ve cooked some of my favorite recipes to feel close to my family when I couldn’t be there physically. This year, my wife and I decided to have a few friends over to join us in the meal. As we were cooking, I mentioned that I felt like I was somehow appropriating the Jewish culture since I wasn’t raised in it. There’s been a recent uptick in social media posts from Christian individuals and churches hosting a Seder meal during the week before Easter in order for them to feel closer to Jesus. I hated feeling like I was doing that by preparing the foods of my heritage. My wife reminded me that even though I wasn’t raised Jewish, the blood of my ancestors flowed through my veins and I have every right to honor cultural Judaism. This was the point where I started to have the itch to learn more about Judaism. For the next few months, I would continue to learn more about theology and history. I started to feel like maybe I had found the religion for me, like I was finding a missing piece to the puzzle.

My strongest belief these days is that the only thing that matters is how you treat people in this life.

It’s Not Just the Traditions, Though; Judaism’s Religious Beliefs Resonate With Me

I discovered that a lot of Jewish ideology resonates with me. Reform Judaism views God and how we should interact with the world around us the same way I do. I don’t believe anymore that Jesus is the savior of the world. I think that at most, he was a political and religious teacher who was a threat to the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. I don’t believe in hell, and I’m not sure about heaven either. My strongest belief these days is that the only thing that matters is how you treat people in this life. My parents don’t know I’m looking into Judaism or that I really don’t vibe with Christianity anymore. I think it might kill them a little bit to learn that I’m seeking knowledge and understanding through a religion they tried so hard to hide from me. The religion and culture of my ancestors are still alive in me. I may not have been raised Jewish, but that hasn’t stopped me from finding comfort in the traditions that have marked my family, both past and present.

I didn’t grow up in an organized religion. Mom is Methodist, Dad’s Catholic, which meant my sister was baptized with one set of beliefs and I the other (something I still don’t understand to this day). We weren’t raised in a religious household, so the idea we needed to incorporate both theologies was lost on me, but I was fine with growing up in a house where we only attended church on Christmas and the occasional Easter.

I knew Christianity wasn’t for me when I noticed how restrictive religion is.

My Spirituality Is Less Restrictive Than Religion

I was 24 years old when I realized spirituality made more sense to me, after regularly practicing and seeing positive results. I knew Christianity wasn’t for me when I noticed how restrictive religion is. Being spiritual means no restrictions on your beliefs like other faiths (e.g. Catholics and their stance on birth control); I don’t have to hop on the bandwagon because an old book says I have to. I believe in the Law of Attraction (or manifestation), the “belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person's life.” In other words, what you put into the universe comes back to you. Say you want $1,000. If you start believing you have that money by speaking it into existence, you’ll get that $1,000. There is no right or wrong way to manifest; you can chant, journal or visualize the life you want (I prefer to write down my favorite mantras several times a day, usually for money and success). No matter which method you choose, remember to visualize what you want as if you already have it. The idea is that it’s already out there—it just needs to find you. If you think this is a bunch of hocus-pocus, you wouldn’t be the first; however, my counterargument is, what set of religious ideas is proven with facts, not beliefs? The only proof a person can have is their own experience and that’s for them to interpret whether or not a higher being was involved. I’ve had plenty of people tell me what I believe is bullshit. I mean, I think the moon and stars gave me the life I have. If you believe in a religious figure to help guide you through hard times, or that a fat guy in a red suit delivers presents to you once a year, who am I to tell you that those things are fake and you’re stupid for trusting those ideas? (Well, I guess there is proof against the Santa Claus idea, but again, beliefs aren’t facts.)I’m not here to invalidate your faith or dismiss the idea of a god. I’m not standing on a street corner passing out flyers and screaming into a microphone, trying to convert people. That isn’t my goal. I just want to share my experiences (and let people know manifesting is dope).

I’ve Spoken My Dream Job and Nice Weather Into Existence

I keep believing in manifestation because it keeps proving itself to me. I recently looked at my vision board for the first time in more than a year and realized about 90 percent of my dreams and ambitions came true (for the record, I hate saying things like, “My dreams came true.” It makes me feel like I’m in a Disney movie). Regardless, what I’ve put into the world has come back to me, and that makes me feel safe—like the universe has my back.One of the greatest examples was getting my dream job, which I spent months speaking into existence. I journaled about how I had the job, it’s what I told strangers when they asked what I did for a living and I spoke it out loud to myself every morning and night. After patiently waiting, I got the job. Of course, I needed to put in the work. The universe can’t do that for you.Then, there are simpler, less important moments like this: My family and I were going on our annual beach vacation, and the forecast called for rain the entire week. The week prior, we spent every day manifesting warm and sunny weather for our trip. It didn’t rain once while we were there. Chalk it up to coincidence, but I’m gonna keep telling the universe the weather forecast I want.

The idea is that it’s already out there—it just needs to find you.

The Law of Attraction Helped Me Get a New Apartment

I also maintain the idea that when you’ve been dealt a shitstorm, you’re due for some good news. It may take some patience, but the good will come. Personally, I had to wait nearly five months. Talk about having patience. I broke up with my boyfriend, an addict, in June of this year. I was convinced I would marry this man. He convinced me of a lot of things: that he would pay me back after using my credit card because he “lost” his, or whatever bullshit excuse he used that day; that he had a job; that he was 28 when he really just celebrated his 30th birthday. He moved into my apartment six months into our relationship. I had to leave the apartment where I lived for five years because he lied about paying rent, so I owed my landlord $3,600. After weeks of searching, I signed a lease for an apartment that kept me waiting for a month while they renovated the unit. They gave me a temporary unit, complete with an unclean carpet, cockroaches and a leaky sink. I couldn’t bring myself to stay there, so I slept on an armchair at my friend’s apartment, where my cats scratched at the new paint job and ruined door frames, adding more damage to my tab. I kept reassuring myself good things would come, but I felt like, “Okay, so when do those show up?”Then, I moved into my amazing apartment, paid for by someone else (a friend from a long time ago, with whom I shared a mutually beneficial relationship. I gave him great sex, and he provided funds to make my life easier. I got my money back that I paid to the shady landlord from the previous apartment. I live alone for the first time in my life, and I have a boyfriend who repeatedly shows he cares about me and doesn't convince me to love him; I just do. If you’re even considering manifesting or find it at all interesting, I encourage you to try it. If you think you didn’t get much out of it, then you spent a few minutes of your life journaling, but who knows? You may just wake up tomorrow with a fat bank account and the love of your life. PS: As I finished this, Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” started playing on my Spotify. If you’re not familiar, it’s about getting what you want because you say you want it. In my opinion, that’s no coincidence. It’s that damn universe again.

It was late summer 2020. I had been planning to go to China for work but that’d been on hold since February when the virus hit. My tenancy in Leeds, where I’d been living, had expired, and I was hesitant to go back to my parents’ house due to fears I’d infect them with the virus. That’s when one of my best friends from university, Ms. O, who’s from Cyprus, called. She offered me the opportunity to go and stay with her. It was a little complicated, though, as she was from Northern Cyprus, which isn’t actually a country—or is, depending on who you ask. At the time of this writing, only one country in the world, Turkey, recognizes Northern Cyprus. I booked my flight from Stansted for an incredible £8, and I was off to Ercan International via Istanbul.

My Arrival Was a Rude Awakening

“Passport.”The word was spoken as an instruction, not a request. Passport? I asked. I had already cleared two sets of security. I was trying to exit the airport in Cyprus. What did they need my passport for? “You get it back after quarantine.”In the ecstasy of arranging my plan, I hadn’t checked Cyprus’ quarantine requirements. I was bundled onto a bus and taken to a not-so-local hotel. On arrival, I pretended I smoked 40 cigarettes a day to be assured of a balcony. At least I wouldn’t be confined inside during the upcoming week. It took 29 hours for me to get the first meal I ordered when I arrived. Only one woman in room service could speak English, so if she wasn’t working, I wasn’t getting anything. The first night, the assigned meal was cold rice and dry beef. I decided I couldn’t wait 29 hours again if I needed something. Meals were delivered outside each person’s room and left on a small white table beside the door, after which a knock would instruct you to collect your dinner. However, an hour before the knock, a separate hotel worker would come around and leave bread and water. I sat by my door, listening for the first worker. When the bread and water had been delivered, I opened the door and decided I was going to rob everyone else’s. I shouldn’t have, but I was starving and thirsty, and so I did. An hour later, when we all stepped out to get our food, I scratched my head and tutted with the rest of them. Seven days I spent in that hotel room alone. I started to go a little mad. I read everything I could and wrote everything I could think of. For hours, I sat on the balcony and made a mental note to ask Ms. O why the buildings in the distance all looked like they were half-finished. I was finally released after seven days and a PCR test. I felt my mood lifting with every mile I put between myself and that awful hotel. We drove for about an hour to Kyrenia. Upon arrival at Ms. O’s family home, she asked me if I wanted to stay in the apartment or the villa in the private compound where it turned out she lived. “Pardon?” I asked, not understanding what she was offering. “The apartment or the villa,” she replied cheerfully. “We have both.”“The villa,'' I said enthusiastically. “And do you want the BMW or the Mercedes?”Again, I could only offer a pardon as my response.“You’ll need a car whilst you’re here. Which do you want?”“The Mercedes?” I asked cautiously. “No problem.” And that was that.A villa and a Mercedes! I was suddenly a long way from my houseshare in Leeds. I smugly settled into a private smile and relished my own damn good luck.

