by Lucinda Ruh
The main lesson that was presented to me here and now of course for my reader as well is not to learn that concussions caused my illnesses. They did cause me to become very sick, but that is not what is to be taken from this lesson. Rather I hope from the bottom of my heart that this lesson relates to all people of all walks of life. The lesson is that anything in moderation is quite fine but when taken to extremes like I did, no matter how wonderful and beautiful and luscious it may seem at that time, it will bring much more harm than goodness. This is true for any obsession about anything that is not in balance with the world and its people. This is one lesson I learned and I promised to God it would not be repeated in any other way in my life.
18
I Know
(NEW YORK CITY)
The longer I live the less I understand and the more I know.
At that time I came to see in myself, and find this even truer today, that the older in age on earth I became, the younger I evolved in spirit. Like Pablo Picasso said, “It takes a long time to become young.” A child does not really understand anything, yet he or she knows everything, sees everything, and can feel everything. Children are innocent yet knowing. The older I became the less I understood about life and the more I was in the knowing of life. I did not need to understand to know. It was an incredibly fortunate aspect of my life then and now, because everything was simplified. It unexpectedly brought all I needed to know to the surface.
As oil rises above water so does the truth in life, and the more I eliminated obstacles around me the more I saw clearly. All the nonsense started disappearing and all the clouds started lifting. I always felt I needed to prepare for my chance that would one day come to me, and now I felt my whole life had been preparation for my life to come. I wanted to put all my genius into the way I was living my life and my talents and hard work into the work I was to do.
Not many doors had easily opened in my life and many doors had shut, but now the roof seemed to open to the sky for my health. I feel the more you let yourself mourn a loss, the greater the possibility you’ll have for the old to be released and for a door to open for new blessings to enter.
I had to stop spinning but I also had to cure all the other traumas I had incurred emotionally from my life. I let myself mourn more and more and whenever I felt like it. Previously I had never allowed myself to feel emotions as I had always been expected to smile and be happy 24/7. If I was upset or sad at something my mother felt guilty that she was unable to make me smile and would in return be mad at me. Since I did not want to see my mother upset I had refrained from expressing my feelings at all. To allow myself to be emotional was scary at first but freeing at last.
I was still living with all my ailments but I now knew what I needed to do. I just let myself cry from exhaustion. I stopped swallowing every single medication, vitamin, and pill with whatever was in it. I threw them all in the garbage. I threw away all the books I had tirelessly read on health and self-improvement. I threw away all the health drinks and steamed food. I had not eaten real food with flavor in ten years!
Where others in life needed a coach, or a teacher, or someone to guide them, one of the most important lessons I learned was that I now needed no one to tell me what to do. I had been desperately searching for a teacher, not realizing the teacher within me. You have to understand, that all my life I had people telling me what and how to do every single thing in my life. I could not walk or even eat without someone telling me I was doing it wrong. I was criticized all day every day in hopes of my becoming that perfect person. In my life when given two sweaters as a gift and having chosen which one to wear that day, I would be criticized for not having worn the other! I never could win and it was not a matter of wining but a matter of feeling like I could do something good. Now for me to cure myself I knew I had to follow no one, no treatment, and no plan whatsoever in any aspect of my life. I had to make my own decisions about life and I had to decide everything for myself. I had to have silence and only hear my voice.
When I was younger I remember thinking my head was going to explode because it was filled with monsters coming to get me that were all talking to me at once. In other words, I had to silence all other voices so I could hear my own, rely only on myself, let my wings spread, and let no one disturb their growth. I had to become the butterfly I was meant to be. I had to relearn how to take a shower, how to dress, how to eat like I wanted to. I had lost the meaning of life and now I had to find it again for myself. I was twenty-nine years old, and I hoped that I would never have to suffer like I had, ever again. I prayed that my body had gone through all the illnesses needed in this lifetime and that only health and happiness was to await me in the rest of my life.
I had deprived myself of almost everything considered self-indulgent and enjoyable in the last twenty years. So now that the world was my oyster you would think I wanted everything but rather, to the contrary, I did not want anything. You might think it was easy for me to decide to do what I wanted but it was extremely hard. I had no idea what I wanted or who I was. I was at a loss for everything
I had not enjoyed food since I had left Japan due to dieting, illness, and image. I decided I would start there. I would start eating real food of substance and flavor. I had to start not feeling guilty about eating. I had to forgive myself to really eat. It was very hard but I was motivated not to fall back into the state I had been in. It had been so long a period of such pain and despair that I would do anything not to fall back. It would take time and great forgiveness of myself, but I felt confident I would be able to do it.
Next, because I was so used to exercising nonstop, it was hard for my body and brain not to just automatically push myself to exercise, no matter what condition I was in. When I had exercised I did it until I shook and bled. I had no boundaries and did not know when to stop. I needed to now decrease exercising to the point of not doing any at all. Exercise had become detrimental to my life and it was incredibly hard to force myself to rest. I had to learn how.
