I Believe

I am deeply troubled by the well-intentioned but fundamentally inaccurate discussions and dialogue I hear from my friends and family and colleagues regarding sexual assault.   They incorrectly use logical conclusions to dissect and question traumatic reactions.  Current media events have provided plenty of fotter for discussion. I am troubled not just because the logic-based conclusion are inaccurate.   I am most troubled because I realize that the inaccuracies in our perception mean that we are not preparing our wives, sisters, daughters and friends to weather similar situations. When the women in our lives hear us brazenly declare "what we think we know" about a place we have never been, we silence them from reporting what happens to them.  When their traumatic reaction conflicts with the logical conclusions they hear us so confidently declare, they stay silent and blame themselves. And even worse, by silencing victims with "what we think we know,"...

Creating an Elite Athlete.   For most of its history, the British cycling team wasn’t only non-competitive it was just plain bad.   Between 1924 and 1988, British cyclists won exactly zero gold medals.   The sport was dominated by countries like France and Germany.   Yet, by 2012, British cycling had become the most successful cycling nation on earth, with a riders winning back to back Tour de France competitions and the team winning twelve medals in the 2012 Olympics, twice as many as any other nation.   What changed?   How did the former laughing stock become seemingly unstoppable?   In his book Heros, Villians & Velodromes , Dave Brailsford, the director of British cycling reported that the phenomenal change can be boiled down to a single philosophy:   “performance by the aggregation of marginal gains.”      What does this mean?   Instead of looking for one earth shattering solution (probably because there...

     I don’t think it would surprise anyone for me to acknowledge that I consider myself a strong and capable woman.   I am sure it initially stemmed from my background and my upbringing.   As a child, it never occurred to me that there was anything in this world that I was not capable of doing.   My parents never discouraged any of my dreams (well, except for the time that my father convinced me that becoming a gymnast was not likely my most promising athletic pursuit).   As a child, I assumed that I would be a gold medalist in the Olympics and world record holder in swimming.   I never questioned whether I possessed the ability to go to law school or to get both academic and athletic scholarships to college.   I never saw the fact that I am female as a setback.   Such a thought never even occurred to me. And my parents certainly never created such a thought. Even in professional setting as an adult, I do find the dialogue o...