Seven days I spent in that hotel room alone. I started to go a little mad.

My Hosts Were Part of the Island’s History

I had known Ms. O wasn’t exactly living hand to mouth, but I didn’t know she maintained this kind of lifestyle back home. It turns out her grandfather was heavily involved in the birth of this new “nation” and well connected as a result. I was soon to find out just how well connected. A photo hung on the wall of an old woman, lighter in hand, attempting to help another elderly lady to ignite her cigarette.“Are those your grandmas?”“One is,” Ms. O replied “The other, that’s actually Princess Margaret.”That evening, like so many others that summer, we sat outside on the patio and ate the most delicious Turkish cuisine. Ms. O and her family all wore jumpers. This was cold for them, while I could have sat quite comfortably in just my swimming trunks. I noted aloud how good the food was, and everyone laughed and rolled their eyes. Cyprus is famous for its halloumi, and they had joined the EU to trade more. However, once in, their halloumi was judged too salty for EU standards, and now it's trapped on the island behind a ring of red tape like so many other elements of Northern Cyprus. I became more interested in the story behind Northern Cyprus. Only one country recognizes the country, and the UN classes it as an illegal occupation. Now though, I sat on the patio and listened to Ms. O’s father Mr. O’s stories. I have to put it on record that he is as fine a storyteller as any I have ever met. In between making me cry with laughter, he simply and succinctly painted me a picture of the history of this resilient island and its Turkish community. I would go on to read more about the stories he told me to see if they checked out, and to my great shame, they did. The shame I felt was that of belonging to Britain, which did everything it could to make nationhood an unachievable position for the people here, condemning them to be trapped in limbo for decades to come. With no initiative, incentive or reason to come to a resolution, the UN-enforced Green Line separating the country shows no sign of being altered any time soon. Mr. O had made his point this particular evening. An accomplished storyteller, he was quick to detect the saddened tone in the air and shift the conversation in another direction. Soon, a tale was being told about a football trip he’d been invited to in Istanbul some 15 years earlier. My ears pricked up at the mention of the event. Liverpool’s famous Champions League final happened in 2005 in the very same city. “That’s the one!” he said. “Liverpool–AC Milan!” “What was it like?” I begged him to share. “In all honesty, I could barely remember,” he said. He confessed that he’d had a little too much to drink. He did, however, manage to get his hands on a winner’s medal as a souvenir. One of the players had even scribbled their autograph across it. He produced it from a drawer in the house and, after matching the signature on Google, I could only sit there amazed at the conclusion that this medal had been signed by Steven Gerrard himself! (For those readers not familiar with football, this is like having the Shroud of Turin handed to you with Jesus Christ’s autograph blazed across it.)

I smugly settled into a private smile and relished my own damn good luck.

Northern Cyprus’ Past Is Still Alive Today

My original plan had been to stay in Cyprus for ten days, but as time passed, there became increasingly less reason to leave. China entered a new stage of lockdown, which made my arrival in Shanghai less and less likely, meaning there was only a miserable English autumn that I was trying to avoid returning to. Two weeks into my stay, the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself. Remember those buildings I had seen from my hotel? Well, they weren’t half-up, but half-down. During the division of the island in 1974, the former seaside tourist town of Varosha was abandoned virtually overnight under a hail of gunfire and fighting as the Greeks and the Turks wrestled for control. The city had been closed to all members of the public for 46 years. Today, however, they were opening it up to visitors for the first time.“Do you want to go?” Ms. O asked.Hell yes!And off we went. Ms. O, Mr. O and I entered Famagusta, some of the first people to go inside for 46 years. Given that most of the world was in some stage of lockdown by this point, I’m almost certain I was the first British person to go there. The gateway to Varosha was lined with police. They smiled as we arrived, but the atmosphere felt tense. The guards checked our passports and gestured for us to go inside. As we walked through the streets, we were guided down certain paths by police ticker tape cordoning off sections in which the public are allowed to walk. The buildings were houses and shops, some still with pinball machines, plates and glasses still inside. Mr. O was a soldier in the army, and I wondered how he felt walking the streets his comrades had fought for. Did the bullet holes left in the crumbling buildings prompt the sound of gunfire in his mind? Ms. O helped with the UN/Red Cross mission to track down bodies still lost on the island. The town we were in had long since been abandoned, but the shadow the fighting cast over the island still looms large in the lives of the people here. It’s impossible to detach what was then from what is now. On the way home, we stopped at a shop. Ms. O and her father went in to get supplies while I waited in the car. Mr. O’s phone rang incessantly. I saw the same number ringing over and over. I’ll answer, I thought, and explain the situation. The next time it rang, I swiped to accept. “Hello?” I askedA voice came back, speaking loudly and quickly in Turkish.I interrupted.“I’m sorry, Mr. O’s not here. He’s just in a shop. Can I tell him who it is to get him to ring you back?”“Tell him it’s the president and to answer his phone when I ring!” The line went silent.I relayed the conversation to the O’s once they were back in the car. “Is that the president of your company?” I asked Mr. O.Ms. O and Mr. O smiled at each other.No, no, no, they explained. That is the president.

Turkish Hospitality Will Make Memories for a Lifetime

The late summer I’d borrowed from the Mediterranean rolled on and on. I went to coffee houses, learned local board games and met some truly wonderful people. Eventually, though, the time to return home drew near. China’s borders had closed indefinitely, and there were suggestions that new arrivals back home could face quarantine measures. As much as I was enjoying myself, avoiding locked-up isolation had been my main factor in coming to the island, so now it seemed appropriate enough a reason to leave. However, looking back now, I can still see in my head the beautiful views from that monastery over the rolling hills of Kyrenia. I can still smell the petunias in the garden, still taste the un-importable halloumi, still feel the warmth of the people I met there. I still feel gratitude for the famous Turkish hospitality extended to me, and I still remember the summer I spent in a country that doesn’t exist.

Nora Ephron was an accomplished essayist, screenwriter and filmmaker. She penned the screenplays for some of the most successful romantic comedies of our time, including When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle and Julie & Julia. Before delving into the world of film, Ephron was also a fearless journalist—in the 1960s she was a reporter for the New York Post and later went on to become a columnist on women’s issues for Esquire. Though I had watched and re-watched most of Ephron’s films, I knew very little of the writer’s life until I saw the 2015 documentary Everything Is Copy, directed by Ephron’s son, Jacob Bernstein, which explores the epic life and legacy of his mother.The film’s title was a maxim coined by Nora’s mother, Phoebe Ephron, who herself was a gifted playwright and screenwriter. In one scene, Nora describes the meaning behind her mother’s private adage, “I now believe that what my mother meant was this: When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh, so you become the hero, rather than the victim, of the joke. I think that’s what she meant.”Early on, Phoebe had given her daughter the license and reassurance to mine her own personal life for material and chronicle her foibles and tragedies with radical honesty. And Nora lived by that rule, architecting her own persona and using her own experiences as fodder for her writing. As a brown, Muslim woman, I felt especially enlightened hearing this maxim explained aloud.

Until College, Most of My Thoughts Remained in Diaries

I had officially begun writing during my first year of university in England. I was one of the few persons of color on an extremely white-dominated campus, and upon arrival, was suddenly bestowed two markers of identity—minority student. I felt the otherness as I walked on campus or roamed the halls of my dorms. I would observe my white peers and professors move nonchalantly in any given space as communities of color seemingly orbited around them. Within the classroom setting, and off-campus, I had also been the victim of racist confrontations and multiple microaggressions, but my complaints were shut down by an overwhelmingly white administration that simply didn’t—and couldn’t ever—understand what it meant to feel alienated because of one’s race. A few months into my first year, I stumbled upon Everything Is Copy. Upon hearing Ephron’s literary tenet, I began to take control of my own narrative. The rule confirmed what I silently knew all along: Writing was going to be my instrument to reclaim my voice. I had finally accessed an art form where personal feelings and opinions held legitimacy and were given a credible space if seen as contributing to society. And so I picked up my laptop and began to write. For my debut essay in the college newspaper, I wrote about the homesickness and isolation I felt like a foreign student in a Western country. The unexpected, resounding response I received from different communities of color and fellow international students encouraged me to begin documenting my own unique happenings interlinked with race and feminism. However, early on in my encounters with the personal essay genre, I found that, as a literary brown woman, I wasn’t afforded the same space and opportunity to be vulnerable in my writing as my white peers were. Growing up in Pakistan, I was instilled with the mentality that writing about one’s feelings, thoughts and experiences was a sign of being weak or “overly emotional.” I was told, like many other brown people are told, to subsume my feelings. And until I began to write professionally, most of my words remained merely as diary entries. Like many female writers before me, my stories of suffering and anguish weren’t taken seriously or considered worthy enough to be called art. But witnessing Ephron take the world of journalism by storm, and occupy the director’s seat in Hollywood, was empowering. Here was a female artist taking ownership of her tales and claiming space for the unabashedly complex female experience.

