....ONE in 100.....**

020515
beloved LEGS

....Even though my mind was made up, even though I had told my trainer my decision.  It was hard.  I would look around at my comrades faces during training (which basically looks like we are all about to die), I would laugh, talk trash, tease and be teased by them and I would know that in a few short months this chapter in my life would be over.  That I would never experience these feelings ever again.  

.....and some days it was easy.  When training was so hard, when I was so tired, when injuries and aches and soreness would plague my abilities for weeks on end.....it was easier to think about how much easier and relaxed my life would be.  How getting on the scale morning noon and night would soon be a undesired piece of my past joyfully left behind......

.....most days it was scary.  I was afraid of leaving the one thing that held me together behind.  What would hold me together now?  Where was my life headed? Was I going to happily settle into being a plain old military wife, who spent her days doting on her husband and trying to get pregnant?  Would that satisfy me?  Would that be enough?  My answer was always NO.  That there had to be a new goal, a new endeavor.  That being ordinary was never going to be enough for me.  

.....I never formally said goodbye to my team mates.  I knew the very last week that I was in training that it was my last week.  SOME of them knew it too, but to keep it together we all just pretended I would be back again next week, or tomorrow for the next session.  

.....the last night I went to training, I almost cried every single second I was there.  I told myself to savor and treasure every single minute, because it was my very last.  When I looked at my team mates I wanted to cry and hug them, I wanted to hold them and tell them how much I loved them.  

.....it was an unspoken understanding.....that boxers don't cry in public.  To reduce myself, to reduce them to tears would be the worst defeat for us all.  So I smiled, and laughed and walked out of the gym saying until next time.  

I was happy.  Happy that I had what I did. Happy that I did what I did.  I was happy that I was able to make a clear, clean decision about when to leave the sport.  I left without any major injuries.  And with a few pretty rough fights, but always leaving the ring on my feet with my head held high.  

My trainer said to me "That only 1 in 100 people have what I have.  That I did more in the sport of boxing in 4 years in Europe that most people don't accomplish in 10.  That I have a fighter spirit, that not every one possesses that, that I should never feel ashamed or sad of leaving for my noble reasons.  And that no one can ever take away what I accomplished.  He said that it hurts his heart that I am leaving the team, because I am the soul of the team, always at training, always happy to attack, always motivating, always ready to fight.  He said that I need to pass that gift on to others in my future.  He said that the team was so lucky that I found them, and that our relationship will continue for our entire lives."

....tears. tears. tears.  

.....another day in the life of an unlikely military wife....**

...living for something new.....**

020515
beloved LEGS....

....When you left again for a 9 month deployment in Afghanistan it made perfect sense that I would spend my time trying for the 2016 Rio Olympics.  I spent the summer training harder than I have ever trained, and traveling all over to compete in International and World Boxing Tournaments.  

When your entire existence revolves around a single goal, its increasingly difficult to accept the disappointments of making only 2nd or 3rd place despite the reality that you are competing against the best in the world......

.....After what was a negative experience in the ring in the USA at the Ringside World Tournament, only to return and experience another crushing disappointment in the German International Tournament.....it was a bizarre dichotomous feeling.  

A question that plagued me for months.  Should I continue down the path of even harder, even closer fights, against girls that had many years of experience more than me, girls that had physically hurt me and taken pieces of my will to fight, girls that had nothing more to live for than the sport of boxing???

Or.....

Should I leave......should I stop.....I won't say quit because I didn't ever quit, no matter how hard, how beat up, how difficult it was to learn and relearn the sport under three different Coaches in three different locations, no matter how sad, or tired, or hurt my spirit or body was.  But should I live for something new, something else?

And then something happened. A very dear friend of mine who was my first and only friend on the Bavarian Regional Boxing Team was in the hospital.  I wrote to her asking her if she was okay, assuming surely that she had only suffered an injury in training. 

Her and I had spent a few weeks together only a month ago, punching one another, sweating next to one another, and surviving the training and grueling schedule of competing in the German International Championship together.  It couldn't be anything too serious since she was a picture of perfect health and strength during tournament.

She told me she had CANCER.  Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  A tumor in her stomach (where I had surely punched her numerous times during sparring) that was a pretty significant size.  She would have to undergo Chemotherapy.  It was at this time that you had experienced some pretty close and frightening calls in Afghanistan. 