So many people in this world lecture and teach others about how important exercise is, yet almost no one ever talks about how detrimental it can be as well. No one was out there to help people like me and I am sure there are many others who go through this. Think of it this way. I exercised about ten hours a day every single day nonstop for about twenty-five years from a young age when the body is trying to grow and mature. I was over-exercised to say the least. I had never recovered from the very first practice session that I had done on the ice at the tender age of four. I had never recovered from my spins.
As I did all of this healing, after a few months I was finally awakening. My senses slowly were starting to come back to me. I am not saying it happened right away. It was a painful experience but it was the way I wanted to go through it. I wanted to feel every emotion and pain in my body to fully be able to heal it. I was in a tremendous emotional recovery of life. I did not want to miss even one emotion and did not want to mask any of my past and how I had felt about it. If I did, I knew it would come back to haunt me later. I was meticulous about every single detail. I was missing my spinning incredibly but I had to put my health first. There had been years and years of torment to my mind and body so it would not heal in one day. It would take time to unravel it all. There was a beautiful park right below my apartment building and I took long slow walks along the river praying, meditating in my own way, and figuring out about life and myself. Here I did the most healing.
I knew I also had to forgive myself. If I did not forgive myself I truly could not forgive anyone or any situation. Forgiving myself was the hardest thing to do because I was the angriest at myself. I was angry and disappointed that I had said or communicated very little, that I had never stood up for myself, that I had nearly ruined my whole family, and that I had almost killed myself by not resting. Now I had to forgive everything that I had done to myself and to others. I knew as soon as I could forgive myself and therefore trust myself, I would be able to live again.
After forgiveness I needed to love myself. Once I did those two things I could forgive and love everything and everyone else. You can only do onto others what you have done for yourself. You can only expect from others what you expect from yourself. How can you have someone love you when you don’t even love yourself? How can you demand respect from someone when you don’t even respect yourself? I know this because I have lived it. I had been swimming up tide for years and I finally made a u-turn and swam with the tide. I let life take me once more to who I was when I was so young in Paris.
As I was healing, it was decided by the heavens above that my life would take me back to New York City. I had no agenda. For once I had absolutely no clue as to what I was to do in the city but I knew I had to be there. I did not understand why or where I was to go but I knew I had to be there to start afresh. In the eleven years from leaving Japan in 1997 to in 2008 I had moved fifteen times! It was an incredible journey, an education and enrichment, and I know I received lessons that I can live by forever and that I would never have learned otherwise. I felt I was an old soul and I felt lucky I had survived my ordeal, but even luckier that I had gone through this, because only now could I help another person in many more ways than my spins could ever have. I was now my only master, my only teacher and ready to be the inspiration to others.
I had so much to learn about life in the areas where I was still a child, such as communication, being social, enjoying life, not being worried that I was always being judged, and letting go and allowing myself to really enjoy life. I had always been in the mode of performance and competition. I was so used to being on stage that my whole life had become my stage. I was so used to representing someone on the ice that my whole life had become representing that someone. I never had the time or the space to be me and figure out and create me. The skating world was not truly a good mirror image of who I had been as a child.
If it hadn’t been for my sister’s skating I probably would never have wanted to skate at all. I have her to thank and to also forgive since her path had forced me into mine without my true consent. As a child I had been happy to play with the birds and animals and insects as in a true nature-filled wondrous fairy tale. But then life might not have taken me to where I am today and not have showed me the world and given me its lessons. And for that I am truly grateful because I could not be happier than I am today. I am finally living again.
It so happened that it seemed the reason I had come back to New York City and the true reason of regaining my sanity and sanctity for love and life was to know the love between a man and a woman. I had begun to love myself and now having let the past go, I was ready for love.
On October 11, 2008, I met a dashing man and on October 16, 2010, we married at our dream church of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. How lucky I was to be able to step a foot in his path that was not reserved for someone with a past like mine, nor was mine for a past like his. Or maybe our paths had been so similar in so many ways that we had run parallel to each other and now that we both had taken a turn in life we were destined to cross. He is a man of exuberance, intelligence, sophistication, and a subdued but magnetic presence with a hidden wildness to him. He is a world mixed with finance, justice, and law, and professor-like notions in the Einstein world of mathematics. I knew him right away. I did not need to understand, I just knew him. But, when I met him, he was a slate of charm and love. He represented a slate of vitality and truth. He carries me into his world and life, a life that had been as unique and misunderstood as mine. Full of passion stemming from the core of the earth right through his heart into the palm of my hand and onto my forehead was a kiss he would plant.
He introduced himself as Anthony, but I accidently called him Antonio. As he would ground me, I immediately give him the value that I accepted him for who he truly was beginning with his childhood, since unknown to me his birth name was Antonio. He is my root of laughter despite withholding that tear in his eye. We both are old fashioned romantics and I told him that “I love living and being in a man’s world, but just let me be a real woman within it.” And he does. He had given me strength by loving me and gives me the gift of courage the more I loved him.
