Grace, Gold, and Glory Read online

  GRACE, GOLD

  & GLORY

  My Leap of Faith

  GABRIELLE DOUGLAS

  With Michelle Burford

  Dedication

  To my mom:

  I couldn’t have accomplished my dream without your

  constant support, sacrifice, and belief in me.

  I love you with all of my heart.

  To my sister Arielle:

  Since the day you convinced Mom to put me in

  gymnastics, you’ve never stopped cheering for me.

  I appreciate you so much.

  To my sister Joyelle:

  You have prayed for me endlessly and encouraged

  me even more than that. My life just wouldn’t

  be the same without you in it.

  To my brother, Johnathan:

  You have always been and still are my best friend.

  Thank you for refusing to let me stop fighting.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Discussion Questions

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  Introduction

  January 2, 2012, in West Des Moines, Iowa — seven

  months before the London Summer Olympics

  GYMNASTICS IS NOT MY PASSION ANYMORE. I’D DRAFTED THOSE WORDS onto my smartphone as a text message two weeks before my mother and two of my older siblings, Joyelle and John, flew from Virginia Beach, Virginia, to celebrate Christmas and my sixteenth birthday with me. In October 2010, I’d left my hometown and family and moved to Iowa so I could be coached by elite trainer Liang Chow. I’d been dreaming of an Olympic gold medal since I was eight — but as I became more and more homesick, that dream seemed like a zillion miles away. That’s when I knew I needed to have the toughest conversation of my life: I had to tell Mom that I wanted to quit.

  “Here we are,” Mom announced as she rounded the corner into the parking lot of Chow’s gym. I was there that afternoon for my usual training session at two thirty — something even a family visit couldn’t stop. Before either of us could get out of the silver Nissan Versa, I handed my phone to Mom. She lowered her eyes to the phone’s screen and scanned the words that I’d been too scared to say out loud — which is why I had written them down:

  Gymnastics is not my passion anymore. I want to get famous off of running track, or I want to try dancing, or become a singer. I can get a job at Chick-Fil-A in Virginia Beach and live off the 14 grand I just won at World Championships. I just want to be a normal teenage kid. I am so homesick. I just want to come home.

  As Mom read my letter in silence, her eyes narrowed and her expression turned to stone. “You’re breaking my heart here, Brie,” she said. I could feel my stomach flip as I hunched my shoulders and looked down at my lap. “You’ve been doing gymnastics for ten years, and now you want to run track? Have you lost your mind?”

  I hadn’t lost my mind — but I had definitely lost my fire. Did I understand the enormous sacrifices my mother had made just so I could become an elite gymnast? Absolutely. Had I been the one who begged Mom to send me to live with a host family in butt-freezing West Des Moines, Iowa, for nearly two years of rigorous training? Of course. But looking back on it, had I understood what it would actually feel like to live through the painful injuries and daily demands without my mom and siblings at my side every day? Not even sorta. It’s one thing to keep fighting for your dream when you’re surrounded by the four family members who know you the best. It’s an entirely different thing to push toward that dream when you feel alone and totally homesick.

  “I’m not trying to break your heart, Mom,” I said.

  “Look, you’re going to go into this gym right now, and you’re going to work out today,” Mom said in a tone that told me a smackdown was on the way. “I’ve worked my behind off for you to be here because this is what you said you wanted — and I’ve loved helping you strive for your dream. But you’re not going to repay me like this.”

  “But I’m not passionate—”

  “That’s a lie!” Mom cut in. “Just a couple months ago, you said you wanted to be the world champion. Is there something going on at the gym or with your host family that you’re not telling me?” I shook my head from side to side. “Then you’re gonna have to explain yourself to me — ‘cause this right here isn’t making any sense.”

  I could feel teardrops forming on my lower lids as I pressed my palms into the seat. “I just don’t want to do it anymore,” I finally said.

  “Well, that choice is not yours to make,” Mom snapped. “You’ve got your coaches, Chow and Li, involved in this dream. They’ve put everything they have into your coaching! You’ve got your host family, Travis and Missy, involved in this dream. They’ve opened up their home and turned their lives upside down to accommodate your training schedule! You’ve got hundreds of people rallied around, helping you to get to the next level.”

  “But, Mom,” I cut in, my lower lip suddenly trembling, “you don’t know how it feels!”

  Mom paused and looked directly at me. “I know you miss home, Brie,” she said, her tone softening just a little before she shifted right into the next gear. “But you’ve signed a contract that says you will represent your country to the best of your ability. You’ve got a responsibility to your teammates. And now you just want to walk away? I will not let you be dishonorable. If gymnastics is not your passion, then at the very least, you will finish the season. I didn’t raise you and your brother and sisters to be quitters.”

  “It’s my body and my choice,” I said stiffly, staring straight ahead at the dashboard. “And I’m not going to do it.”

