Being captain on the leadership council for the gymnastics team has taught me that becoming a leader is downright one of the most important aspects of being successful. But what’s even more important than being a leader is being a good leader.
Seth Godin’s book, Tribes, gave me a lot of insight on the traits of a leader, especially in terms of comparing a leader to a boss. Since I was named a member of the leadership council for the Rutgers Gymnastics team, I connected to Tribes on a personal level.
As a captain I use my personal beliefs, as well as new ideas I have learned, to push my team towards our goals on a daily basis.
One idea that I have always felt strongly about that was touched upon in Tribes was the idea of not doing something for glory, but instead because you genuinely want to help.
“Which is true of all great leaders…They’re generous. They exist to help the tribe find something, to enable the tribe to thrive. But they understand that the most powerful way to enable is to be statue-worthy.” – Seth Godin.
Leaders want nothing more than to achieve their goals with people they care about and respect. They are open to ideas from tribe members and go out of their way to connect with these people.
Making personal connections with my team forms trust and makes the team work as a whole.
A tribe won’t reach a goal without the support and dedication from each member. If trust is formed, team members are more likely to follow my lead and trust the process.
“He didn’t tell them what to do. He didn’t manage the effort; he led it.” – Seth Godin.
Leading by example to me means not only leading in the physical aspect of gymnastics, but also in the leading aspect in itself. A boss is most interested in results, and doesn’t specifically care about the learning process to achieve these results. In my opinion, the process is when character is built and knowledge is gained.
Personally, I try to fine tune the process and focus on the small details, because that’s when habits are formed and greatness is achieved. Bosses don’t necessarily care about forming connections with their employees. Forming connections with other members of my tribe is not only a genuine hobby of mine, but it is key for our success.
While reading Tribes I couldn’t help but relate it to being a captain on the leadership council for the gymnastics team. Good leaders are vital to a tribe if they want to reach, or even surpass their goals. Just like in the book, I make it a point to lead my team and tribe by example. Because of this, I form trustworthy bonds between my teammates and do what I love to do.
Two parallel lines, two faint blue strips that dictated how drastically my life was about to change.
Pregnant. There’s no way, this can’t be right… can it? Not me, it was only once, so it doesn’t even really count, right? Wrong. So, so wrong.
Lets back up for a minute and start from the very beginning.
I have always been a true-blue, textbook definition of a perfectionist. From as early as I can remember, if I couldn’t do things 100% the way they were supposed to be done, that was it, I could not handle it, so I just wouldn’t do it. The risk of failing far surpassed the risk of trying and not ending up being able to do it perfectly. This is probably why I flew through about half a dozen sports growing up before I landed on my one true love, which also fueled my perfectionism in more ways than I can even bear to think about: gymnastics.
The perfect 10, the most sought-out number on the face of the planet in a gymnasts’ eyes, and quite frankly, next to none of us ever experienced that success. But nonetheless it was a goal, a goal that every single gymnast strives for.
From that point on, from the age of 6 years old, my entire being and human existence was dictated by the correlation between numbers and perfectionism. In gymnastics, it was the perfect 10, which let’s get real, I never even came close to achieving. Once I outgrew gymnastics, both figuratively and literally because I’m 5’6” which is a monster in the sport where all dominating forces are under 5’, I turned to running.
After running in a 5k for a late uncle, I realized I might potentially have some talent, so I decided to take up track and cross country throughout high school, which further fed my numbers equals success rationale. Times, miles, laps, it all had to add up to what I deemed to be “perfect”, most often determined by my coaches, but I also put my spin on it to determine how effectively I was meeting my own expectations for myself, which if you haven’t figured out by now, were unrealistically high.
My numbers equals success facade took a turn for the absolute worst the summer before my junior year of high school. 3 weeks before school began, I ended up being life-flighted to one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country for deadly blood clots in my leg and lungs.
After that 8-day hospital ordeal was over, as I was getting ready for discharge, the doctor turned to me and said “In order to prevent this from happening again, there are 3 things you must not ever do: Smoke cigarettes, take hormonal contraceptives, and become overweight.” I nodded and tucked that information in the back of my mind, and proceeded with the rest of my day.
