It's all too easy when talking about female gymnasts to fall into the trap of infantilizing them, spending more time worrying more about female vulnerability than we do celebrating female strength.

There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.

Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona.

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

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.

Faith does help mourners survive their loss, some studies suggest; but I imagine one still struggles.