I was told, like many other brown people are told, to subsume my feelings.

My Personal Experiences Were Inherently Political

Every single time I faced doubts as a young female writer, both during and after college, I’ve reminded myself that “everything is copy.” By doing this, I’ve been able to experience catharsis through the process of poetry and journalistic writing. I’ve learned to center my own emotional perspective as a woman of color, automatically defying the patriarchal and cultural gatekeepers. I’ve understood how to be delicately intimate and vulnerable in an effective way—a particularly difficult task in the age of social media and oversharing.Post-college, I began covering broader, more relevant issues like race relations, South Asian culture and global feminism. These were all topics interlinked with my own identity and pushed me to realize that my personal was political. Interestingly, I also came to realize how my literary outlook was chiefly rooted in Western ideology, and I instantly began to discard the colonial lens I was writing through. Soon, I was rebuilding my fraught relationship with my mother tongue, Urdu, and inculcating my bilingualism into poetic form. I now possessed a newfound creative freedom, where culture, tradition, language and memory could coexist. Ephron’s dictum also permitted me to use writing as a way to organize the clutter in my mind and come to terms with past familial trauma. Putting the anguish of my past into words allowed me to regain a semblance of control in a way that didn’t let the pain entirely best me. Though it wasn’t a cure-all, I was at least halfway through to letting my traumatic past finally go.

I Learned the Importance in Sharing My Voice

Audre Lorde, a Caribbean-American poet, essayist and activist, explained the essentiality of her own voice in her poignant essay, “The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action.” “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”For years, the world has participated in the cruel silencing and erasure of the voices of writers of color. As a result, we’ve collectively faced doubt in our right to share stories. In Pakistan, I risk censure by reporting events like the feminist movement (Aurat March—Urdu for "Women’s March") because of the heavily prevalent patriarchal constructs and the deep vein of internalized misogyny that runs through the nation. However, like Lorde’s and Ephron’s maxims emphasized, it would be a disservice—not only to me, but to the female collective I belong to—if I never wrote about these crucial causes.

Not Everything Is Worthy of Being Shared

Ephron’s own literary journey, and her strong self-belief in everything being copy, has encouraged writers across the globe to translate their own personal experiences through creative expression. She taught writers how to consistently view the world through a sensitive lens, taking in and observing everything around them, from the mundane to the essential. However, while writing openly about one’s own insecurities and failures is a powerful act of vulnerability, there is also a fine line between “everything is copy” and sensational disclosure. As a writer, there have been moments in my life where I’ve used people close to me and the most private moments I’ve shared with them as fodder for my work. But over the years, I’ve come to understand that not everyone and everything in my circle is fair game. Some events are intimate, not meant for an article or an essay. Moreover, Ephron’s dictum seemed to generalize greatly, because not everything in our lives is worth being copy. Most of us live ordinary lives, filled with regular moments, which aren’t fit for the page. What is fit is material and stories we critically examine and evaluate to see whether they are in any way contributive to broader society. And perhaps, Ephron came to this realization as well. When she was diagnosed with leukemia, the disease which would ultimately take her life, Ephron remained strictly private, only revealing her illness to her family and friends until much later on. Toward the end of the documentary, Ephron’s son provides his final thoughts and developments on his mother’s famous adage.“Ultimately, people you love are not copy,” he says. “Copy is the pain, the things you’ve lost. What you decide to give away. That’s copy.”

It was the summer of 2020. Despite the pandemic, I was planning to go on a trip. The guy I had just started dating didn’t want to come, but his flatmate did. During the trip, he and I got close. My emotions were running high; I wondered if I had met The One. I thought the feeling would go away after I got back to my regular life again, but that didn’t happen. I didn’t want to ditch the current boy I was dating, so I decided to forget about the new one. I thought if one trip could make me fall for him, then another might make me feel another way. I had always wanted to travel solo, and I had always wanted to see a border between countries. I decided to do both and planned a trip to a city close to the border between Ukraine and Slovakia, alone. After a day of thinking it over, I packed my bag and left for the railway station. On the way, I decided to make it a two- or three-day trip and visit two or three cities. I booked a hotel on the way. The area is where Ukraine, Slovakia and Hungary meet. I arrived in Uzhhorod in the morning and decided to explore a little before checking into the hotel. I found out that the Slovakian border was just an hour’s walk away. I decided to take a look.

Tensions at the Border

The road to the border was uphill. After an exhausting walk, I reached it and started taking pictures. There was just one officer around. He saw me and came over to ask what I was doing. I told him that I wanted to see what the border looked like. He asked me to show my documents. I only had my student card on me, but I showed him a photo of the rest of my documents. It was hard communicating with him because he was speaking Russian and I only know Ukrainian. The part of Ukraine where I lived is full of patriotic people. They don’t like Russians, and they don’t speak Russian, unlike much of the rest of the country. I had to use Google Translate to talk to him. I wasn’t scared of my situation. It was all too interesting to me. This was just what I needed: a new story to share. In serious situations, I always feel like laughing, so I was trying to control it, but I still had a smile on my face. And I was secretly taking pictures of the border officer. He took my phone and looked through my photos. “Don’t you know that it’s prohibited to take photos of the border?” he asked me. I told him no. I honestly didn’t know, because in India, where I’m originally from, people often visit a town just across the border in Pakistan. Taking photos is totally normal. The officer deleted all of the photos. He seemed to believe I was innocent because I didn’t act scared at all. He told me that the police would come and take me, but not to be scared. They were just going to check my documents and let me go. The police vehicle came. Two officers with rifles got out and took me into their vehicle. Now things were getting even more interesting. They drove me to a place that I didn’t know at that time was a refugee camp. They asked me questions and said they don’t believe a single word I said. They took my mugshot like a criminal, plus my fingerprints and signature.

It was only then that I started to realize I was in a refugee camp.

I Was a Tourist—Then Suddenly I Was a Refugee

It was only then that I started to realize I was in a refugee camp. There were three other Indians and one Afghani family. The Afghani family had run away from their country because they didn’t feel safe there. They had paid thousands of dollars to an agent to take them into Germany, but the agent had abandoned them along the way. They spent a night in the woods, and the next morning, some Slovakians saw them and called the police. The Indians were going to Austria for a better job. They had also paid a handsome sum to an agent. I was the only one there who hadn’t.The camp was interesting. There was a living room and a kitchen. In the living room, there was a TV, but all the movies had Russian audio with Chinese subtitles. There were books too, but they were also in Russian. Since we were bored and the guards had taken our watches and phones away, we would play games like “guess the time,” where everyone would put in their guess and we’d ask the guard to tell us what time it was. In the evening, the other refugees got their phones back for a while. I never did. The guard told me I’d get it the next day. At night they would lock us up in our room. I was sharing a room with an Indian girl. The first night was horrible. I just couldn’t adapt to what was happening. On the second day, I waited all day to get my phone, but at the end of the day, we got the news that we were switching camps with other refugees. On the same day, a Bangladeshi man was brought in. He said he’d been trying to cross the border at night, but as soon as he started cutting the fence, it got light out and he got caught. It was hard for me not to be able to wear makeup. Thank God there weren’t any mirrors around. As soon as I got my bag back, I put on the lipstick. Then we moved camps. The second camp was even more trying. There wasn’t a common room. We were locked in our rooms all the time, and they let us out to use the toilet. I still didn’t have my phone. The next day I gave up. I surrendered to the situation and offered no more resistance. It brought me peace.I found ways to pass the time. My roommate talked about our life experiences. A young officer at the camp named Dima kept me entertained. He brought apples for my roommate and me. I still didn’t have my phone back. On my second night at the new camp, they told me I had court the next day. When the next day came, they asked me to grab my stuff, and I heard them talking about a railway station, so I was sure that they would release me. The guards put me in a van with a group of Indian guys. One of them was a YouTuber who was trying to make a video on how to cross the border easily. When he got caught, the police deleted his channel.

I wasn’t scared of my situation. It was all too interesting to me.