As my recovery process began, I found myself laid up a lot longer than I originally had thought. It seemed my running days were over as I could barely hobble across my house to the bathroom with a walker without gasping for air. And to my absolute demise, I began to gain weight.
I have always been a muscular girl, between the immense amount of muscle mass gained from 6 years of gymnastics, to having “quadzilla” legs from running for 5 years up until that point, I had a good amount of mass. So 150 pounds on my 5’6” frame was normal for me, and I looked exceptionally fit and healthy. Or so I thought, until I found the internet.
Soon I began obsessing over weight charts, “normal ranges” for women my height, and to my absolute despair, I was considered “at risk for becoming overweight”. There was that word, overweight. One of those three words my doctor told me I could never become. Thus began my irrationally unhealthy relationship with food. Over the next 3 months, I would go on to lose close to 30 pounds, always fed by my numbers-driven thought process. By the end of December, I was 127 pounds and looked like a walking skeleton.
I had family members constantly down my throat, drilling me about how much I weighed and what I had eaten that day. It was constant, and it was exhausting. So I “recovered” or so everyone thought. My battles with food and disordered thoughts would continue to haunt me every day for the next 5 years. My weight had recovered, despite a few half-hearted attempts at starvation a few weeks before a big event like prom or graduation or the beginning of college, only to binge afterward and put on more weight than I had lost.
I had been accepted into Duquesne University’s Doctorate of Physical Therapy program, and began my first semester there in the fall of 2012. This acceptance was just another reminder of how ‘perfect’ my life was to be; a great school in a big city far away from the controlling eyes and words of my family, I was pre-accepted into grad school as a freshman, I would graduate with my Doctorate and live the rest of my life as the strong independent woman I was always portrayed to be in a big city filled with opportunity… until those two little blue lines showed up.
I met D through a mutual friend at the University of Pittsburgh, and we instantly hit it off. He was different than anyone I had ever been with back home, so immediately I was even more intrigued. He had a history in modeling and was studying opera at Carnegie Mellon, the primitive music college right next door to Pitt. All of these things combined, plus a little liquid courage, made him more attractive by the minute.
Soon enough, I found myself in his suite the morning following a party we had attended together, not entirely sure what had happened the night before, but through deductive reasoning, I had a pretty good idea. In the midst of getting around and ready to head back to my campus, the conversation was brought up that the condom had broken. “Oh well, it happens”, I thought, and back home I went.
A few weeks later, that “oh well” thought had turned into a feeling of absolute despair as I walked alone to the nearest pharmacy to buy the one and only pregnancy test I have ever taken to this day. There it was, 6pm on a cold November night, 6 hours away from home, with a white stick with two faint blue lines running down it, confirming what I believed to be something that happened to unlucky people, people who weren’t careful, people that weren’t me… I was 18, and pregnant.
The next few weeks were a blur, honestly. Abortion was never an option as I am explicitly pro-life and there was no way to persuade me otherwise. I had made a decision, and now it was my job to take responsibility for my actions, a lesson that had been taught to me from a very young age.
At first, D and I had decided that an open adoption was the only way to get through this. I would have the baby and his aunt who had been trying to have kids would adopt it, that way we could still be a part of his or her life. But that idea was shot down after a conversation with my mother one day, who had also gotten pregnant at 18, and she asked one simple question that determined the direction that my life would go from that point on, “Where do you think you would be today if I had given you up for adoption?” Thus began the planning.
I applied and was accepted at a small branch campus of Penn State University that had a 2-year Physical Therapist Assistant program, a “measly Associates degree” that I thought to be a cake walk compared to the Doctorate program I was currently a part of.
I withdrew from Duquesne at the end of the semester, returned home, and immediately began working. I got a job at a new deli in my small rural hometown, and worked throughout the entire length of my pregnancy, up until a few weeks before my due date, July 2nd. July 2nd came and went, without any sign of “Baby Bella” as she was affectionately known as.
The morning of the Fourth of July came, and I was woken up abnormally early, about 6:45am, with these weird cramps. I tried going back to sleep but they seemed to be getting stronger, so after taking some time to shower and relax, I realized exactly what was going on… I was in labor. So off we went to make the 2-hour drive to the hospital that I was to deliver at.
