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

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.

I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely... gone.

My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.

It's a hard thing to imagine how somebody copes with grief and at the same time has to build a new life.

It's torturous what my siblings put me through. I can take any Olympic final, I can fight in a world championship and fall behind and win in sudden death, but when it comes to my siblings, it's out of my control. There's not much I can do.

Every day, TV, newspapers, and the Internet bombard us with a message that we're destroying the earth. Ice caps are melting, rivers are dying, polar bears are drowning, and trees are doing something.

If any reader has lost a loved one or is afraid of death, modern physics says: 'Be comforted, you and they shall live again.'