Our love is one no words can describe. We stand strong yet delicately on a powerful foundation of trust. He makes me produce that perfect tear. Lucky is the man who is the first love of a woman but luckier is the woman who is the last love of a man. Love is to never want anything else in return and we love for who we each become in the presence of the other. Love can only make you wiser, make you know more about love, which ultimately is all that life is about.
I have been truly lucky to have been so loved all my life — to have been introduced to eternal love from my parents, to have admiration and love from my fans, to find my own love of self, and now to have the love between a man and a woman. Much more love is to be experienced and I am preparing for all the love life has to offer me in every which way…
19
Finale and Opening the World for Me
(AT HOME, WHEREVER I AM)
Life gives answers in three ways, it says yes and gives you what you want, it says no and gives you something better,and it says wait and gives you the best.
I waited and therefore the best had come to me. I have won the game. I feel in many ways that it is my destiny to share my experience and expose my vulnerability. I wish to keep on inspiring people with my story. As my spins inspired my fans, I do hope my insight about my life will do this as well. Now, I live life, love myself, and I live in the truth. I have found my peace. My soul can once again reside within me. It was an excruciating as well as glorious thirty years and I hold immense gratitude to those that have changed my life in the process. I have to come to realize that anything difficult one goes through is fine as long as you can recover from it, and therefore my life is victorious. What is most important is not what has happened to you but what you do as a result of it, and I plan to do honorable actions in my life. I would never want to relive what I did, but the lessons I learned are priceless. Skating taught me powerful determination, concentration, hard work, a will to achieve anything I want, and an ability to adapt to any situation no matter where in the world.
Although I led a life of privilege in so many ways, I have also led a life of real hardship. I have conquered obstacles in ways I never imagined I ever could have, overcoming extraordinary adversity to achieve unique recognition and worldwide admiration. I know I have overcome enormous mental, emotional, and physical abuse at the hands of ego-ridden trainers and emotionally exasperated family members in order to achieve my spiritual strength and personal resolve but I know it was worth it. I hope to think that I was a brave little girl who took on the world — only to find myself desperately searching for the innocent little girl I had left behind and only to ultimately ask of myself, Why am I here and what greater purpose might I serve? I feel my story has been, above all, a story of recognizing love — love for self, love for others, and love for the sacredness of life, even in the darkest and loneliest battlefields of overwhelming inhibitions and impossible probabilities. I now know that truth, courage, and love remain the greatest medals of all. In essence, in telling my story I humbly hope to awaken the extraordinary in others and I hope to encourage others to find their own balance and to find within themselves the inspiration to become their own champion in life no matter what the obstacles are and no matter who they are or what they do.
In no way do I think I needed to tell my story because my life has been more grand, more painful, more joyous, more heroic, or filled with more tragedy or success than other persons. My experiences may be nothing to tell compared to other painful injustices inflicted on mankind or the heroic moments that have changed the world. I only express truthful words of the life that I have led in hopes of helping someone in the best way that I pray I can.
My mother always said that in life you can watch, or you can teach, or you can do, and she encouraged me to always do. I feel tha
t to be a spectator in life is to avoid and escape reality and suffering and so in my life, I do, and I teach from the experiences I have lived through. As I guide new prodigies on the ice, I don’t view my role as teaching them only skating skills to make them gold medalists. Rather, I feel I am there for them as a mentor to teach them how to be the best they can be, and that there is more to life than achieving a double axel. I am to them as I wished a coach had been to me at their age. Sometimes as an athlete, the one jump or that one spin can become your sole obsession, and it can feel that nothing is more important than achieving that one goal. I feel a responsibility to guide them in how to become a champion in life by respecting themselves in ways they might never have imagined.
It’s not only on the ice but off the ice as well that I hope to continue to inspire children by speaking to them at schools and at charities. As I do on the ice, I guide them to find the courage, respect, and confidence within themselves to achieve their goals. I love the feeling of being able to give back by encouraging people of all ages and walks of life to learn from my mistakes and for them to see their full potential.
This book is ultimately for my parents. I love them to the depths of the universe and to the length of eternity. They hold my gratitude, my respect, and my profound thankfulness. They are to me my wonderful and perfect parents. They might not be perfect in other people’s eyes but in my life they presented to me what I needed to learn and for that they are perfect and I could not be more grateful.
My mother had absolutely treated me like a princess when I was little and when the pressures of the skating world were not yet present. I had been truly spoiled in a good sense in more ways than one. She would write cards almost every day, either wishing me good luck, or congratulating me for a great day, or even thanking me for my love, elaborating each and every one with stickers and little drawings of smiley faces, angels, and fairies. She raised me with meticulous care and love and attention to every single detail. I am eternally grateful for the art, love, and beauty she presented to me, as it prepared me for my life for how I now take care of others. The toughness of the skating life then covered her true self and I missed my true mother. I truly never regret that path of life, but I so regret the fact that we could not enjoy each other and the wonderful and prestigious life I had on and off the ice because of our pursuit to achieve that unattainable perfection.