My Day in Court

When we got to the court, they introduced me to a translator who told me that my visa had been canceled and they were planning to send me back to India. I was shocked. I asked him what I could do. Was the decision reversible? He said he would record a voice message and send it to my father. “We will figure out a way,” he said. “Just give me his number.” I gave it to him. It was so hard to explain my situation to my father, but I had to do it. I had been gone for three days at that point, and he didn’t know where I was. He immediately sent a response, but he sent it in Hindi and the translator couldn’t read it, so he couldn’t tell me what it said. He couldn’t show me his phone either, because of the border police. Then I was sent back to the van. Some of the other refugees told me that the translator wasn’t a good man and that I shouldn’t have given my father’s phone number to him. Now he will try to take money from him, they said. I just didn’t know what to do. After a while, I was called out again. Someone told me that I had a stain on my pajama pants. It turned out I was on my period. But I didn’t even care about the stain. I roamed the court just like that. The translator asked me to cry in front of the judge. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. In the end, she said, “Let’s see what to do with you. Do you know that your visa is canceled?” That’s when I started crying. The court was dismissed and I was taken out. My translator told me that after a while I would have another court session. Imagining myself crying like that was making me laugh, so I sat in one place alone and I harnessed all my gloomy feelings in order to cry again. I went through another court. This time it was easier, and there weren’t too many questions. But I didn’t know what the court’s decision would be. The translator wouldn’t tell me. He said someone would come to take me, but that I shouldn’t go with them. “They will say that they did something to release you,” he told me, “And then will ask you for money.” I said okay. Then we were all sent back to the van. When it pulled away, the other refugees told me that we weren’t going in the direction of the camp. I noticed that we were going back the same way I had come from the railway station. The border lady called me and gave me my file. I was ecstatic to touch my phone again. I immediately wanted to call my father, but my battery was dead. We finally reached the station, and when I got out of the van, I felt like it was the end of some horror movie. In many horror movies, all of the characters die but one. I felt like that one lucky survivor.

As a student in college, the outlook on your professional future is mostly rosy. You’re excited about your classes, and looking forward to getting a job and working your butt off doing what you love. Rarely do professors in the classroom address gender stereotyping before students enter the field. Athletics is no exception. Working in athletics seems awesome, and for the most part, it is. You get to travel with the team, work with athletes, cover the games and practices, and share in the victories and defeats. However, one not-so-awesome aspect of athletics, that isn’t often discussed, is gender stereotyping, as well as unequal treatment because of gender faced by the people who support the athletes. As a female athletic trainer working at an NCAA institution, I know that unequal treatment and gender stereotyping are more prevalent than one might think. 55 percent of athletic trainers are female yet only 17.5 percent hold Division I head athletic trainer positions. The profession is still widely viewed as very male-dominated, and despite being in the minority, males frequently hold these positions of power.

We graduate student athletic trainers were treated as dispensable.

My First Job in Athletics Made Me Want to Quit the Whole Field

Transitioning from student to clinician is not always smooth. Working independently as a clinician can be a harsh contrast to working as a student underneath an athletic trainer. While transitioning from student to professional, there are a few different scenarios that can play out. Your confidence can soar—you can feel like you’re on top of the world, living out your dreams and doing exactly what you wanted to do. Or it can seem not that different from when you were a student—the transition goes smoothly, and life goes on as normal. Or life comes to a screeching halt, your confidence is crushed, and you question why you wanted this job (and most of your life choices leading up to this point). For me, it was route number three. My first boss coming out of undergrad, who oversaw my work as a graduate student earning my master’s degree in kinesiology and recreation, is not the type of boss anyone should have—or their first job or otherwise. The environment he created as head athletic trainer undermined my confidence through manipulation, lack of empathy and questioning every decision made by myself and my female coworkers (but not the male ones). His training room was a mentally unhealthy working environment, and the attitude he fostered in the entire athletics department was not of mutual respect and understanding, but of coaches (mostly male) holding power and using it to crush everyone else. We graduate student athletic trainers were treated as dispensable. The administration didn’t feel they had to listen to our thoughts, ideas or desires because we’d be gone in two years, and a new class of grad students would take our place. But I trudged forward through my doubts and lack of confidence, thinking that this is just what happens when you get a new job in a new place, unaware that this is not always normal.

The Gender Gap in Our Workplace Was Impossible to Ignore

My male coworkers were never treated the way my female coworkers and I were, never questioned the way the females were for our plan of care regarding our athletes. I developed crippling anxiety of giving a definitive answer about the condition of my athletes to coaches, or even the athletes themselves, for fear of doing or saying the wrong thing. My female coworkers and I were judged much more harshly than the males were. One time, a male coworker sat and watched Hercules at his desk and my boss said nothing about him slacking off; that same week, I left baseball practice for five minutes one day to grab a coat and dinner from the athletic training room and was reprimanded for neglecting my job to fulfill basic human needs of food and warmth. My boss wasn’t the only issue, though. More often than not, when visiting teams came for games, their staff assumed the male student athletic trainers were the certified athletic trainers, and would approach them directly—while brushing me off as if I were a student. Male athletes on the teams in my care would approach my male peers with injuries or concerns before coming to me. They called me “mean” for holding them out of play due to injuries when my male superior did not care enough to back up my decisions. Undergraduate students wouldn’t respect my authority as their preceptor regarding rules and standards. Coaches would ignore me or refuse to learn my name, even when I was the main clinician in charge of care for their team. And they'd be confused and dismissive when we were traveling and I'd request a separate hotel room from the male staff. I didn’t get much support from other staff members either. When I brought up my concerns about the working environment and the head athletic trainer, the answer I always received was, “There’s nothing we can do until he retires.” It only reinforced the cycle of shrugging our shoulders and brushing off gender inequality and mistreatment.

I was completely questioning the entire profession, and whether I wanted to continue working in collegiate athletics at all.

Gender Equality in Athletics Isn't Impossible—In Fact, It's Already Happening

This environment affected me in such a way that by the time I finished graduate school and left that job, I was completely questioning the entire profession, and whether I wanted to continue working in collegiate athletics at all. It took a lot of time and discernment, but I decided that I wouldn’t make a decision for my future based on the treatment I received at the hands of someone else, but on my own dreams, desires and convictions. And I’m glad that I did. Since graduating with my master’s degree, I’ve entered a new role as an assistant athletic trainer at another university, where the work environment is a stark contrast to what I experienced in graduate school. Here, there is both a female head athletic trainer and a female athletic director. The working environment is one of collaboration and respect among administrators, staff, coaches and athletes. I’m valued for what I bring to the table because I work hard and I’m good at my job, irrespective of my gender. The coaches for my teams actively seek out my advice and input for the care of their athletes, and everyone on staff is treated equally. I was relieved to find that the environment and treatment that I experienced at my first job is not the be-all-end-all in collegiate athletics, or even athletics in general. How athletes and staff members are treated is all about the environment that is created and fostered in the athletics department by the athletic director, head athletic trainer, administrators and coaches. Any job can be a bad job, but don’t let it tarnish the dreams you have for your career and life. Any job can have gender stereotyping, inequality or mistreatment. It’s about changing the conversation to one of equality and hoping—knowing—that there are places out there that are getting it right.

A few times, I’ve been asked outright about my chances of getting the COVID-19 vaccination. “I’m too young for the age cut-off,” I say, which is true in the state where I live. But I’m omitting key information: I’ve already been vaccinated.My husband works in the ER. In the tent erected in the hospital’s parking lot as a vaccination station, staff quickly noticed that the Pfizer vial that was supposed to contain five doses actually contained six. At the end of the day, this left them with valuable bonus shots they were loath to discard. When this realization occurred, several staffers came into the ER to quietly ask if spouses could get to the tent in the next 15 minutes to be vaccinated. My husband came home that night and told me to be on alert that I might get that call from him on any given evening.My experience of being vaccinated in this way was furtive and exhilarating and felt absolutely historic. But as layoffs are looming in my husband’s department and we are scared of any little slip that might jeopardize his job, I cannot tell anyone that I got this amazing side benefit after a year of worrying he was going to contract COVID and die—or that we both would, and leave our kids orphaned.

I’m omitting key information: I’ve already been vaccinated.

Receiving the Vaccine Early Felt Illicit

I got the phone call from him several weeks after this epiphany. At 6:10 p.m., I rushed to the hospital, uncertain if a dose was actually earmarked for me, or if it depended on how fast I got there. In the dark as I walked towards the luminous tent, lit like a Japanese lantern, another woman also made a beeline for it. It struck me that maybe we were vying for the same, last shot. “Forgot my mask,” she muttered, and returned to her car. I was embarrassed at how relieved I felt. Even once registered and waiting inside the first chamber of the tent, I was still unsure if it was really going to happen. The staff seemed urgent, hushed, secretive—and the vibe was definitely that of a landmark moment in history. After my years of writing about the 1918 flu and its years-long cycling (we really shouldn’t call it the 1918 flu, which implies it only lasted a year), here was a vaccination already prepared for us modern souls. I had the sense that we were all lucky, the kind of lucky that makes you tremble.I watched as a woman begged for a shot for her sister and was denied. “We don’t have one for her,” said the healthcare worker. “Well, she can just sit next to me in case,” said the woman. “No,” the worker answered flatly. “She has to wait outside.” I inhaled, thinking of history and its narrow escapes or pivotal moments of many a “no” when a “yes” would have changed everything.After my shot, I sat in another section of the tent with others, to make sure none of us keeled over. We were told to set our phone timers for 15 minutes. As a group, we were emotional. I had tears in my eyes, and a man sitting across the tent called out to me with his arms in the air, embracing elation. The man next to me, also a spouse of an employee, had arrived so rushed he didn’t even know whether he’d been given Pfizer or Moderna. (It was the latter.)It felt illicit—but I reasoned that it couldn’t happen any other way. Opening up the bonus doses to the public would cause a stampede like the last lifeboat leaving the Titanic, leading to an unsafe environment for employees in the midst of a pandemic where everyone is trying to be socially distanced. And for me, as a spouse, it seemed fair. After all, we spouses are the ones who wiped every surface for months; we fretted over germ-filled shoes at the threshold and virus-laden scrubs in the washing machine; and we heard our mate coughing as we slunk down to sleep on the sofa. In a move that felt horrifying, I had contacted our estate planning attorney just to confirm he had the right phone numbers in the case our kids were left orphaned (my husband and I are both in the middle-aged group). The pandemic has been hard on spouses of essential workers in all fields: What they encountered, we believed, might come home with them.

