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By India McCarty
For former Olympian Shawn Johnson, earning a gold medal has nothing on being a mom.
“I had fulfilled my dream,” she said during an appearance on “The Upload” podcast, reflecting on winning her first gold medal. “[But] it felt really empty.”
Johnson continued, “I remember standing on a podium as a 16-year-old kid thinking, ‘If this is what the entire world says is the best feeling I’ll ever have in life, it’s actually really scary, because it didn’t feel like the best feeling in life.’ [It] led me down this journey of trying to find something higher, of deeper value. Found my faith a lot more.”
“I’d say since having children, I think our faith is just like our rock. I mean, it’s the compass of our life,” she said, referring to herself and husband Andrew East. “Once you have kids, you realize you kind of have no control, and you have to give up control to something.”
Related: This Gold Medal Olympian Says Nothing Compares to Being a Mom
East added that faith has “really colored in my life in such a wonderful way,” saying that the “selfless perspective” Christianity gives him has “unlock[ed] this community that’s really amazing.”
Johnson and East share three kids — daughter Drew, 6, and sons Jett, 4, and Barrett, 2.
The former Olympic gymnast told NBC that motherhood has helped her let go of the rigid routines she was used to following as a professional athlete.
“It’s not athletics,” she joked. “You can’t just train kids into perfection…I feel like I’m so used to having a program, and if you just stick to the program it works, and kids are not like that… So, the perfectionist side of me had to turn off to allow for flexibility and creativity and failure.”
Johnson added, “[I] had to learn how to truly celebrate that because that’s some of the greatest times of parenting is the failures that see your kids go through, so that’s been different and hard but cool.”
The couple recently announced an exciting new project: the publication of their first co-authored book, The Courage to Commit: Embrace the Radical Power of Sticking with Something.
“So often commitment is portrayed as a trap in today’s society, and we want to offer a different perspective that commitment can actually be so freeing and worthwhile, whether that’s commitment to a partner, a job or a hobby,” Johnson and East said in a joint statement. “Writing this book together has been such a labor of love, and we are so excited to share it with the world.”
The Courage to Commit hits bookstores June 9.
Read Next: Olympian Explains Why Grace Is So Important Marriage
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