By the time I got to the hospital, I was already 5cm dilated, half-way there! I began walking laps around the hospital floor, doing everything in my power to have gravity help me move things along. I never planned on having an epidural, just something about needles and my spine that I’m not too comfortable with! By 7pm, it was go time, and by 7:10, I heard those first beautiful cries from my baby girl.
The first few weeks after delivery were tough, but with some minor complications and feeding issues resolved, things were beginning to calm down. That is, until the end of August came around. I had decided to begin my schooling immediately after my daughter was born, with the rationale being that I would get through a two-year program while she was young and wouldn’t remember me being gone, and then I would be home and with a career once she was old enough to start remembering things from her childhood. This all sounded fine and great, except for one thing; she wouldn’t remember I wasn’t there, but I sure would remember not being there.
The campus was an hour and 40 minutes away, far too long to make the commute every single day with no income to help pay for gas and all of the mileage on my car. So with the immense love and support from my family, it was decided that I would stay on campus during the week, and come home on the weekends, with my mom and grandma taking turns helping out with my daughter throughout the week. Welcome to the next two and a half years…
My daily schedule during the week proceeded as follows: wake up by 7am, class from roughly 8am to 4pm, depending on the day, library from 4pm to 10pm, back to my room to study from 10pm to between 2am-4am, off to bed and up by 7am the next day. It was grueling, and it was exhausting to say the least. I would force myself to do whatever necessary to get all of my work done throughout the week so by Friday night, I could come home, snuggle up with Bella, and be passed out asleep by 8:30pm.
Weekends consisted of all of the time I could get with her, interspersed with the increasingly less frequent naps as she got older that I craved in order to catch up on all of the lost hours of sleep during the week. And week by week, I found myself collapsing into bed on a Friday night, muttering the same phrase “another week down, I did it.”
Summers consisted of more hours in the heat of the kitchen back in my hometown deli, with the hopes of making enough money throughout the summer to get me through the school year to follow. I was fortunate enough to be chosen as the class tutor my freshman year in both Anatomy and Physiology, so through the schools’ work-study program, I was able to make a minimal amount of money that helped with the ever growing expenses of being not only a college student, but a single mother on top of that.
In the midst of everything, I also found myself struggling once again with my obsession of numbers dominating my existence. I knew I had to get good grades in order to be competitive in a graduate school application, and seeing as that was my ultimate goal, I let that far off illusion control my every move. Any second I wasn’t sleeping or eating, both of which I rarely did, I was studying.
It was obsessive, it was compulsive, it had friends worrying and whispering behind closed doors, but I thought I knew what I had to do in order to ensure I would have a chance at another opportunity of furthering my education after this phase of my life was over. I isolated myself in the library, in my dorm room, even in the laundry room in order to utilize every single minute I had to study, to get that elusive 4.0, that “magic number” that I thought would be the only way I would ever feel that I had made something of myself, the only way to be perfect.
But weeks and weekends came and went, exams and practicals passed and aced, and next thing I knew, it was May of 2015 and graduation day was here. I cannot put into words the overflowing emotions that overcame me as I walked into the gymnasium and across that stage. All of the sleepless nights, all of the countless hours of studying and stressing and practicing time and time again for practicals, it was all worth it.
I walked across that stage with a 3.73 GPA and nothing less than an A- in any class except my freshman history class because let’s get real, a science geek like me could not stay awake to save my life in that class! I was inducted into Alpha Sigma Lambda, a collegiate national honor society for adult learners, for those who exemplified leadership and academic excellence while managing a family or competing interests outside of the classroom.
But none of the exam scores, practical grades, or GPAs mattered in that moment, because I was officially a college graduate; 21 years old, with a soon to be 2-year-old cheering over everyone else in the audience… I did it.
And in that moment, everything was great. The Monday following graduation came, and our clinical rotations began. I had 6 weeks at a nursing home, followed immediately with 6 weeks in an outpatient rehab facility in my hometown. Once those were said and done, the real work began.
In the field of Physical Therapy, your degree means nothing without passing the national Board examination. Like the MCATs for medical students or the LSATs for prospective law students, “the Boards” are the biggest cumulative exam a physical therapy student will ever take. It encompasses the last 2.5 (or 7 for DPT students) years of knowledge and clinical experience you have gained and puts it to the test in clinical application questions.