Getting the Second Shot Felt Completely Different

A month later, the clandestine atmosphere had completely vanished. When I showed up for my second dose, it was a sunny day. I'd taken the earliest available hour slot in case supply was limited. In fact, days before my appointment, news broke that another medical provider in the area was canceling its second dose appointments for lack of shipment. This time, ribbons attached to traffic cones created parallel lanes for us to wait in, and a hospital employee directed us to the correct lane. It felt like security clearance at the airport, and the tone was one of boredom. I found myself with the same sort of gratitude, but definitely not as intense—because with the first dose you're already at 85 percent immunity.The nursing supervisor in charge of the vaccination station periodically walked the line to ask if everyone was OK (people with mobility issues were taken to the front) and made sure we’d filled out our two forms. She engaged in good-natured ribbing with a woman who didn't have them and tried to say she hadn't been informed about them. "Nope!" the supervisor said with a grin. "I sent you that email myself!"At one point, she tried to get the crowd going, almost like we were in line for a rock concert. "Is everybody all right?" she called out. Nods, murmurs of assent. "I mean, is everybody all right?!" I added an up-volume “Woohoo!” but this crowd wasn't having it.

My experience of being vaccinated in this way was furtive and exhilarating and felt absolutely historic.

For Those About to Jab, We Salute You

After I got the shot, the waiting area of the tent was completely full, so I took a seat outside. I was tempted to start scrolling my phone, but I made myself put it down so I could truly experience the moment. The supervisor came by and I called out to her—she sat down for a few seconds once I told her who my husband was. I thanked her profusely and told her the operation was running incredibly smoothly. She said things were going so well they were upping their doses to 100 per hour from 75.But at a community vaccination event the previous day, she had had to turn people away, and they were angry.As I walked past the line of incoming people on my way back to my car, it occurred to me that I wanted to get that rally going that she had tried to start—to clap, hoot and shout; to thank the medical staff who had been on the front lines for an entire uncertain year; to thank the volunteers who were there on a Saturday, masked and putting themselves in a situation others would have run from. I was too shy, and I'll always regret that. But to anyone reading this who has been part of the medical field in this last year: You really were rock stars.

Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s difficult to recognize the reality of your situation when it’s all you know. So it wasn’t until after I finished my four years as a college athlete that I realized how dangerous the training we were subjected to really was. Looking back on my time playing lacrosse, I’m amazed more of my teammates didn’t get seriously hurt, although the chronic injuries that many of us suffered now make all too much sense.

No pity or rest was given to those who would vomit in between sets.

Our Coaches Pushed Us Past the Limit

I blacked out during my first run test—there’s a lot of running in lacrosse, turns out—as a freshman. It was mid-day in September in the South, so temperatures were up in the 90s. I turned to the senior next to me, and fearfully said, “I can’t see.” All she could say was, “Don’t stop,” knowing that if one person couldn’t complete the run test, everyone would be punished. I ran the last half of that test blacking in and out of consciousness. At one point I peed my shorts. I remember the urine soaking into my socks and pooling in my shoes. The veteran teammates around me assured me that it was normal, and I believed them. To them, it was normal. After experiencing the same thing during every subsequent run test that fall of my freshman year—when I was just 18 years old—it became normal for me too. Our strength and weightlifting tests were equally grueling. The most infamous one began by splitting up into groups of four. Each team had to sprint up and down the bleachers of our school’s colossal Power Five conference football stadium, one of the largest in the world. But there was a twist: On each sprint, one girl in the group had to carry a sledgehammer over her head the entire way up and down. I can’t describe how terrifying it is when you reach the top of that stadium, sledgehammer overhead, and look down to see a seemingly vertical drop to the bottom. Legs wobbling, we would have to descend as quickly as possible without the help of our hands or arms for balance. Lowering the sledgehammer, or even bending our elbows for a moment of respite, meant punishment for the entire group. We never slept well the nights before these tests. In the locker room, before we’d head out, there would be an overwhelming somberness and sense of dread wondering what the workout that day would entail. Some girls would cry just from knowing the suffering they were about to endure. No pity or rest was given to those who would vomit in between sets. I often got the sense that our strength and conditioning coach got a sick satisfaction out of the mental and physical anguish she imposed upon us. I often caught her with a smile on her face as she watched us struggle through the torture. One particularly gruesome run test sent several of my teammates to the hospital for heatstroke. Our strength and conditioning coach screamed at us to keep going, even as a teammate sobbed and crawled on all fours to reach the finish line.

Threats, Coercion and Control

The threat of punishment by grueling exercise extended to our off hours. The coaches would use it to dissuade anyone from going to the bars during the week—anyone caught out the night before a morning lift was subjugated to either running up and down the football stadium or climbing 200 floors on a StairMaster, all while wearing a weighted vest. We were consistently drug tested, usually with only a few hours' notice. If we didn’t show up, we were punished as if we had tested positive. The NCAA drug tested us to monitor steroid use, but the university tested us to monitor our behavior. Despite experiencing what I now recognize as persistent stress throughout my time as a college athlete, our mental health was never discussed. Our coach would even play mind games with us—she’d make a girl believe all week leading up to a game that they were going to “see the field,” or maybe even start the game, only to crush them minutes before by announcing a starting lineup without their name on it. The fear leading up to workouts was agonizing. The dread of playing on an injury resulted in panic attacks that went untreated. The pressure to maintain the right size and weight destroyed my teammates’ self-image and led them to dangerously alter their diets. One had an eating disorder so severe that she would vomit into kitchen pots and pans that she would stash away under her bed and in her closet in the hopes that no one would find out. Some girls brought it to the attention of our coaching staff, but nothing was ever done about it. Another girl only ate corn for every meal of every day, knowing that it would satisfy her hunger, but wouldn’t stick around to add any weight. Our strength and conditioning coach lauded her for how much weight she lost and how great she looked. We would all watch her with a close and fearful eye during practices and run tests, waiting for her to collapse.

Can a 16-year-old realistically make an informed decision this major?

College Athletics Got in the Way of Our College Educations

The coaching staff always placed athletics above our education. Some of my teammates, and other athletes I knew, were funneled into majors that offer the least interference with their training and competition schedules. The most popular was communications. Girls who had hopes of majoring in nursing or architecture were told “too bad,” because those programs were considered too demanding. Dreams of becoming an engineer were quashed when we were told it would be too difficult. I often wonder if my teammates would have gone down a different academic path if they’d been given the choice.Writing this has conjured up a ton of questions for me. What was the point of all of this? A professional future in lacrosse beyond college isn’t a straightforward or particularly lucrative path. Mental toughness? If so, for what? I wonder if my former teammates would disagree with what I’m saying, or if they’d think I’m being dramatic. Is this just the price you pay for an athletic scholarship at a top program? Had I known that I would be left with chronic injuries, would I have still done it? I committed to playing in college when I was still a high school sophomore. Can a 16-year-old realistically make an informed decision this major? Some things have changed since I graduated years ago, and I’m glad. For starters, our strength and conditioning coach got fired. It may have been too late for myself and my former teammates, but I’m happy for the current players, and hopeful that they’re having a better weightlifting experience. Since I graduated, more and more athletes have been talking openly about mental health. More female athletes are speaking out about their struggles with eating disorders. We don’t let 16-year-olds in my sport verbally commit to colleges anymore. Despite it all, I don’t regret my time as a Division I athlete. I was part of a unique experience in a sports program that is synonymous with pride, winning and loyal fans. I’m not going to lie: I felt very special at key moments during my time there. I also made lifelong friendships along the way. The rest, though? I could have done without it.

I’ve been involved in equestrian sports over several disciplines since I was a child. I started out doing hunters, based on style and quality of the animal, and jumpers, based on speed and efficiency of getting around a course of fences without knocking them over. I then did equitation and dressage. I was a horse girl through and through. But, unlike the majority of the community, I grew up in a lower-middle-class household. I always felt like an outsider in a world where the majority of participants were privileged with lots of wealth and resources. At horse shows, my mother had to work in concessions while other kids’ moms stood by the side of the ring with their horse butlers, the majority of whom are Central American and live on the family’s sprawling acreage, handling all aspects of caring for their horses and equipment. Only when I got older and got a job at a barn in Ocala, Florida—during a winter circuit—did I begin to grasp the true inequality of it all. Throughout the annual 12-week-long show, people would spend an average of $2,000 per week, per horse, often bringing multiple horses to show during the event. A memory that sticks with me is when a girl around ten years old came in and bluntly told me, “I need Porpoise ready in ten minutes.” For one, she was way too comfortable ordering a stranger around. But second, it wasn’t my responsibility to groom her horse at all. “OK, then go get it,” I responded back. She was completely beside herself, and just stood there with no idea how to prepare and saddle her own horse.

