“I have dreams where I am back in the gym,” Elena said. “That feeling of control and mastery. That feeling of having a secret power. Defying the rules of the natural order.”

I’ve been excited to read Winterland, by Rae Meadows, since I first heard about it last fall. It tells the story of Anya, who lives in Norilsk, an industrial town in Russia’s far north. Her father works at the copper mine and her mother, who was a ballerina, vanished when she was five. She goes to ballet lessons for a while, but she does not love it. Instead, Anya loves doing cartwheels and somersaults with her friend Sveta, who can also do aerials and back handsprings. When the national sports program tryouts for gymnastics come to her school, both she and Sveta try out, but only Anya makes it. 

In theory, this is a novel about gymnastics. The author is a practicing gymnast and she gets the details of the sport exactly right. The brutality of the sport and its impact on young bodies, mixed with the exhilaration of finally perfecting a new trick or move, of feeling like you are flying, come across well. Anya, as a gymnast training in the Russian of the 1970s and early 80s, goes through the pain of injuries (that the coaches never give enough time to heal), a sexually perverse doctor, and the exhaustion that the sport’s rigor demands. But she also loves her sport more and more, learning new skills, perfecting her triple twist—until, of course, she doesn’t.

(I don’t know if this is the trajectory of all sports, or even all gymnasts within gymnastics. But it is a trajectory I experienced myself, and watched many of my teammates go through. I even remember talking to my best gymnastics friend, Kristi, about how it used to be fun but now was just terrifying. Even Simone Biles got the twisties. And the fact is, it is a sport that leaves life-long scars, both the physical proof of injuries and the emotional impacts that in a sense never leave.)

In actuality, this is a novel about how a large political system impacts individual lives. Anya is one little part of this system; if she wins she brings honor to Russia—as well as proof that communism is the best way to be in this world. Her coach’s work isn’t to make her the gymnast she could be but the athlete the system needs her to be. Her father, a devout member of the communist party, pushed Anya’s mother to move and work in Norilsk (rather than continuing to dance in the Bolshoi ballet) because it was how he thought they could best serve their country, but she struggled to feel the same. Vera, one of Anya’s neighbors, survived the camp that was near Norilsk, but lost everything. And Anya, as she works to become an Olympian, is altered by the damage that work does to her in ways she will never heal from. And Elena, who is based on the real-life gymnast Elena Mukhina, who became a paraplegic after attempting the Thomas salto (a move that is now illegal): she literally sacrificed the normal use of her body in an attempt to win a gold medal for her country.  

It would be easy to say this is a condemnation of Russia or of communism, but it really isn’t. It’s more of an observation about how no one can escape (alive) any political system we humans build. None of them are perfect, however much we need one, and all of them impact us in negative ways.

I did love this book. I felt compelled back into Anya’s story. I had some quibbles with the plot construction; I wanted more character development and the end felt scattered.

But it reminded me all over again of how we only get this one chance to live, and how our lives are formed not only by the choices we make—but by how the systems around us work to influence those choices in ways that aren’t always the best for us as individuals.  

Plus, Anya and her mother are connected by a bracelet. How couldn't I love that story? 

Last week this video popped up over and over in my social media feeds:

It’s a recording of a flash mob outside of a Victoria’s Secret, and the singer/songwriter Jax is performing her song “Victoria’s Secret,” which is about how our perceptions of what women’s bodies are supposed to look like are manipulated by marketing. I think it’s a fantastic performance and has a great message.

I noticed, though, as I read the comments of strangers on my friends’ feeds, an overwhelming similarity: so many of the comments went along the lines of “I hope I can teach this to my daughter.” And while I am 110% behind young girls learning body positivity, and I hope I taught it to my daughter better than my mom taught me, I started to feel like maybe there’s something wrong with me? Have all the other 50-year-olds gotten over their body negativity?

One of my very strongest memories from childhood might be the last time I loved my body unequivocally. I was sitting on the lounge chair on the patio in our backyard, reading a book. It was a summer afternoon and that morning I had done my three-hour gymnastics workout. Lying there in the shade with my book, I pointed my toes, lifted my straight leg in the air, flexed my biceps, all because I had finally mastered something at the gym (I don’t remember now what skill it was). I felt strong and skilled and, most importantly, light. So small and compact the summer wind could lift me. I thought this is exactly how a body should feel.

