As an athlete you're taught to be selfish. When I'm training, it's usually all about me.

No one has the right to beat you.

To be a fighter, you have to be passionate. I have so much passion, it's hard to hold it all in. That passion escapes as tears from my eyes, sweat from my pores, blood from my veins.

There was a long time I had no job security, no options and no education.

I kind of like to think of myself as the bad girl Olympian that would get kicked out of the Miss America pageant.

The kind of hope I'm talking about is the belief that something good will come. That everything you're going through and everything you've gone through will be worth the struggles and frustrations. The kind of hope I'm talking about is a deep belief that the world can be changed, that the impossible is possible.

Even before I was a fighter, I was a daddy's girl.