At horse shows, my mother had to work in concessions while other kids’ moms stood by the side of the ring with their horse butlers.

Horses Are Treated Better Than the Impoverished Groomers Taking Care of Them

People involved in the equestrian disciplines tend to be either ultra-wealthy or ultra-poor. The elites own lots of acreage spread across multiple properties. In Ocala, there are a lot of seasonal residents who reside there only during the months of competition. They fly on private planes, vacation in the islands and flaunt their wealth in astounding and egregious ways.The economics speak for themselves: If you want to be competitive in the regular divisions, the average price for a horse at competition level is around $100,000 and stretches well past that. The cost for boarding at a more minimalistic barn is at least $1,000 per month. There are more extravagant barns with costs ranging into the millions that have full lounges, gyms, swimming pools, kitchens and any amenity the mind can conjure. Since the horses are treated like athletes and there’s a lot of pressure on their joints, they also get regular injections and courses of treatment. At base level, owners must factor in thousands per year in veterinary costs to maintain their joints and a minimum of $250 every eight weeks to have their hooves maintained by a farrier. They even get acupuncture, chiropractic treatment and massages. They’re fed the finest foods. Their care is manicured and tailored down to the hour of turnout, which allows a horse to graze the pasture. Those who can afford it have their horses turned out by themselves without any other horses in the same pasture so there’s no risk of injury. In many cases, horses live a more lavish lifestyle than the humans who are taking care of them. To put it in perspective, think about when you’re driving down the highway and you see one of those large horse trailers—if you know to look, you’ll often spot a human face. They belong to the grooms, largely undocumented Central Americans, riding in the back with the horses to keep them calm. It’s very dangerous, just one of many inhumanities they suffer. They often live on a corner of the barn owner’s property with their whole families, including kids and grandparents, packed into decrepit mobile homes. On the surface, they seem to be treated very well. They basically become part of the family. But the reality is that they’re paid almost nothing, they work 15-hour days in brutal climates and then have to go home to a trailer with ten other people.

In many cases, horses live a more lavish lifestyle than the humans who are taking care of them.

Racism and Elitism Still Dominate Equestrian Sports

The most ironic thing about the horse community is that they’re largely Republican and anti-immigrant, yet rely heavily on extremely cheap, undocumented labor to tend to their every need. There’s also a major undertone of racism that shines through the sport thanks to its lack of diversity. When George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement bubbled over in the summer of 2020, there were threads on popular horse message boards where the racists came out of the woodwork in droves. A well-known horse trainer wrote, and I'm paraphrasing, “Of course there are only white people in the sport—it’s an expensive hobby and Black people are poor.”Overall, there are very few people of color in the sport, and they’re almost always younger. I only know one person of color who still shows up after aging out of their junior status. The competition judges are mostly white male conservative baby boomers, and the standard for what gets pinned (awarded) in equitation is flat out gross: tall, thin, beautiful and white. My friend’s daughter rides remarkably well and is Black. Even if she puts in a nicer round, she has never placed above her white competitors. In many cases, the competitors make clear mistakes but were still placed higher. The racism is still more of a foghorn than a dog whistle. Despite the glaring issues facing the horse community in the U.S., I want to believe we can make it a more equitable experience for everyone. I’d love to see this change here and I know it’s possible because, in European countries, taking part in equestrian sports is not as rigidly class-based or as problematic as it is in the U.S. Working with horses teaches you so much about communication, body language, listening, sensing and helps you build an intuition that you just can’t get anywhere else. I hope more people can experience it.

I’ve been an athlete my whole life. Growing up in Iowa, I played four sports in high school, but college basketball captivated me the most. I soon started studying everything there was to do—from biomechanics to kinesthesiology—right when I got out. Eventually, I got certified as a nutritionist and personal and group fitness trainer. I kept it up in my twenties while living in Italy as a fashion model. Because I lived overseas, I trained people through the internet and on Skype. I eventually became certified in about ten different ways. It’s been my life’s work.My trajectory halted in 2010 for a year and a half-long prison stint. When I got out, my life had changed and I was determined to do whatever I could to work and make money. I went back to my training roots. As I went online looking for different opportunities, I came across these bodybuilding forums, and started participating in them. They were looking for reps for various companies. “Well shit, I'd like to do that on the side,” I thought. They only paid me in supplements, but I went from being a small rep for a supplement company within one year to being a salaried employee making five grand a month.

It’s not difficult to get them once you figure out where to look online.

The Start of the YouTube Experiment

Soon, they wanted me to start making YouTube videos as part of my work. The videos took off so fast that I turned my name into something huge and quickly became a self-made star. I went from living in my mom’s basement in the middle of 2011 to buying my first house in 2012. And I did it all from scratch.Most of my messaging on YouTube is trying to steer people away from steroids. A lot of what I preach are the dangers involved in them—how to be careful and how to find alternatives. But if you're going to use them, I explain how. It’s not difficult to get them once you figure out where to look online. China is trying to ban the production of steroid powders in its country, which is where they mainly come from. But even if they ban them, it would just be like weed and coke being illegal here. You’re still going to get it. Go on Google and type in “buy steroids online” when you're not busy. It'll blow your mind. So, I will help people, but I tell them that taking steroids is not recommended, and if you're under 25 years old, even if you pay me, I won’t coach you on them. I consider myself more of a good guy in the industry. I’ve never sold steroids and I’ve never sold regular supplements—I’ve just worked for those companies. I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum.

My Honesty Was My Undoing

For some reason, people get mad at me for this. When people ask you a question they just want an answer. I need to know their weight, their height, their medical, their psych history. There are a million reasons I could explain why you shouldn’t use steroids. I’ve used them all and I’ve made a point to tell people that I quit them all because I’m not a bodybuilder, I’m not a meathead and I have a family. It’s just not me. Most people making YouTube videos just like to get views and traffic, so they tell you whatever you want to hear. I won’t tell you what you want to hear; I won't coddle you. I hate that. If you ask me a question, you're going to get an answer. If my wife asks me, “Is my hair messed up?” I’ll tell her if it is. I hate people who won't tell you the truth. If you ask me if you’re out of shape, I’m going to tell you.Eventually, YouTube suspended my account. It’s very vague why, but people I was competing with and people who just flat-out didn't like me were angry. I pissed them off, and so they started flagging my videos and reporting them as dangerous. The thing is, there are a million other people making the same videos. Why is it that mine is taken down when others are not? It's a big question that I never, ever received an answer to. YouTube just writes back and says that the videos violate their policy. I made disclaimers that this was for entertainment purposes. I never signed up to put ads on my channel. I never tried to make any money or do any of their affiliated stuff. I never signed up for their premium products.

Why is it that mine is taken down when others are not?

My Life Post-YouTube

I don’t belong with the groups of people who do a lot of advertising and make money on their channels. The way I make money is by getting people to follow me and then I sell them personal training or get them to buy supplements that I get paid for in referrals. I've put some new videos up, but to be honest with you, I don't even enjoy it because years and years of work have already been taken down. The stuff I put out is priceless info, and I want to get paid for it. I'm opening a gym now and I’ve made some real estate investments. I don't need YouTube anymore. I was going to make a subscription service, but everybody wants everything for free. Sometimes I ask people, “What do you do for a living? Would you give me free information if you were a fucking attorney? Would you cut my hair for free, or fix my brakes for free?”

In 2008, I narrowly missed out on the Beijing Paralympic Games in equestrian. I would soon go on to represent Australia at several international equestrian events, including the World Equestrian Games (WEG) in 2010. This all took place at a time when I was completing a Master's degree in psychology, as well caring for my mother, who was dying of breast cancer and electing not to undergo any form of Western medicine in her fight to survive. Her tumor grew from pea size to the length of her torso—from the collarbone down to the bottom of her rib cage. It’s an image that will haunt me forever. The only equestrian event I would compete at without my mother, my wingman and best friend, was the biggest event of my equestrian career, the WEG. My horse tragically suffered significant stress on the 72-hour flight to the event, which became life-threatening. At the same time, my mom had flown herself to Mexico for alternative treatment. Traveling solo to Tijuana, I spent several nights sleeping next to her in a hospital bed, scared for her and my own life. Frail and weak, I managed to fly my mom back home to Australia, which would become the setting for some of my most memorable and traumatic memories to date. Three months later, she passed, leaving me grieving, traumatized and with no structure or guidance in my world. My dream of the Paralympics was now nowhere in sight. My depression and anxiety had me housebound at times, suppressing my emotions through alcohol, partying and the warmth of conversations with friends and strangers. It was a spiral of moods and an unhealthy lifestyle. My all-around self-loathing became a point of embarrassment and personal disgust. I tended to my thoughts and feelings by trying to understand them better rather than living by their control. It took conscious awareness of my pain and sadness, and allowed myself to understand what made me happy, to understand my own identity. I missed the drive, the goal-setting, the challenge and the natural euphoria of competition.