I was ten or eleven.

After that summer afternoon, I wanted to keep the feeling of being both strong and small, so I worked harder at the gym. I don’t think I really matched up what I ate with how small I might be, but I never stopped yearning for that feeling. And for whatever reason, I never felt it again.

I mean, this girl could do fifty pull ups and then fifty dips and then one hundred sit ups in a row; she could do flips on a 4” wide balance beam and swing around the bars.

But she hated her body. Her boobs were too small and her butt was too flat and her thighs were too big.

In my 20s I had three magnificent pregnancies with no complications and perfectly healthy babies who I nursed without issues. But I hated my body. I wanted slimmer hips and a flatter belly and bigger boobs and smaller thighs.

In my 30s I was a strong runner with no injuries. I was busy with three, then four kids who I had plenty of energy for. But I hated my body; my belly was even bigger, my boobs saggier, my hips wider. I started to struggle with weight gain. My thighs were still too big and my running pace was too slow.

In my 40s I fought through several injuries and kept running. I began hiking on a regular basis and discovered I’m a pretty fast uphill hiker. I trained for and ran a marathon while recuperating from pertussis. But I hated my body, because losing weight became impossible and I got a good growth of back- and side-boobs and my skin began to sag and wrinkle.

And here I am, 50 years old. Still hating my body. Don’t get me wrong: I have gotten better. A huge part of me accepting my body was finding running clothes I love (which might sound like a marketing gimmick but for me it was an answer. Girls without thigh gaps are never going to be comfortable in tiny running shorts). Now if you gave me three magic wishes to use on my body, I’d wish for healthy knees, painless feet, and a better memory rather than slim thighs, big boobs, and a flat belly. I know it’s imperfect, especially by society’s standards, but my body is the only thing I have to experience this world with, so I try to cut out the negative self-talk and accept it for what it is.

But I’m not sure I will ever not have this deep-down body shame.

I don’t think my mom ever got over it. During her last illness, she told me once that she hoped, once she got better, she could keep off the weight she’d lost. The weight she’d lost suffering with intense abdominal pain, several surgeries, and a limited diet: that lost weight was her silver lining. And I don’t write that with judgement but with sadness. I’m not sure she ever thought her body was good enough.

A friend once told me that she was surprised to read (in a blog post) that I struggled with my body image. “But you run all the time! You’re strong and you’re not overweight like me.” I don’t know—do I carry around this shame out of conceit? Is there a body weight that’s too small to express your embarrassment over, like cultural appropriation except with body issues? I don’t think so. I know plenty of runners who are faster than me, who have that stereotypical “runner’s body,” chiseled muscles and a flat belly and a thigh gap, who also carry around the same shame. (And, in some ways, running makes it…not exactly worse, but adds another level. How silly of me to call my soft, slow body a runner’s body! Is a 10=minute-mile even running or is that just jogging? If I were more dedicated, I’d be faster, thinner, stronger. Can’t have carbs and a fast-run summer!)

So yes: I am here for songs and social movements that celebrate real bodies. The shapes of all the bodies. More, the concept that who we are should be determined by…who we are, how we chose to live our lives, the way we love our people and try to take care of the world, rather than what size our clothes our, how flat our bellies, how gapped our thighs. I am so much here for teaching this to our daughters and granddaughters. I long for the existence of a generation of women valued for what they contribute to the world, not for their level of sexiness.

Oh how I want that for younger generations.

But I grew up in an era where these ideas didn’t even exist, raised by a mother from a generation that was very much about how you look. (I will never not hear her saying “Amy sure is looking heavy” when I look in the mirror at my body.) For myself, all I can do is continue to fight it. To acknowledge the thoughts are there and then to take my sub-par but alive body out into the world, dressed in a skirt that might be too short for my Mary-Lou thighs and a tank-top that might show way more side-boob than is visually comfortable, and do things. Run, hike, walk. Fumble at climbing, swim poorly. Hold my husband’s hand, hug my children. It’ll never be perfect, this body. Just like I might never rid myself of the shame in order to love it completely.

