Resilience doesn’t always announce itself in bold, cinematic moments. More often, it lives in the quieter seasons—the ones where nothing feels sharp, nothing feels exceptional, and you wonder if you’re even capable of doing anything well.

That’s where I was in 2012, walking into the Queens.

I wasn’t terrible. I wasn’t great. I was… mediocre.

And for someone who had spent her entire life chasing excellence, mediocre felt unbearable.

I was a new mom, trying to figure out how to balance sleepless nights with early practices. I was coaching athletes, but constantly questioning whether I was giving them enough of me. I was competing, but with a fire that flickered instead of blazed.

Every role felt half-done.
Every day felt split.
And no matter what I did, I never felt fully present or fully good at any of it.

For a long time, my identity had been crystal clear: competitor. Bowler. Someone who poured everything into the pursuit of being the best. But suddenly, I was spread thin across roles that all mattered deeply—and instead of feeling strong, I just felt average in all of them.

That’s the weight I carried into the Queens.

And that’s why that win changed everything.

Not because of the trophy. Not because of the headlines. But because of what it proved to me in that moment: that resilience isn’t only about coming back from disaster, from rock bottom, from the dramatic low point.

Sometimes, resilience is about fighting through the fog of the middle. The season where you don’t feel like your best self. The days where you wake up stretched thin, where your confidence is quiet, where everything feels “just okay.”

That’s the kind of resilience the Queens gave me. The ability to keep competing even when the spark felt dim. The belief that you can still produce something extraordinary while feeling painfully ordinary.

It taught me that showing up in mediocrity is its own form of courage.

Because here’s the truth: most of us will spend more days in the middle than at the extremes. More days tired, distracted, and spread across too many things, than days at the absolute peak of our abilities. But those middle days aren’t wasted—they’re testing grounds. They’re where your foundation is built.

Winning at the Queens reminded me that resilience isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s just staying in the game when everything inside you whispers that you don’t belong.

And that’s the frame that changed everything.

Because after that, I stopped fearing the middle. I stopped treating “average” as a place of shame. Instead, I started seeing it as the arena where character is forged. Where you learn to keep fighting, keep balancing, keep showing up—not for perfection, but for progress.

Resilience doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it whispers.

It whispers: “Even here, in the gray, you’re still capable of something golden.”