I Am A Gladiator

For most of my life, I didn’t think of myself as a fighter.

If you had asked me years ago to describe myself, I probably would have said I was easygoing. A people pleaser. Someone who avoided conflict whenever possible. Someone who just wanted a loving family and friends.

A gladiator?

Not a chance.

Which is funny, because when I look back now, my life had never really taken the easy path.

I’d grown up without a mom and survived an abusive first relationship.

I’d taught myself how to be a business leader.

I’d raised three children.

I’d weathered more than my fair share of challenges.

I'd grown, healed, and lived out many of my childhood dreams, while breaking my own negative patterns.

But I never saw those things as evidence that I was a fighter.

I simply saw them as things I had to get through.

Then, in 2019, I attended Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery.

I went because I wanted to become a better business owner. Tatsuda’s was facing increasing pressure, and I was trying to build momentum in my leadership coaching business. I expected to learn about strategy, marketing, finance, and operations.

I did learn all of those things.

But I left with something I never expected.

A new way of seeing myself.

Throughout the week, we’d spend hours learning business math, financial statements, sales, marketing, organizational systems, the seasons of business, and every other aspect of building a successful company.

Then, between sessions, the music would explode through the room.

Thousands of us would jump to our feet.

And together we’d shout at the top of our lungs:

“I AM A GLADIATOR!

Winter is my season.

This is my time.

I will not be denied.

Give me your fears. Give me your limits. I’ll give you results.

I add massive value, and I always find a way to victory.

I AM A GLADIATOR!”

Tony came back to winter over and over again.

Spring is exciting.

Summer is abundant.

Fall is rewarding.

But winter…

Winter is coming.

He said his job wasn’t simply to help us grow our businesses. It was to prepare us for winter, because every business—and every leader—would eventually face one.

I remember wondering what my winter might look like.

Maybe an economic recession.

Maybe losing a major customer.

Maybe a difficult employee.

Maybe a health scare.

I imagined all kinds of challenges.

Not one of them was a mountainside collapsing onto my family’s business.

Not one of them included watching over a century of family history disappear beneath rock and mud.

Not one of them looked anything like the winter that was about to begin.

And I certainly never imagined a winter that would last more than six years.

The landslide.

The loss of the business that had anchored my identity for decades.

The death of my father.

The unraveling and reshaping of some of my most important relationships.

The loss of my sense of safety.

The loss of my connection to community.

Losing my best friend and two little girls I loved as my own.

Parenting struggles that included self-harm and suicidal ideation.

Living with the fear that an unexpected heart condition might take my child’s life.

The heartbreak of loving someone struggling with addiction.

The shame of confronting choices I made that were rooted in my own brokenness.

Deep, extended isolation.

Finding moments where blue skies finally seemed to appear, only to be met by another life-altering storm.

Leading publicly through one crisis after another while privately trying to hold myself together.

Winter came.

And it was hard.

I’ve written before about my gladiator.

About how she appeared after I learned the truth about the man I loved. How she stepped in when I could no longer afford to let someone keep hurting me.

For a long time, I thought of her as someone separate from me.

The strong one.

The fierce one.

The protector.

The woman who arrived when I could no longer survive as the version of myself I had always been.

But lately I’ve begun to realize something.

She didn’t arrive.

She emerged.

Or maybe even more truthfully…

She was there all along.

Every impossible decision.

Every devastating loss.

Every time I stood back up when I wanted to stay on the ground.

Every time I chose integrity when it cost me.

Every time I kept leading when it would have been easier to disappear.

Every time I kept believing there was another side to the pain, even when I couldn’t yet see it.

She wasn’t becoming stronger because the fires kept coming.

The fires were simply revealing who she had always been.

For most of my life, I thought I was someone who avoided the fight.

Now, when I look back across the landscape of my life, I don’t see someone who was defined by hardship.

I see a woman who kept walking into impossible winters and somehow found her way through them.

Not because she wasn’t afraid.

Not because she didn’t grieve.

Not because she didn’t break.

But because somewhere deep inside of her lived a gladiator she simply hadn’t learned to recognize yet.

Now that I have met her,

I can't wait to choose what we conquer next.