But I’ll keep trying.

During my last season of gymnastics (four months of meets and intense training for those meets, stretching from January to my birthday in April, 1987), my closest teammate had a mental block. Her beam routine included a front flip, and for whatever reason, she became afraid of doing it. As I had my own block (the round off on my beam dismount) I had all sorts of empathy for her. As meets grew closer she would grow more and more anxious, but she always showed up to the meets and almost always nailed that front flip. But then, once in practice, she fell and injured her shin. She got x-rayed and since there was no break, she got taped up and kept going. That’s what gymnasts do.

But as the qualifying meet grew closer, she struggled more. Then, at the start of one of our workouts during the week before the meet, the beam coach gathered us all to sit on the floor. She had this teammate stand in front of us, and told us what she’d done. At school a few days before, she’d walked through the halls, asking boys to kick her on her injured shin. Our coach didn’t explain why she might’ve done this, but she did say it was a disgusting thing to do; if she ever heard of anyone else doing such a thing they were now warned that they would be kicked out. This teammate was only being allowed to stay because no one had ever expressly had to say “don’t try to make your injury worse by having others hurt you.”

My teammate sat down next to me and I put my arm around her shoulder, but we could both hear the other gymnasts whispering. “Weird” and “creepy” and “gross” and “what’s wrong with her?” But as I had already also discovered self-harm, I didn’t have that response. Mostly I was grateful to know that I wasn’t the only one who was weird and gross in the same way.

The season continued, my teammate’s shin stayed taped, I never did get over my fear of my round off dismount. It was one of the reasons I got second in the all-around on my life’s last meet, instead of first like I was supposed to. Like real winners do. I did win first on bars, which was my favorite and best event, so I was OK because my beam coach was already disappointed in me, but my bars coach still had some respect.

After that meet, my teammate and I both left gymnastics. You’d think we’d stay friends, but somehow we didn’t. (I have searched for her on social media more than once and haven’t found her. I’ve also changed some of the details of her story, just in case.)

This story is both unique and commonplace. Unique in its details but commonplace because every gymnast has a similar story. More than one. Things that happened to them, things that happened to their teammates. I’m telling her story because it greatly affected my outcome as well, in ways I am still trying to understand.

Because here’s the thing: gymnastics is a complicated sport. It’s not just about back handsprings and front flips, Yurchenkos and Tkatchevs, wolf turns and triple pirouettes. It requires an enormous amount of mental energy to get your body to do things normal people would never try. You have to conquer rational fear and then train your body to work towards defying gravity for a few seconds, twisting or flipping all the while. With pointed toes and smile.

It is also politics: not everyone gets the same level of attention from coaches.

Who had the most expensive leotards. Whose parents put the most money into the booster club. Whose enormous cabin could be used for team retreats. Who the coaches like the best and think have the most potential (usually the ones with the richest parents). Who’s been loyal to the club for the longest. Who is most likely to do great things like become Elite or get a college scholarship or make it to Nationals. Who is willing to try anything, doesn’t express fear, does everything the coaches tell her to do.

Despite that, it’s also the deep connections you make with your teammates. The way you know the history of their injuries and how to tape them if a coach isn’t around. You know your teammates’ floor routines as well as they do. You cheer for them even knowing it means their win is your loss, because it also means their success is a win for the team.

I loved my decade in gymnastics. I learned skills that I still use today: perseverance, toughing it out, encouraging others, bravery. A sense of my body within the world and a sort of confidence that still helps me keep my head up. How to tape a sprained ankle and how to care for a deep bloody blister. A precise cartwheel.

But I also carry some pretty good scars. Self-doubt. Despair over every ripple and lump and extra pound on my body. Guilt that my parents paid so much for my gym time and then I didn’t get a scholarship like my mom so desperately wanted me to. A bone-deep shame. The ever-present feeling that I was destined for greatness but I didn’t get it because I was a coward, even while I’m the first to acknowledge that I was never going to be an Olympian or even an Elite. I was a mediocre gymnast who never conquered her dismount fear; I was the support staff whose time, fees, and body supported the real winners.

All of those feelings, positive and negative, are still here in my body.

