When I look at my own career, growing up, I was doing really well at age 11, but it was kind of isolating because back then, people weren't hanging out with me. My mom was always there. She had my back and was like, 'You keep focused. You gotta keep focused.' And I think those kinds of lessons were hard.

The Women's Sports Foundation has empowered so many young girls and women across the U.S. I benefitted from WSF with a travel and training grant when I was 12 years old. It really helped my family financially.

As a kid, falling was embarrassing. As I got older, I got used to falling and picking myself back up. There's not a sense of failure. It's of disappointment. You train so hard to not make mistakes. When you do, you're learning from that. How do I improve? How do I get better for the next time? Through every failure, there's something to be learned.

I was improving in the sport at age 10, 11, when I was getting my triple jumps - and it was suddenly very isolating. I was doing really well in competitions, and it felt strange because people that were my friends became almost jealous.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Prayer is a privilege and the soul's sincere desire. We can move beyond routine and 'checklist' prayers and engage in meaningful prayer as we appropriately ask in faith and act, as we patiently persevere through the trial of our faith, and as we humbly acknowledge and accept 'not my will, but Thine, be done.'

I hope that people who don't believe depression is a real thing will stop calling people crazy, because that's dismissive and not a medical diagnosis.

In school, when I got into upper-level math, there would be times when I would wake up from a dream and have - not an answer, exactly, but a direction to pursue. My writing has always been like that. I wake up from dreams knowing which direction to go in.