While studying for 20 hours a day in college was something that could be done, studying with a two-year-old proved to be one of the most challenging feats I had come across at this point. Cue again the late nights studying, the minimal sleep, the begging for nap time so I could continue the quest of finally finishing this process, once and for all. Any spare moment of silence I had was spent with my nose in the books, and many pages of my review book are marked with the drawings of a 2-year-old Picasso.
As I made my way to the testing center, I was overcome with a calming sense of relaxation and peace. The nervous jitters were replaced with a feeling of complete satisfaction and confidence, knowing that I had dedicated every single ounce of myself into getting to this moment. I had taken practice exam after practice exam, hitting target scores on each, and continuously solidifying in my mind that this journey that had started just about 3 years ago was finally about to come to an end…
The exam began and to my pleasant surprise, it was easier than any practice exam I had taken, and my confidence began to elevate. By the end of the 4 hours, I was exhausted, I was brain dead, I didn’t know my left from my right, nor did I think I remembered how to drive. But the one thing I did know, was that I had passed. We would not get our results for another week, but in the back of my mind, there wasn’t a single doubt that that was the last test I would ever have to take in my PTA career.
The week following was the slowest and most agonizing waiting I had ever experienced. But finally the day came when we would find our results. The group texts were blowing up, everyone anxiously waiting for the first person to tell everyone that results were up. I checked feverishly every hour on the hour until 6pm, when I told myself that I would stop checking if they weren’t up by then. But around 8:30pm, the first text came through, “THEY’RE UP!” My eyes scanned for that one word, one single 6-letter word in parentheses that was to determine my future… Passed. I did it!
Tears flowed uncontrollably from my eyes as she threw her arms around me, even at 2 years old, she could understand the importance and significance of this moment. I assume the minutes and hours following were full of text messages and calls to those most important to me to share the big news, but there was no better way to have found out that everything was worth it than to have my precious girl right by my side, just as she was for the past 2 ½ years.
As with every college graduate, next came the job search. There are pros and cons in being from a small rural town. Pro: there probably aren’t many of whatever degree you just graduated with, so if the job is there, there’s not much competition for it. Con: It doesn’t matter if there’s competition if there is no job available in said area. I was experiencing the latter. My hometown has two physical therapy offices, and neither of which had postings for jobs. I searched far and wide, every job search engine, websites of every hospital and nursing home within a 30-mile radius. Nothing.
About a month had passed, and I was getting more and more worried by the day… How am I going to support my daughter as a single mom with no job, OR how am I going to afford to move out on my own to go find a job elsewhere without the help of my family? They say fate has a funny way of taking its own sweet time, but eventually it will come back around and find you. And that’s exactly what it did one November day.
I had just put my daughter down for a nap when my phone rang, and to my surprise, it just so happened to be the facility director from one of the local physical therapy offices in my hometown, where I had done my last clinical rotation. “Hey Victoria, congratulations on passing your boards! Just curious as to if you had a job lined up yet. If not, why don’t you come on in for an interview, we would love to have you back on board as a full time licensed PTA!”
I’m not sure which emotions were strongest, those after finding out I had passed my boards, or those that I felt in that moment after hanging up the phone. Here I had been searching for a month all over the county, just to have my clinical location call ME to ASK me to come back to work for them!? A lesson for anyone having to do internships of any kind: ALWAYS do your best, ALWAYS give your 110%, and NEVER burn bridges, because you never know where they can lead.
I have been working for just over 5 months now, and it is everything I could have asked for. Being able to say that I put myself through college as a single teen mom and came out on top with a degree, a license, a career, and a toddler that I can fully support financially on my own is absolutely without a doubt my proudest moment, and most meaningful accomplishment.
People ask me regularly if I plan on going back to school to finish what I started originally and complete my Doctorate, and yes, that is certainly a goal that I keep in the back of my mind. I am currently teaching myself biology at home from an old college textbook in order to get a head start on some of the classes I know I will have to eventually take to finish out my Bachelors and proceed with grad school. But after spending two years away from my daughter, my only priority is spending as much time as humanly possible with her.
I missed a lot of her firsts: her first time rolling over, her first word, her first steps. But I can’t wait to be here for the remainder of her firsts, and every other moment, both important and unimportant. School will always be there, and I will always have an opportunity to finish what I started. But my baby will only be my baby for so long, and spending time with her and watching her grow is more valuable than any additional piece of paper (and additional $100k in student loan debt).