So when I watch gymnastics, I always cry. My body remembers exactly how it felt to move in some of those ways. I wish I could still move in those ways, could still be lithe and strong and graceful. My psyche remembers the negatives, the bloody hands and wrists, the shame of not being great like those girls on TV are.

But I’ve never cried like I did last night, watching the Tokyo Olympics team round and Simone Biles walking off the floor.

***

Kendell walked in and caught me crying and asked me why. I couldn’t explain for a bit because the lump in my throat was so large.

After her vault, when she is talking in that rushed way with her teammates, Simone says “I don’t trust myself.”

That was when I started crying.

Simone Biles does some amazing gymnastics. She is strong, talented, and skilled, but no matter what it still takes bravery to do what she does.

Unless you have been a gymnast, it is hard to understand how brave she was to do what she did at the team competition.

All of those entwining emotions that go into gymnastics. The idea that your body must be sacrificed on the altar of gold medals. The way your coach can humiliate you by simply seeing you make a mistake you shouldn’t have. The way you both support and lean upon your teammates. Not to mention the fierce public eye, which must feel like it is always on her.

As a gymnast, you do your routines and your moves, you compete because at one point you loved this sport. It was fun and it brought you bliss, learning how to flip and spin without getting (too) injured. Defying gravity without a space suit. Dancing across the floor in a sparkly leo. That joy stays with you, but it isn’t always there. For coaches, for gymnastics clubs, it’s still a business. It’s still and always about winning, the work of winning, not about the joy of moving your body. It’s not completely or even mostly about you as a person or as an athlete, but about you as a winner. You are really, simply grist.

So there is Simone, at the Olympics. The Olympics team competition. There she is, and she is struggling. In an invisible way, in a way you can’t tape or stitch together, a way you can’t shake off. In her head. In her gymnastics self, which knows how to do the things she does with her body, she cannot make that connection.

Everyone knows the stories. Everyone thinks of Kerri Strugg doing her second vault despite her ankle injuries. Gymnasts just go on, anyway.

By withdrawing from the competition, Simone Biles did something so mind-blowingly brave. So brave.

By walking away, she said that she would not risk her body for anyone. Not for her teammates, who I know she loves. Not for her country, who loves her. Not for her coaches, who helped her get to that point. Not for that gold medal. Not for fame or adulation or endorsements.

Because her mental game was not there, she knew she was risking her body if she continued. And she was brave enough to break the gymnastics rule that says “you must always risk your body.”

That was why I cried while I watched it. Because I know how much courage that took. And because I know most of the world will not understand it, and will say awful things about her.

Because taking care of your own body as a gymnast is only supposed to be something you do to become a winner, not to not compete.

***

Many people will write about what happened in gymnastics during this Olympics. My contribution to this discussion is miniscule. But all night, I couldn’t sleep. I was full of…something. Both dread and awe. The memory of my teammate’s bruised shin. When I slept I dreamed round offs turning into cartwheels, over and over. 

But I am still adding this little bit. My voice to this conversation, because something shifted in me, watching her last night. Honestly, she’s never been my favorite gymnast (no one will ever replace Julianne McNamara for that spot in my heart), but that doesn’t matter. Last night, her bravery gave me just a tiny bit of grace for myself. For that part of me who is still 15, still facing down that dismount with my taped-up ankle and tiger claws on my wrists and perpetual wounds on my palms, who was lithe and strong and graceful but who boiled in shame anyway. The coaches and the teammates and even my parents couldn’t quite give me that grace to say I was anything worthwhile. I wasn’t great enough to matter, so what I did do was pointless: that feeling was what stretched and started to dissolve a bit, last night.

I wasn’t an Olympian. I didn’t earn a scholarship. I was a lowly class II gymnast. I didn’t sacrifice hard enough, I didn’t give enough, I wasn’t enough: I have carried that feeling for my whole life.

Her decision last night helped it weigh a little bit less.

Her decision bolsters all gymnasts.

In that moment, she chose what was right for her. That is never allowed in gymnastics, but she did it. Her choice tells us that we matter. Not because of medals or scholarships or rankings, but because we are individuals with bodies in the world. Because she matters—as a person, not as a medal winner—the rest of us matter too.

And it is why—not because of the five moves named after her—that she will always be the greatest of all time.