Once a gymnast, always a gymnast.
- Mignon Hunt
- Jun 20
- 1 min read
Fun fact about me: I started competitive gymnastics at a very young age. I worked my way up to Level 10, and then somewhere along the way I became terrified of every apparatus except floor.
When you’re spending 3–4 hours a day, 6 days a week doing something, it becomes so much more than a sport. It becomes part of who you are.
And when that chapter ended, I struggled.
For a long time, I didn’t know who I was without gymnastics.
Looking back, I think losing that identity was harder than leaving the sport itself.
It sent me on a journey of trying different things, chasing different versions of success, and figuring out who I was outside of what I did.
Truthfully, I’m not sure I fully found my identity again until now, at 34.
Not because I have everything figured out, but because I am learning that my worth isn’t tied to a title, a sport, an achievement, or what I can accomplish.
Gymnastics taught me discipline, resilience, and how to get back up after falling. But it also introduced comparison and perfectionism in a way that, if I’m being honest, I still work through today.
Some lessons serve us. Some lessons take years to unlearn.
Maybe that’s why a part of me will always be a gymnast.
Now I want to know—what sports did you play growing up?
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