I hope this story will inspire anyone else going through a similar issue; whether it be an unplanned pregnancy, or any life circumstance that might be limiting your ability to pursue your dreams. I thank God every single day for allowing me to have the strong family support that enabled me and encouraged me to continue my education and not be another “teen mom” statistic. However, I know not everyone can be as lucky as I am with a supportive family.
Whether you are surrounded by a loving and caring support system or you’re totally on your own, always remember that you have the capability to do anything you set your mind to. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” People told me time and time again that “my life was over” and I had “ruined my life”, even those I thought were closest to me. The funny thing about that is, a large majority of the people who told me that, never finished college themselves, or are barely scraping by to pass. How’s that for karma for you.
Moral of the story is: No one can tell you “you can’t” or “you won’t”, every decision you make is a reflection of your inner strength and your inner determination to succeed. You can’t “kind of” want it, you can’t just think about it… whatever you do, whatever you set your mind to, you have to WANT it. You have to want it so bad, you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get you there. It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to be really hard. You’re not going to sleep, and you’re going to survive off of m&m’s and popcorn. It’s not going to be a walk in the park, and you’re going to miss out on a lot of things your peers get to do.
But you have to find that inner strength and desire to throw the rule book out the window, let any comments from people telling you that you can’t roll right off your back, and always keep your goals in the front of your mind and allow your dreams to lead you. I went through my entire college career reminding myself every day of this quote… “Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside of you greater than any obstacle.”
And despite my desperate attempts through my time in gymnastics and running, my struggle with eating disorders throughout high school, and my time in college, I have finally learned that there is no such thing as perfection. There is no perfect number, no perfect person, and no perfect situation that will determine how successful you will be. Success comes from within, it comes from a passionate drive and unwavering determination to succeed.
Today, myself and many of those around me would consider me to be successful, and guess what, there is no number dictating “how” successful I am.
The biggest lesson I have learned through everything I have made it through in this life is to strive for progress, not perfection. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good and great. What you put in, you will get out. As for me, I will continue to have dreams to chase and goals to achieve, but I am perfectly okay with my imperfect life.
As a gymnast, flipping through the air on a four inch beam requires the highest level of concentration and balance. I have spent over 15 years of my life practicing balance beam, and at times, I still lose my balance.
In life, just like gymnastics, balance is one of the hardest skills to achieve and also one of the most important. I believe it is a lifelong, learning process that requires self-discipline and adaptability. Achieving success as a student-athlete in the classroom and in competition is absolutely impossible without it; and I have learned this lesson the hard way.
My life as a high-school student and club gymnast consisted of two things: school and gymnastics. School was never too much of a challenge for me.
I stayed on top of my school work, managed to get A’s and B’s, and focused the majority of my time and effort on my passion…gymnastics.
My hard work in the gym paid off, and I was given the opportunity to compete at the collegiate level on full athletic scholarship. Something I will forever be grateful for.
However, college presented itself with a whole new set of challenges. I had two realizations after my first semester of college: school is hard; and I love being social. Because I spent the majority of my life prior to college in the gym, my social life was nonexistent, other than my teammates who were more like sisters to me; but I was completely fine with that.
My drive and determination to excel in gymnastics and compete for the best college in the country (UGA) trumped any desire to have a social life.
June, 2013, I moved into the dorms at UGA. I was suddenly surrounded by hundreds of people that shared the same love of sport that I have. We all spent our entire existence dedicated to our sport, something that few people understand.
I made so many friends freshman year. Often times, I would sacrifice studying for hanging out with friends. It wasn’t long before my GPA began to suffer. I knew I had to make a change.
Instead of limiting the amount of time I spent socializing, I began to sacrifice sleep; and believe me when I tell you, I need sleep! I quickly realized that playing egg toss in the hallways until 1 a.m. with the swimmers that lived next door, or teaching the baseball players how to do flips on the couch (luckily there were no serious injuries) was not the wisest use of my time. My lack of sleep was beginning to affect my concentration in the classroom and in the gym.