  Without a word, Mom turned the key in the ignition, sped through the parking lot, and swerved left onto the main road that leads to the gym. And if you think she was upset before — this is when she really lost it.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this!” she shouted, slamming her wrists against the steering wheel to the beat of each one of her words. As the car’s tires wavered from left to right, Mom hit her brakes just in time for us to miss a pole on the right-hand side of the road. She then pulled over for part two. “All the people who’ve said you can’t do this, the people who’ve doubted that your dream could ever come true — I guess you’re just going to let them win,” Mom said. Her eyes filled with tears. “Why didn’t you just tell me a long time ago that you wanted to quit? What a waste — a total waste.”

  “I love you, Mom,” I whispered in an attempt to calm her down. I reached over and began rubbing her back. Yes, I still wanted to quit gymnastics — and PS, I also wanted to make this argument long enough for me to miss that day’s training session with Coach Chow — but I thought coughing up a little affection might keep me alive a few minutes longer.

  “No, you don’t love me!” Mom shot back. I knew she didn’t mean those words — and she
knew it too — but the tension of the moment brought out so many emotions. “You can pack your bags and buy yourself a plane ticket back to Virginia Beach,” she told me. “But when you get there, you’d better go live with your grandmother — because you’re not moving back in with me.”

  Everyone around me knows that I’ve always had just one hero — my mom. But on the very first Monday of 2012, I couldn’t have been more mad at her. In fact, after my mother, my sister Joyelle, and my brother, John, flew home to Virginia the next morning, I was still so furious that I didn’t Skype with Mom for two weeks. I knew she was right. I was just way too upset to admit it.

  The next afternoon as I dragged myself into Chow’s gym for a hard workout, Mom’s words were still fresh in my head. I thought of the hundreds of double shifts she’d worked in order to pay for my training. I thought of my two sisters: Arielle, who gave up ballroom dancing, and Joyelle, who stopped ice skating so that our single mom could afford to keep me in gymnastics. I thought of my father — the one person who’d missed out on so much of the dream I was about to set aside. I thought of my closest friend and my only brother, John — the one whose little pep talk turned out to be the big miracle that changed everything that month. But I’ll come back to that part.

  For now, here’s what you need to know: Exactly 210 days before I ever attempted my first vault in the London Summer Olympics, my leap of faith came this close to ending in a crash of disaster. That’s why this isn’t simply the story of how a one-handed cartwheel at age three eventually landed me on the top of an Olympic podium. It’s also the story of how the people who love me the most literally lifted me up during the lowest moments of my journey. It’s the story of how I finally faced the truth about a dad I hardly even know. It’s a testimony of the one huge lesson that I’m still learning every day: With strong faith in God and some serious determination, every dream is possible — especially if your mama refuses to let you fly home, fry chicken, and give up.

  My Father

  In one way, I know my dad. In another way, I never have. He was there. He was gone. He was suddenly back again. Strangely, the truth lives in every one of these statements, as well as in the cracks between them. While I can’t tell you all there is to know about this man who gave me life, I can tell you this: The story of my dream to make it to the Olympics has both everything and nothing to do with him. That’s why I’m finally choosing to share it.

  My first memories of my father are dim — just faded images of him picking me up or playing with me when I was a toddler. In later years, my recollections are more concrete. Living briefly with him and his parents in Chesapeake, Virginia. Looking on in silence as he and my mother separated. Overhearing my mother implore Dad to spend time with me and my siblings. Going fishing with him before I moved to Iowa. In the chapters to follow, you’ll read about the countless joys, stresses, tumbles, and thrills that line my path to London. Alongside that account, you’ll experience my dad in the same way that I did as a girl — in a series of brief snapshots and scenes that led me toward a place I’m still trying to reach.

  I have always loved my father. I just haven’t always understood him. Maybe gathering up the pieces of what I remember about our moments together will somehow reveal him more clearly to me. That is the only real reason to reflect. That is also my deepest prayer.

  Chapter One

  By His stripes we are healed.

  —ISAIAH 53:5, NKJV

  MY MOTHER ALMOST DIED ON THE DAY SHE HAD ME: DECEMBER 31, 1995. As Mom gripped the arm rails of her hospital bed in Newport News, Virginia, a doctor and nurse tripped over themselves trying to stop her from bleeding to death. No one could figure out exactly why she was hemorrhaging so badly, but they finally gave Mom a series of medications that made her blood clot. An hour later, a nurse bundled me up and placed my six-pound, five-ounce body in Mom’s arms — that warm spot I’ve returned to a thousand times since.

  Back then, cash was tight. Very tight. I’m the baby in my family, and that made me the last of four mouths to feed. Since three of those mouths arrived back to back (Mom was prego every year between 1993 and 1995, and each birth came with major complications), my mother had to be on bed rest. So Mom let go of her job as a bank teller, a position that only paid about $20,000 a year; and my father, who worked on and off at various jobs, wasn’t bringing in much money. That’s why my mother and father loaded up a U-Haul trailer and moved us all to Oklahoma so we could find a fresh start.

