According to my mom, the year 2010 is expected to be a year of changes all leading up to the shift in 2012. I think it was the year 2008 when I began learning of 2012 and wondering... Much of the world is very skeptical of the idea of 2012, and I don't much expect many people to read this with belief in their hearts or minds. That is your choice, so I ask that you do not criticize the words I am writing.
Early on in 2010 I experienced my own changes and spiritual journies. Inside my heart and changes on the outside that people were seeing. Likewise, people all around me were experiencing changes as well; both good and bad.
One of my teammates at GGC who had never been injured, tore her acl. She was one of the top gymnasts there, after the injury she choose to quit gymnastics. I also decided to take time off because of a wrist injury which was continually getting re-injured since February 2008. I didn't know if I would come back, I had decided I was going to wait 6 months before training again. More or less, I made it about 6 months before I started training full time. I only managed to take off two months before I started working out at another gym nearby. I could not train at Grace after I told them I was likely done with the sport of gymnastics, but I still wanted to train and compete. That's the way the sport seems to work, it beckons you back in. So that incorporated my next change, I began training at Metropolitan. I was not training very much though. After two months, I was only going in one to two days a week for a couple hours at a time. Likewise, I was coaching my very own team for the first time in my life, and it was quite an experience; both good and bad.
Mentally my thoughts shifted as well. Being without gymnastics, living in the world as an adult, not having anyone to go to for support changed me. It humbled me and gave me every reason to feel blessed for any gym training I could recieve. I learned what coaches liked coaching. I learned that sometimes the gymnasts who trained the hardest got the least amount of feedback because coaches simply "expected" perfection and hardwork from them. My coaching philosophy became: "Coach your gymnasts as you would've liked to be coached". I listened to coaches gossip and learned that sometimes, if not often, children are much less threatening; if not wiser than many adults. (At least the adults I worked with...) One day I would love to get to coach, to support every gymnast, to work them hard but to understand their feelings and sympathize with them as well as to teach them what it is to be a great gymnast and a kind human being. For now though, my time belongs in the gym as a gymnast.
At the beginning of the year, I still wanted to return to Grace gymnastics as time wore on, things kept pushing me away from that direction. Strangely enough, it was as though a divine source kept me from returning and showed me once again, that everything happens for a reason. At the end of season the GGC team learned that 3 of the team coaches would be leaving for other gyms. One of the head compulsary coaches; Carleigh left for Emerald City Gymnastics and both of the head optional team coaches were leaving as well. Brian also for Emerald City and Jackie headed off to Roach.
I was left without a gym and many gymnasts were left without a coach. And for the second time in my life I watched as a gym fell apart. A large majority of the gymnasts chose to leave. I also left...for home.
And with that;
I dropped out of college,
Almost retired from gymnastics,
Once again lived home for the first time in 2 years,
Re-injured my wrist for the 5th time
and
Returned to the gym that I thought I had left forever...
It seems I've made a complete circle.
There were other things happening within the gymnastics community that reached my ears but I cannot disclose on blogspot due to the turmoil such gossip has already provoked.
One major shift in the world of gymnastics is the U.S. earning a bronze medal from the 2000 Olympic games after finding that Dong Fong Xiou was actually 14 years of age instead of 17.
Over this past year I have watched two other major knee injuries occur. Two other top level gymnasts in their own gyms have been taken out of the sport for the moment. One gymnast at my "home" gym dislocated her knee and tore some ligaments and another gymnast from one of my past gyms also tore her acl...Her coach, (one of my past coaches) also had a knee injury within the last week. Both Shawn Johnson and Ivana Hong tore acls as well.
Likewise, there have been two major deaths in my family, seperated by only a couple of months. My aunt I lived with for a year was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year ago. She died last April. My grandma was also killed this past year, in June. She was severly injured in a car accident and died a couple weeks after the incident.
It's been a long, rough journey but change is not as frightening as it used to be. I have learned to cope a lot better and to allow change instead of trying to force things to remain the same. God is changing the world all around us, we are changing and I feel more prepared than ever before for the change that is to come.
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