Sophomore came with nagging injury, maybe resulting from a lack of focus, that added to my stress and frustration. I wanted to be healthy, I wanted to compete, I wanted to reach my full potential in the sport I love, and in the classroom. I needed BALANCE.
I knew my struggles in the gym and school were God’s way of telling me, “you have to make a change.”
I needed to invest my time into relationships that would last a lifetime rather than sacrificing my studies or sleep for friends that are there for me only when it’s convenient for them. I knew this transition wouldn’t happen overnight.
It was going to take me exerting self-discipline in consistently making good decisions that would put me in a position to reach my full potential in all areas of life. I knew it would be tough, but God creates His toughest soldiers through life’s hardest battles.
The end of my sophomore season as a gym dog was steadily approaching, and things were finally beginning to look up. My ankles were almost at 100% and my GPA was on the rise.
I continued to strive to make good decisions with my time. Taking on a support role for the beginning of the season was new to me, but it taught me to be encouraging, patient, and hungry for the spotlight again. I sought out every opportunity to prove myself in the gym.
The last few meets of the regular season were upon us. When Coach Danna Durante began to call out the lineups for the upcoming meet, everyone was silent. I would say a prayer every time, “God, pleeeease let her call my name. I want to compete soooo bad.” But every time I heard, “…and Morgan will be the alternate.” I had to take this as a challenge. A challenge to work even harder in the gym; to continue to push my teammates and prove that I was ready to compete.
The last meet of the season was at home vs Utah. Danna called out the lineups; but this time, I was not an alternate. I was competing second on beam and first on floor! I was excited and ready.
I hit had a solid beam routine, followed by a memorable floor routine to tie my career high score of 9.9. I secured my spot in both lineups going into post season. My team and I went on to win Regionals, and then later placed 9th at the NCAA Championships.
Halfway through my college career, and I continue to strive for balance in all areas of my life. It is a lifelong process. With different stages in life, come different things to balance. Prioritize what’s important, rely on God to take care of things out of our control, and live a peaceful, balanced life full of happiness rather than stress and anxiety.
My name is Lauren Beers Stanton and I am a daughter, sister, graduate student, friend, wife, and a senior on The University of Alabama’s gymnastics team. I wanted to share with you my story and the challenges that have influenced who I am today.
I was born April 1st, 1994 in Sayre, Pennsylvania. My parents, Rick and Trish Beers had no idea what they were getting into when they entered the world of parenthood. Seven children later, I now had five brothers and one, precious, sister. I had a rather unconventional childhood. Not only am I the oldest of seven siblings, but I was homeschooled and grew up on a dairy farm. I know…sounds like the perfect combination for either a total nerd or a tomboy.
Luckily, I am both of those things but I am also so much more. From a young age I was totally in love with animals. My mom tells me stories of how I would put toads in my doll stroller and push them around the yard.
That is, until my brothers decided that they didn’t want to play dress up and tea parties. It was now my turn to play army, Legos, and Indiana Jones. When my sister was born, I was able to revert back to girl play for a short time before I discovered a new passion that would take me farther than I ever imagined. This passion was gymnastics. After watching the 2000 Olympics, I was mesmerized by the girls flipping around on the TV and told my mom that I wanted to do that. I started classes soon after and the rest is history.
Flash forward to 2006 when I was 12 years old. I had switched club gyms at this point and had been doing gymnastics competitively for about five years. I was now a second year level 10, which is the highest level you can obtain before becoming an elite gymnast, and facing one of the biggest challenges in my young life.
I had been having issues with my elbow for about a year and one day at practice it collapsed and my joint locked. We went to many different doctors, including specialists, who told me there was nothing they could do for me and I would have to quit gymnastics.
Just imagine, a 12 year old girl being told she had to quite doing the sport she loved and there was nothing that was going to make her arm normal again. To say I was devastated was an understatement. I still remember the first doctor we saw when I first was injured. My best friend, Megan, went to the doctors with my mom and I and we both cried hysterically when he told me, “You can’t play gymnastics anymore”. It was at that moment when I decided that I was going to prove this man wrong and not only do gymnastics again, but be successful at it.
I prayed that God would provide a way for me to do both these things and He did. We were able to see an arm specialist in Indianapolis and multiple car rides and surgeries later, God had answered my prayers. We knew from this point on that my elbows were going to be an issue the rest of my life but through the reassurance of my doctor, I could continue doing gymnastics and have relatively few complications.
