I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.

Hope begins in the dark.

I'm here to be me, which is taking a great deal longer than I had hoped.

It was simple reality - most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fit, tan and of good stock - great big hair and white teeth and long legs. Then there were the rest of us.

I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me. It provided the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends who helped me step into the shape that had been waiting for me all my life...I not only get along with me most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side.

I believe that discipline and self-love are the total secrets to freedom.