This was my Games. For me. No one else.

I Competed in the Paralympics for Australia in 2016

An invite to consider triathlon back in 2008, while at the Australian Institute of Sport, reignited my dreams of representing the country at the Paralympics. It was a long shot, but I decided to start. With guidance, support and pure grit and determination, I went on to win bronze at my first world championship. With a mix of pure hunger and heartache for a dream yet to be achieved, I felt I owed myself and Mom the opportunity to try to qualify. Ultimately, I became one of the first Australian triathletes to compete at the Paralympics for the competition's debut in Rio in 2016, after less than two years in the sport. I finished in the top five, and although I did not achieve my performance goals and capability on race day, I finally achieved my dream. I had learned that the path least planned can often be the actual path. I went on to race for Australia with several international wins. In 2017, I went on maternity leave and gave birth to a baby boy. I returned to training four months later and became the first Australian to return to elite world triathlon racing six months after giving birth. Traveling with a baby, breastfeeding and racing internationally throughout 2019, the road to Tokyo 2020 was alive and well. It was a huge balancing act between motherhood and elite athlete life, but I was at my best physically and mentally leading up to Tokyo, with my best race to date six months from the Games. This was my Games. For me. No one else. Securing a spot for Australia and meeting all the criteria towards team selection, I had a burning hunger to really show my capability on the world stage this time around. I was ready to finish an amazing chapter of my life and retire from competing at the elite level. With the bags almost packed and the family ready to set off to Europe for the final few months of “no guts, no glory” training, I knew this would be the Games of a lifetime. Was it ever.

The Pandemic Forced Me to Reflect on My Career

A few months away from achieving my goals and ending a fulfilling career as an athlete, COVID-19 hit. Losing the Games meant having to face an early retirement. It meant no competing and taking on financial strains. It meant another year of training at an elite level into 2021. It meant weighing plans to bring another baby into the world now, at 37 years old, and risk dealing with the personal impact of not “completing” this chapter of my life. The pandemic revealed so many repressed emotions and struggles, especially from my earlier years and times of adversity and turmoil. I thought about my body image and anorexia as a young teenager and dealt with anxiety, depression, grief and identity loss. But on a very powerful and positive side, with time, COVID-19 also gave me the space to reflect. The postponement of the Games put me in a lonely place, one that was hard for others to comprehend. I tried to explain that I couldn’t just simply accept what I had done already in my sport as enough. I was driven by what I still had left to achieve. I thought about it being taken from me—not due to injury, or choice, but due to being a female and hitting the peak-end of (less risk) child-bearing years. I thought about the impact sports can have on an athlete’s family, and the significant financial strain that Paralympic sports bring. I had no choice but to do the work, to dig deep and reflect, realizing that I had never been content with what I had already achieved. And I had achieved so much, across two sports. But I only saw gold as a success, and I was vying for that moment in time in Tokyo. I had worked so hard physically and mentally to for that one race. The virus-forced lockdown was the setting for learning to accept myself instead of what was missing, to let go of the desire to seek constant approval from others through achievement. But it was really for my own approval. I soon started to realize that even if I did choose to train for Tokyo, it might not have filled the void and sense of self-worth that I had always believed. Would the sacrifice justify the risk of not being able to get pregnant again? Would sports outweigh that potential reality? It may seem like an easy decision to the reader, but being an athlete is unique, requiring constant mental training to consistently push each day, all for that big event: the Games.

I have learned that acceptance rather than resentment allows me to develop different but acutely powerful senses to adapt.

The Challenges in my Life Have Developed Me as a Person

I have so much in my world to be grateful for, even as I struggle to be happy with who I am. But what is it that keeps me unsettled? What is it about athletes that we struggle to live in a world without sports? Is it the lack of challenge, the lack of structure? Is it the adversity and inner struggles that can bring to the surface the tangible effects of one’s mental health? I am still only learning I am enough without being the elite athlete, which I will always hold so close to my heart.I have learned that acceptance rather than resentment allows me to develop different but acutely powerful senses to adapt. Even though it doesn't always feel that way, I am realizing that constraints in life are a good thing, especially if we can accept them and let them direct us. They push us to places and develop skills that we'd otherwise never have pursued.

Strains of my high school’s fight song echoed down the hallway. The teachers shooed my classmates into the gym, where they sat shoulder to shoulder on the bleachers. As my class wandered down the hall in the direction of the pep rally, I ducked into the orchestra room to hide. Despite growing up in a football-worshipping small town, my interest in sports hovered somewhere between copying from the dictionary and going to the dentist. Pep rallies represented everything I despised about sports: a maniacal loyalty that always seemed to involve screaming at a television, games full of boring rules that dragged on for hours and the glorification of a hyper-masculine culture that I didn’t care to understand. I didn’t like participating in athletics any more than I liked watching them. I hated sweat, exercise and anything that required me to wear tennis shoes instead of ballet flats. One of the best parts of graduating from high school was the end of mandatory phys ed classes. Never again would anyone make me change into ugly gray clothes, run laps or memorize rules to a sport I didn’t want to play in the first place.

I didn’t like participating in athletics any more than I liked watching them.

I Thought I Hated Sports, Until I Discovered Gymnastics

My dislike of sports continued through college and beyond. I attended a small liberal arts college where like-minded peers shared my disinterest in organized athletics. Occasionally a friend would drag me to the gym, but for the most part, I avoided exercise the way most people avoid parking tickets or spam emails. I thought I had escaped the world of sports. Then a sudden severe illness in my 20s caused my muscles to atrophy almost overnight.After my diagnosis, my doctor prescribed high-dose steroids. The steroids were my only chance at surviving, but they also temporarily worsened some of my symptoms. They increased the muscle weakness my disease caused until the muscles in my legs and arms were completely atrophied. Less than a month after I first got sick, I was bedridden. Too weak to lift a coffee mug to my lips, I drank out of a plastic travel mug with a bendy plastic straw shoved through the hole in the top. I was too weak to even lift my feet from the floor, so when I got up for my weekly doctor’s appointments I had to shuffle the few feet to my wheelchair. My legs felt like noodles under me. I was terrified of falling because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back up if I did.I’d lay listlessly in bed while my peers went to work, hung out at bars and walked effortlessly wherever they went. My caretaker helped me stack cartons of books, snacks, medication and water in the bed beside me. Even sitting up in my wheelchair was exhausting. I needed three days to rest and recover after each doctor's appointment. I couldn't walk, sit up for long periods of time or even knit. But I could prop my laptop on some pillows on my stomach and watch YouTube videos. One day, a video of a gymnast named McKayla Maroney popped into my feed.

Gymnastics Empowered Me to Pursue the Impossible

Since then, I've watched that clip more times than I can count. McKayla stares down the runway. A green light flashes. She pulls one foot back, stretches her arms in front of her, then charges fearlessly towards the vaulting table. After a round-off onto the table, her body shoots into the air, reaching an impossible height before she twists down toward the mat. She sticks the landing. Her face bursts into joy as she jogs off the podium. Something about her performance resonated with me. At a time when even getting out of bed seemed impossible, it amazed me that this gymnast had trained herself to do something that also seemed impossible. After watching McKayla’s vault, I began binge-watching gymnastics videos, starting with the greats. I saw Nadia Comăneci earn the first perfect ten. I watched Shawn Johnson flip her way to Olympic gold on beam, Dominique Dawes tumble on floor and Nastia Liukin fly between the uneven bars with ease and grace. Before, when I thought of sports I’d always pictured grunting men in football helmets and screaming matches between referees. But gymnasts wore hair ribbons and lipstick—no ugly tennis shoes in sight. It combined elegance and strength in a way that made sports make sense to me. I had never known that they could be so beautiful.

I Channeled My Favorite Gymnasts' Energy Into My Recovery

I also devoured the training videos gymnasts posted. Most elite gymnasts train between 20 and 40 hours a week. I watched them perform routine after routine, climb ropes using just their arms and walk on their hands across the gym. I watched them fight through torn tendons and broken bones. Their determination was the fuel that pushed their bodies to flip and twist through the air in a way most people couldn’t even imagine. A spark of inspiration grew inside me. If these young women could train themselves to achieve the impossible, maybe I could achieve my own impossible dream of relearning how to walk.Six months after my diagnosis, I was finally well enough to start tapering off the steroids. My muscles were still weak, but I began to feel a lightness in my limbs rather than the wet-noodle feeling I’d grown used to. I’ll always remember the day I climbed out of bed and shuffled to the couch in the living room for the first time. My caretaker brought me coffee in my favorite mug to celebrate. When I realized I was still too weak to lift the cup, I stuck a bendy straw in the top. Then I watched more gymnastics videos and vowed to make lifting the mug my next goal. After walking to the couch got easier, I started walking to the kitchen, then to the mailbox, then to my car, which had been parked in the garage for almost a year. My recovery was painful and littered with setbacks, but watching gymnastics gave me the courage to fight my disease and reclaim my life. Two years after my diagnosis, moving my legs began to feel as easy as it did before I got sick.