Fast forward to 2009 and a different part of my life. I had been best friends with a boy name Nicholas Stanton for about two years at this point and I knew he had “liked” me for a while now. I ended up accepting his offer to attend our church’s formal as his date and the rest is, again, history.
God has a plan for everything and He can implement it whenever He chooses. For me, that just so happened to be when I was just barely fifteen. We continued to date throughout high school and into our college years before we decided to take the next step. Marriage.
Now, before we get to that, I have to go back to my gymnastics career. In September 2010, I made the decision to accept a full athletic scholarship to the University of Alabama. Soon after, my faith was tested again when I needed another surgery on both of my arms. My future coaches were extremely supportive and I was back on the road to recovery before I knew it. Now, I’d like to take the time to say that God ALWAYS has a plan. Before this episode I was having with my arms, I was considering moving away from home to train at a better gym to give myself a better chance at the 2012 Olympics. Because of my surgeries, I decided not to. I truly believe that because of this, I am where I am today. I finished out my club gymnastics career at home and then moved to Alabama in August of 2012 to start the next step in my journey.
The first two years of college were amazing and terrible at the same time. While I loved school and being a part of such an amazing team, I missed Nick and I struggled with self-esteem issues that I continue to deal with to this day. I pushed myself in both academics and athletes while maintaining a 4.0 and becoming an All-American.
The summer before my sophomore year Nick and I decided that we didn’t want to have a long distance relationship anymore. After a lot of prayer and thinking, we brought up the idea of marriage to our parents who, although they were shocked to say the least, were supportive. My mom and I planned my wedding over the computer and on May 24, 2014, I got married to the love of my life.
We faced many different challenges in our dating relationship but through it all, we stayed strong and came out better for it. When people see my ring they are always so surprised to find out I am married and even more surprised to find that I’ve been married for almost two years. I enjoy being able to share my love story with others, especially if I can encourage them to follow what they feel God is telling them and not what the world is trying to conform them into.
Moving on to the last two years, to say they have been a rollercoaster is an understatement. My junior year, my team won our second SEC Championship, I celebrated my one year wedding anniversary, and I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in just three years of school. Then, I had four surgeries and didn’t do gymnastics for almost six months. During my junior year, my elbows started acting up again and I knew I would need surgery soon.
So once season was over, I had a “clean-up” surgery on each of my arms. This wasn’t so bad, especially since the recovery wasn’t more than a few weeks. However, when I did start training again, I took a nasty fall and suffered a spiral fracture in my hand that required another surgery with external fixations in order to heal properly.
Coming from someone who had never taken more than about two months off of gymnastics for an injury, this was a new situation for me. I was sidelined from the end of April until October. During this time I struggled a lot. I’ve always been a planner and now my whole plan for my “awesome senior year” was completely thrown off. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to compete at all in the regular season. But being the person I am, I set a goal. To come back as soon as possible, while still being safe. I worked my butt off day after day and soon enough, I was back. I was now done with my first semester of graduate school and about to start the competition season.
Without going into detail, I can say that my season has been a crazy rollercoaster of amazing successes and utter failures. Going from someone who had only three falls in my entire collegiate career, to falling off beam four times in one season was heartbreaking. This was not what my senior year was supposed to be like. I was supposed to be the rock of the team, not the most inconsistent one. Frustration became a daily issue. I knew I needed a change of heart and through the help of prayer, Nick, my coaches and teammates, I was able to let go of the need to be perfect and just enjoy the last few weeks of the sport I love so much.
It’s crazy to think that something that’s been a part of my life for over 15 years is coming to a close, but I know that with the closing of this chapter comes the bringing of the next. I will be graduating with my Masters in Sport Business Management this summer with a 4.0, and starting my MBA in the fall. Looking back, I know my success has not come from myself. It has come because God gave me the opportunity to use the gifts He gave me to glorify Him. I can look forward to the new opportunities that God presets me and be confident in stepping into the next roll he has planned for me.
For anyone out there struggling with something, whether its relationships, your career, just being generally unhappy with your life, I want you to know something. It’s going to be ok! It will pass. If there is anything that I have learned in my short 22 years on this earth, is that this is all temporary. My sport is temporary, my school career is temporary, a bad grade or a bad meet means nothing in the broad scope of the future.