  Mom had once dreamed of becoming a lawyer. But after she had Arielle in 1989, she set aside college at Norfolk State University in order to keep food on the table. A couple years later, when she was twenty-one, she met my father and they got married. As they considered a move from Virginia to Tulsa, Oklahoma, after I was born, the plan was for my mother to go to Bible school and for my dad — who already had a background in ministry — to continue his training. At the time, my parents were both part of a movement called Word of Faith, a set of teachings that involves claiming and standing by God’s promises in the Bible. So Tulsa — a city filled with Word of Faith mega-churches and Bible schools — was the perfect spot.

  When we rolled into Tulsa in February 1996, my family drove right into one of the worst situations we’ve ever survived. My mother and father had scrounged up a thousand or so bucks to cover the deposit and rent on an apartment, but because of a miscommunication between my parents and the owner, that place fell through. So rather than sinking all their money into a hotel, my parents first looked around for apartment vacancies. When they couldn’t find a single rental that was in their budget, we ended up living in the only place that wouldn’t cost them a cent — the floor of our blue Dodge van.

  So that’s how we became homeless — as in parked in a dark, damp, and rundown lot for several months. Why didn’t they reach out to their families for help? Because Mom was sick and tired of asking her own parents to lend us money, so she just wanted to stick it out this time. When my mother called her mom from a pay phone — not many cell phones back then! — my grandmother kept asking, “What’s your address?”

  “I felt humiliated,” Mom once told me when I asked her about the experience. “We removed a bucket seat from the back of the van so that we’d all have more space to lie down, huddle together, and try to sleep at night.” After lifting me up to her breast to feed me, Mom would rock me in her arms. Later, after my mother had patted me on my back till I was asleep, she’d carefully spread a napkin on the floor to prepare the only daily meal our family could afford — peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. “And since we’d gotten to Tulsa right in the middle of winter,” Mom recalls, “it felt like it was below freezing some nights.”

  Just to keep us warm, Mom dressed my sisters and brother in every shirt, pants, underwear, and socks she could find. With all those layers, my siblings must have looked like little stuffed animals! My sister Arielle was already six at the time, so Mom enrolled her in school by using the address of a post-office box. In between shuttling Arielle back and forth to first grade with the few drops of gas we had in our van, Mom practiced the alphabet with Joyelle, who was two, and John, who was one. For hours, our mother would entertain them with stories or let them color while my father, who worked sporadically as a day laborer, was away from the van. At just two and a half months old, I lay there next to all of them, wrapped in every blanket Mom could find.

  That April, my parents’ tax refund check showed up in their temporary PO Box — and that gave us enough money to move into a small room in a Super 8 hotel. But after two months of shelling out $50 a night, they’d blown through every dime of their money. In place of cash, my parents began making promises to the hotel manager that they would pay up soon — and that worked until their bill climbed to more than $300. So one afternoon when we were away from the hotel, the manager evicted us from our room and removed our few belongings. In fact, just to get our suitcases back, my grandmother had to wire some money — by this time, Mom had ‘fessed up to her par
ents that she and Dad were flat broke. Once that money ran out, we stayed for three weeks with a newlywed couple my parents had met through a local ministry. But after awhile, we ended up back where we began — crowded together in the back of a Dodge. We spent most of our five months in Tulsa living on that hard floor.

  By spring, I was a few months old — and getting smaller by the day. (I’ve always been tiny — don’t rub it in!) Because my weight kept dropping, my parents became concerned. In fact, my mother told me that a couple of people accused her of starving me. She fed me constantly, but I threw up everything. At one point, Mom says it felt like I only weighed about four or five pounds. I’d received one round of vaccinations at birth, but because my family had no insurance, Mom hadn’t taken me back to the doctor. Mom eventually received a letter from the hospital where I was born — a friend back in Virginia had forwarded the note to our PO Box. Doctors had gotten the results of the blood test they run on all newborns. They’d diagnosed me with a life-threatening disease called Branched Chain Ketoaciduria. Sounds scary, right? Basically, it’s a rare blood disorder found in infants who can’t process particular kinds of protein. The condition is also known as maple syrup urine disease (MSUD) — mostly because it makes a baby’s pee smell just like a stack of molasses-soaked pancakes. Maybe that explains why I’ve always loved me some IHOP.

  But all jokes aside, I was sick. Seriously sick. And in addition to the blood disease, Mom was also pretty sure I had whooping cough, because I sounded like a child she’d heard on a public service announcement on television. “I was afraid for your life,” Mom recently told me. “Because we had no money and no health insurance, I was afraid to take you to the doctor. I just didn’t know what to do, so I leaned on my faith.” Mom prayed for me every single day as she quoted (and requoted!) a powerful Scripture, Isaiah 53:5: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” As it turns out, God answered Mom’s prayers and came through with a miracle: By the time I was six months old, the disease had gone away. Completely. And to this day, I am healthy — even if I am only 4’11” and 94 pounds.