They are recovering, too, just like I am. I’ve realized that each of us is facing our own impossible challenge.

Life Lessons From Sports Aren’t Just Physical; They’re Emotional, Too

In 2015, the USA Gymnastics sex scandal broke. Over 150 gymnasts including Rachael Denhollander, Mattie Larson, Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber testified against team doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of serial sexual abuse. McKayla Maroney revealed that she had been molested by Nassar the night before she won her Olympic silver medal. From the second-floor apartment I’d moved to after I regained the use of my legs, I watched young woman after young woman testify at the trial. Their stories were shocking and the trauma they’d endured showed in their words and in their expressions. But their voices rang out strong and determined. These days, I’m able to work, climb the stairs to my apartment, walk my dogs and go out with friends. I cheer on my favorite NCAA gymnastics team every weekend of the season. I do Pilates and yoga to keep my body healthy, even though I’ve resigned myself to being the worst in the class. But I still have days when the traumatic memories of my illness feel more real than the friends that surround me. Some days, recovery feels like a never-ending road. On those days, I think of McKayla Maroney, Jordyn Wieber and the other gymnasts who testified. Despite the superhuman strength they displayed on vault, bars, beam and floor, their true power showed when they spoke their truth with the world watching. Aly Raisman and Simone Biles have talked openly about going to therapy. They are recovering, too, just like I am. I’ve realized that each of us is facing our own impossible challenge. No matter how healthy someone looks on the outside, on the inside every one of us is fighting to rebuild.

My whole life has revolved around sports. My father played tennis and my mother ran track, and they always had a philosophy of keeping our family fit. Having two older brothers (and later, a younger sister), I wanted to do everything they were doing, and just keeping up with them naturally pushed me to become a better athlete. They played basketball and lacrosse and wrestled, while I participated in softball and swimming. But the sport that stuck with me was gymnastics. As a kid, every piece of furniture always turned into some type of gymnastics equipment. At seven years old, I started classes, which is extremely late for gymnasts now (many start at two or three years old), but it provided an everyday challenge that let me work my hardest to accomplish something and progress along the way. As I got better, my parents learned to juggle a lot. My father was an attorney with his own law practice, so he had the flexibility to take me to practices. I trained in the mornings and the afternoons. When you’re an elite-level athlete, there’s a high level of commitment—you have to know this is the sport you are going to do. Then you manage your time around it. A lot of times we practiced at 6 a.m., then went to school, then practiced again from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Homework was done in the car or late into the night. Gymnasts don’t really have much relaxation, so you learn how to manage your time really well. I competed all the way through high school and then got a scholarship at a Division I school for four years. I would eventually train with the U.S. Olympic team, and several years after school ended, I embarked on my college gymnastics coaching career. Today, I have three daughters. All three are athletes. My approach to raising them was modeled after my parents—and even though I'm coaching and am away a lot, I feel I owe it to my daughters to take an active role in everything that they are doing. Every competition that they have that I’m around to see, I attend. It wears me down a lot, but I know that I'm not going to have these moments for very long. I want to make sure that their memories of their sport include me as a mom and my support of them. I want to be there whether they win, whether they lose or whether they come in last. I want to be there for it all.

My Husband and Me Already Believed in the Value of Sports

I met my husband in college—he was also an athlete and would eventually go on to play in the NFL. We bonded over our shared level of commitment, the time that goes into having to participate in a sport and were able to encourage each other in a way that non-athletes probably wouldn't be able to. We got married after I graduated, and when our daughters came along, they were high energy. We knew immediately we were going to need to channel it somewhere.I realized I had to put them into any activity possible, otherwise, we would have gone crazy. So, from the time they were six months old, we were doing the "mommy and me" swim classes to introduce them to sports. Gymnastics soon followed as they started crawling, and at three we started putting them in other sports. We did t-ball, we did soccer, and then once they got to be five, seven and nine years old, we put them into track (because we weren’t exhausting them enough with sports), which has stuck with them ever since.

I want to be there for it all.

Three Girls; Three Different Attitudes Toward Sports

Our oldest is a senior in high school and just ended up getting a track scholarship for college. That was a proud moment for her because, until last year, she didn’t buy into the idea that she was an athlete. We always told her, “You have such ability,” but she didn't have that mindset when she was younger. Thankfully, she drives now, so she can take our middle daughter to high school track practice. At 15, she is our strongest track athlete. Since the time she was nine, she was making it to USATF and AAU Junior Olympic Nationals, doing multi- events like triathlons, pentathlons and, now, heptathlons. High jump is her specialty sport, and in the winter, we drive about 45 minutes to take her to a train with a coach. Our youngest is doing club soccer and starting track. She tried gymnastics competitively until she was nine, but I realized that wasn't going to be her strength. The one thing about being a coach in gymnastics is you know if your child has potential. All three of them are wired extremely differently. We have to nurture the oldest one a bit more and encourage her, while our middle one is a complete competitor and wants to win all the time. The youngest one hasn’t quite gotten there. I’m sure her journey and her thought process will change as she gets older, but for now, she sees sports as, “Oh, this is fun, I’m with my friends.”

Not Putting Pressure on Our Children Has Been One of Our Greatest Challenges

As parents, we’ve been extremely careful to not compare our achievements to theirs. We were very clear with them that we were not the norm, that what we were able to achieve—with my husband being an NFL football player and me being a collegiate All-American gymnast—not everybody gets to experience. That was our path. But they need to create their own. I think sometimes that they did feel that pressure, being around our friends and watching our return to alumni events. My husband has even been inducted in multiple Hall of Fames. They've seen it, they know what we've accomplished. But we don't want them to ever feel as though we are pressuring them to achieve our level. We try to be as careful as possible.A few years ago, my husband was trying to get on them about not trying hard enough. I had to tell him to take a step back. When we were coming up as athletes, the world was very different from theirs. They have a lot of things to distract them from focusing just on athletics. His mentality is a little different than mine. I just step back. If they really want it, they will do it.

Parents’ Role in Youth Sports Is Part Coach, Part Teacher

One thing that defines us as parents of young athletes is that we’re strict on technology. We knew we wanted our daughters to be physically active, that training your body was just as important as training your mind. Let’s face it: This generation would probably be sitting at home, watching TV or scrolling on phones all day if we didn't get them outside of the house. In that vein, my husband and I are a little sterner with our daughters. In middle school, our daughters had to get straight-As before they could get a cellphone. The only way to keep one in high school was if they participated in a sport. My mindset was: You're not gonna sit at home on a phone. You have to do something. You don't have to be great at it, but the moment you are not doing something physically active with your body, you can give the phone back, because you don't need it. We have stuck with that rule from our oldest to our youngest. It gives each of them something to work for. Of course, we didn’t have the materialistic things that this generation of kids has. We didn’t have laptops or cellphones. My husband and I were just wired in a way that we didn't like to lose. You should see a game of bowling between the two of us—it’s a competitive event. I can't let him win, he can't let me win. It’s the same way with playing cards or a board game. We tell our daughters that we worked hard to achieve what we have right now, and we want them to achieve things for themselves, too. We don't want them to think they could have everything given to them. Maybe because we were athletes from athletic families, we wanted to instill in our daughters that you have to earn things, you have to work hard for them. If you want a good job, you’re going to work hard for it—nobody’s going to give it to you. You are going to have to get good grades and show you’re deserving. Those are the little lessons we programmed into our daughters from the time they were little. For the most part, I think they get it.

We wanted to instill in our daughters that you have to earn things, you have to work hard for them.

Youth Sports Parenting Is All About Learning and Adapting

It’s not always easy parenting a child athlete. I think the first step is getting a taste of a sport and seeing if it’s one that your child likes. Then you start asking people at the highest levels of those sports where to put them. My youngest daughter had played a year of rec soccer with our township, and we wanted to go beyond that level. So I stopped into the women’s soccer coach’s office at my university and said, “I don't know anything about women’s soccer. I need you to help me. What direction do I need to go in?” He gave me a list of club teams in our area, and at that point, I left it with my daughter. Now, after every season, I sit down and assess with them, “How do you think it went? Do you like where you are? Is this a team we want to continue with?”It’s always about asking the right people—talking to those who know the sport. That’s the biggest thing, especially if you know nothing about it. My daughters went into three different sports that we didn't really know anything about, but we wanted to make sure they were going to a place where they would get good training, especially if we were going to pay for it. Being able to go and observe, to see how the coaches talk to their athletes is important. Is their approach an approach you want your child to be working under?As they’ve gotten older, I've loved stepping back and watching the direction that their lives are taking. I love knowing that what we did for them at a young age has helped catapult them into a positive direction, helping them to grow and be prepared as adults, too. I cannot imagine not having sports involved in our life. It’s made them well-rounded, strong individuals. It's given them a work ethic, drive and a desire that will continue to motivate them throughout their lives. What more could you ask for?