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.....**
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