While it’s important to love what you do and have passions and goals in life, just remember, it doesn’t define you. God defines you as a most perfect being worth of unconditional and unfathomable love. So what is my new ultimate goal in life? To serve those around me by loving and giving all I have to give. I’ve been given my talents and current place in life for a reason and I can’t wait to see what’s in store!
My name is Kristian Silva. I am 24 years old. I am a professional musician, and I am Acting Regional Manager of the Artist Intern Program at Hit Records Worldwide. I was born on March 24, 1991 in beautiful, sunny, Miami, Fl. I was raised in a middle class family in the suburbs with my two 2 sisters. I went to school like a normal kid up until the third grade.
I had begun taking gymnastics classes a year before, and I had become very good at it. I decided to do gymnastics all day and get home schooled instead of having to go to school. I trained from 9am to 7pm Monday through Saturday. Wednesdays and Saturdays were half days; we trained from 9am to 2pm.
This was my life for 6 years, until I got an opportunity to travel and compete for the national team of Spain. I moved to Spain at the age of 13, alone, and I lived with my uncles for about one and a half years and half, while practicing at the Olympic training center during the day.
Later that year, at the age of 16, I decided to quit gymnastics and go back to public high school in Miami. I wanted to be a normal American kid. I moved back to Miami, and my parents were distraught when I told them I no longer wanted to be a gymnast.
I started school on Oct. 10 2007, and this was the beginning of my new life. My parents did not support my new lifestyle choices, and we did not speak for four months. I got grounded all the time.
This was a new chapter for me, and guitar had already been a part of my life for the past two years. My father got me a guitar instructor at 14. The teacher cost $50 an hour, and I learned a ton in this lesson. My father broke the news after the lesson that the classes were too expensive, so I could no longer have an instructor.
I had no money at the time, so I took to the internet and free books from friends to learn to play the guitar. Fast forward two years into the future to my first day of public high school. High school was very easy compared to everything else I had ever done, and I loved it.
I enrolled for my senior year, and I met a ton of kids that played music. I embraced this group of friends and learned as much as I could about the guitar. Some kids made fun of my novice skills, but this didn’t stop me. I graduated high school, and a few months into college, I got a call from one of the best musicians at school. He invited me to start a band with him. The rest is history.
These were my first music classes ever. The first week was so difficult. I had never read music before, and I felt like the underdog compared to my classmates who had years of middle school and high school music experience. I got over my fears and accepted the language of music, the story of music, and the discipline.
My skill increased exponentially, and the same kids that laughed at me at school were now cheering me on during local concerts, parties, and even our debut music video. We played over 70 shows together in four years. I graduated college with my A.A. degree in Music Education.
I had moved out of my house at the time, and I was living with my girlfriend and another couple in a small apartment with a dog. I rode my bike 10 miles each way to get to my retail job at the time. My parents had given me a car but had taken it back when I decided to move out of my house. I taught guitar lessons at the time as well and rode 11 miles with my guitar on my back to get to my students.
When I was 20 years old, I received a call from my mother with an opportunity to attend my dream school Musician’s Institute in Los Angeles, California with a full scholarship. I had an epiphany; I realized I was not happy with my life.
I slept on it, and it hit me the next day like a sign from something larger than me. The light shone through my sliding glass so brightly that I thought I was going to pass out. My vision went from blinding yellow to white light. I felt like a heavy stone was turning in my mind. It was so heavy and significant. No willpower or strength in me prior to that moment could ever stop that stone from moving. It was as if a large switch in my mind had flipped, and there was no going back.
The song Once in a Lifetime by The Talking Heads came to mind in this moment. The light faded. I look around. The music stopped. I stood in the empty hollow kitchen as the sounds of me breathing bounced off the layers of paint on the walls. I didn’t make a sound. “This is not my beautiful house…This is not my beautiful wife.” To myself I said, “This is not for me.”
I dumped my girlfriend and told her I wanted to go to LA. She was so distraught, because I didn’t want to continue our relationship long distance. She got a new man in an instant.
I was heart broken, but my future was soon to change. I made it to LA. I already passed the bachelor’s program entrance exam, and I have started school.