She wasn’t even five feet tall.

But when she said it, you believed it.

“Strong like Bull.”

That was Grandma Betty. My loudest cheerleader. My best friend. The first woman who ever showed me what strength actually looked like.

Before I was a world champion, I was a little girl in a bowling alley with my sister Kassy, watching our grandma put a ball in our hands for the very first time. She didn’t do it because she had a plan for me. She did it because she loved bowling, and she wanted to share what she loved with the people she loved most.

That’s how she did everything.

She had every health problem in the book. You’d never know it. Not because she was hiding anything, but because she genuinely didn’t see the point in dwelling. Complaining doesn’t fix it. That was her whole philosophy. So why waste a good day being pessimistic about it?

She loved the sun. She loved moving her body. She loved her friends. She loved fiercely, and quietly, and without ever making a show of any of it.

I wrote her letters from the time I could hold a pen. Through middle school. Through Team USA. Through college. Through every version of myself I was trying to become. She kept every single one.

She believed in me before I had any reason to believe in myself.

And here’s what I didn’t fully understand until later: She wasn’t telling me how to be strong. She was showing me. Every time she walked into a room without a complaint on her lips. Every time she chose kindness when she could’ve chosen bitterness. Every time she said you can do this and meant it harder than I did.

That’s the thing about the women who shape you.

The lessons that stick aren’t the ones they teach. They’re the ones you watch.

I watched her be kind to strangers. I watched her be generous with people who couldn’t give her anything back. I watched her smile through pain that would’ve leveled most people I know. And somewhere in all that watching, I learned the lesson that became the foundation of everything I built later.

You can be fierce and kind in the same breath.

You can compete with everything you’ve got and still treat your opponent like a human being. You can want to win badly enough that it almost hurts and still lead with grace. You can be barely five feet tall and walk through the world like you own every inch of it.

Strong like Bull.

That’s not a contradiction. That’s a blueprint.

I think about her every time I step on the approach. Every time I write to a young athlete who’s lost their belief. Every time I tell a parent that the way they handle their child’s hardest tournament will matter more than any score on the sheet.

Grandma Betty never coached me on a single technical thing. (Well, she did always tell me to “puuuush that ball out” which I still don’t really know what that means.) She gave me something far more valuable than mechanics. She gave me a way of being in the world.

And now I’m a mother.

I watch my daughter watching me. I see her catch the way I respond when something doesn’t go my way. I see her clock the words I use about myself when I think no one’s listening. I see her absorb everything I’m not saying out loud.

It’s humbling. It’s terrifying. It’s the most important coaching job I’ll ever have.

Because here’s what I know for sure. One day she’ll tell someone about the first woman who showed her what strength looked like. I want her to describe a woman who was kind. Who didn’t complain. Who believed in her more than she believed in herself. Who chose grace, again and again, even when grace was the harder choice.

I want her to pass it down to her own kids one day.

Not because I taught her to.

Because she watched.

So to every woman who shaped someone without ever realizing she was doing it: thank you.

To every grandma who put a ball in a kid’s hands and said go ahead, you’ve got this: thank you.

And to Grandma Betty: I’m still writing you letters. They just look different now.

From the lanes to life, the strongest women I’ve ever known taught me without saying a word.

Your skills get you to the door. Your mindset walks you through it. The women who came before us put the door there in the first place.

If you’re a parent walking alongside a young athlete this season, the way you show up matters more than any score on the sheet. The Out of the Settee playbook will help you become the steady presence they remember. Get it here →  https://parent.beyondthelanes.com/out-of-the-settee