Learning boxing didn’t teach me how to fight. It taught me how not to. That might sound backwards, but the biggest lessons had nothing to do with throwing punches. Boxing gave me confidence—not arrogance, not aggression—but a quiet confidence that comes from knowing I can stay calm when things get uncomfortable. Because boxing gets uncomfortable fast. One of the first things you learn is that panic makes everything worse. When your heart rate spikes, your breathing shortens,

At 36, I lost the ability to swallow. Not gradually. Not subtly. One day, something that had always been automatic—eating—became difficult, painful, and unpredictable. What I didn’t know at the time was that I had a hiatal hernia, possibly since birth. I also had GERD and didn’t know it. At 36, I lost the ability to swallow. Because the symptoms had always been there, I didn’t know what life felt like without them. Discomfort had become my normal baseline. Eventually, the her

When I was 16, I started running. Nothing dramatic. No big goals. Just short runs around the neighborhood. At first, I could barely go very far, but over the next two years something started to change. I got faster. I could run longer. What began as short jogs slowly turned into three- to four-mile runs. Progress was gradual, but it was real—and it taught me an important lesson early on: consistency beats intensity. Then, at 18, everything shifted. After a bout of bronchitis,