The fear that LIFE had just given me was paralyzing.  I felt backed into a corner and afraid to come out.  I also cried a lot, and felt powerless in the world.  It was something that I had never felt before, LIFE, had never quieted my spirit, my hunger to face it without fear, until now.....

I was able to pull it together, I decided that......my friend would fight this cancer and come out victorious because there was no other option, and that you despite all the danger you were in, would return to me once again.  In the meantime,  I would enter the ring and fight for her, and for you. 

One night I was texting my friend.  She told me that she needed to spend the day at the Women's University because.......the chemotherapy could possibly affect her ability to ever have children.  

We both sat on the phone texting each other sobbing and bawling hysterically.  It hadn't even crossed my mind that.....having Cancer would ruin her ability to have children.  She told me "wait and see, one day I will have children." 

After spending hours alone in my bed crying, I decided that I had no more time to wait and waste.  That as soon as you got home, we would get pregnant.  Bringing new life into this world had become my new purpose. 

I always stayed in boxing to motivate, bring hope, inspire, to show and spread love, I stayed because I was needed, because it gave me a mission, because......within the sport and with all of them watching I was changing the world...... 

But.....it was time....to leave the sport on my terms, without any major injuries, and start to live for something else....something new......

......just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife.....**

....family....**

012015
beloved LEGS...

After years of being stationed in NEVER NEVER LAND, its no wonder that we are a little estranged from both of our families.  The two of us have not been home to visit together for more than a few SHORT periods, usually before or after deployments.

During these periods I can't say that us or our families behave "normally" because of the stress involved.  How does one operate normally when its possible this is the last time we will all see one another? How does one behave around a person who just came back from a war zone?  Is it right to behave "normally"? Or should special attention and consideration be made for this bizarre time?

It frustrates me when many moments of our visit I see the distance between us and the family, it makes me very, very sad.  There are so many times when it becomes apparent that even our families do not understand our lifestyle, so many moments in which there is an element of surprise on both behalf's at some random detail of both lives, and some even tense conversations about view points on all things political.

Am I in denial? I am always left scratching my head.  How is it possible that we could grow up, with the same parents, live in the same house, go to the same schools, church, have the same neighborhood friends, the same childhood memories, and yet there be so much distance between us as adults?

The awkward isolation, odd man out, cast away feelings I get make my heart ache to return to the world that we have created for ourselves.....the world where our views are perhaps not always agreed upon but certainly understood.  The world where we are loved, where we are a little idolized and at the very least supported by almost strangers.......the phenomena makes me feel sick....and like crying....which admittedly, I did.

I just wish it wasn't so hard to reconnect to "our people." I feel protective toward you, and toward what you have done.  It should be recognized, there should be an attempt to understand you.  I feel like, you are the most amazing person on earth and your sum should be known.  I wonder if it is difficult for you to be unseen, misunderstood, unknown by people I know that you love insanely dearly.  I asked you about it.  And you said the most profound thing.

"I don't want them to think about it.  I do it, so they don't have to think about it."

As a person who spends an obscene amount of time, talking, writing, and thinking of ways to be UNDERSTOOD, its a surprise to me that you are so comfortable being under the radar, being an unknown man, in the shadows.....and it hurts me that people who should see you never will.  The parallel between you and the comic book superhero is strangely, A REALITY.

To make matters even harder for me to understand.....while home....I watched a family member of mine harshly criticize my mother.  To be honest the message was difficult to understand following the words felt like entering a maze to which there was no real solution.  Determining a conclusion or the correct response was maddening.  When my mother defended herself she was told to eliminate herself from the life of her sibling and actions to promote that finality were set in motion.

This.  I do not understand.  While it is very hard for LEGS and I to always understand, hold compassion, and love our families despite the distance and estrangement.......we could never and would never willingly eliminate them from our lives.   At the end of the day I could only conclude that this phenomena MUST be a luxury of civilian life.

To dismiss an individual because they are difficult, challenging, because they live a way you don't agree with, or navigate differently then you do even though they are your blood, to me, is a cardinal sin, one that I will never understand.

On our last night in Alaska.  I said goodbye to my sisters as if I would see them again tomorrow.  I felt like things were like they used to be.  We lived at home, we were close, I felt a unity with my family that I hadn't felt in years.  

The next morning we left under the cover of night in a taxi, it started to snow a little, as I gazed out the window watching the flakes blow by, my heart fell apart, because I realized that I wouldn't see them tomorrow.  And that closeness, I feared, was already floating away.

.....just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife....**