But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone.

I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.

And after my mother's death I became more open to and empathetic about other people's struggles and losses.

One word I had throughout the first year and a half of my mother's death was 'unmoored.' I felt that I had no anchor, that I had no home in the world.

Loss is so paradoxical: It is at once enormous and tiny.

It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

What's endlessly complicated in thinking about women's gymnastics is the way that vulnerability and power are threaded through the sport.