I don't feel like a star; I never have. I don't feel like a star; I never have. I always feel like I'm the young one, I'm the small one. I always have someone to look up to, and I think it helps me with motivating myself.
I was able to do Classics, the U.S. national championships and the Pan American Games and feel like I improved with each meet, but I was still struggling with a lot of residual pain from the two surgeries.
My parents- they've been my biggest influences and supporters since day one. They teach me every day that happiness comes from within and not from something outside of your heart.
With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.
It sounds funny, but the 2008 Olympics were something that just kind of happened, and I was lucky they came at a point when I was uninjured and well prepared. As a gymnast, you can't ask for much more.
My coach, Liang Chow, had one rule while I was training for the 2008 Olympics: no skiing. I could do anything I wanted outside the gym, he said, except ski.
I think about my goals. There were a lot of times in gymnastics when I really didn't want to go in and train, but you can't make it to the Olympics if you don't train!
I'm pleased to say my knee feels a lot better. It's still not back to normal, and I don't know if it ever will be, but I'm learning to deal with it instead of expecting it to be like it was before.
Every year I just kept going back to gymnastics, but I didn't start out training 10 hours a day. When I turned 10 or 11, I got more serious and I focused a lot on making it to the elite level, and from there I just kept going.
I missed being considered an athlete and having that competitive drive, and missed having something to work for every day. I'd taken two and a half years away from the sport and was out of shape. I wanted to get back to where I was in 2008.
To have any doubt in your body is the biggest weakness an athlete can have. There are times when I physically can't get myself to go for a skill because I'm thinking, 'My knee hurts really bad.'
In 2008 I didn't take it all in enough. I was so wrapped up in just the competition that I missed what was going on around me. If I am given that opportunity again to go to the Olympics and be an athlete I want to take it all in because I feel like this is my last shot and I want to feel the team spirit. I want to really live and breathe the USA.
In some ways the ACL tear was a blessing. I had hesitated to return to elite gymnastics after the 2008 Olympics. I told myself I had already accomplished so much, and the road was just going to get harder if I continued.
After 13 years of hard landings in gymnastics, one ski run had delivered the biggest injury of my career.
Retiring was scary and it was tough to give up gymnastics, but so many great opportunities have come from it that I never expected.
It might have been easier to retire, to say my knee couldn't handle it and let that be that. At the same time, the prospect of not being able to compete in gymnastics anymore was heartbreaking.