What a year it’s been for Olympic gold gymnast Gabrielle Douglas. Just four months ago, she vaulted into fame (and everyone’s heart), winning gold at the London games, becoming the first African-American woman to ever win a gold medal in the Olympics all-around gymnastics competition. She also became the first U.S. gymnast ever to receive the individual all-around gold and team gold medals in a single Olympic games.
It’s an impressive accomplishment under the best of circumstances. But in her sixteen years, she’s had to deal with homelessness, racism, and bullying. She’s sharing her story in a new book called “Grace, Gold and Glory.”
On PoliticsNation she talked about how all those struggles paid off on that summer night when she won her gold. “I was thinking about all the sacrificing me and my family put into this,” she said. “Overcoming injuries and being homeless at one point and all the struggles that we faced, I was thinking ‘it was so worth it.’”
At the young age of 14, Gabby made the difficult decision leave her mother and family to move to Iowa to train in a more competitive gym. She found herself homesick, especially as her family packed up to head back to Virginia at the end of a Christmas. Her mother, Natalie Hawkins, pushed her to keep going despite how much she missed her daughter. “I knew she had a love and a passion for the sport, and I knew she had a dream,” she said. “The days I would go through where I felt like my heart was breaking, I would think, ‘she’s doing what she loves.’ It was hard, but I knew that that was where she wanted to be and I couldn’t be selfish, I had to let her go and let her give it everything she had.”
Reverend Al Sharpton and Gabrielle connected over having grown up with absent fathers. Her relationship with her father isn’t good today, but she hopes that, after reading her book, he might understand how she felt while he was gone, and that they might build a better relationship in the future.








