NaturallyMoi.com
By Victor Ochieng
Posted June 21st 2016
Claressa Shields is a demonstration of the American dream. In spite of the challenges she went through during her childhood, she managed to stay focused in life, rising to win a boxing gold medal in the Olympics. The 20-year-old overcame sexual abuse, hopelessness, and her poverty-stricken background to become the first U.S. woman to scoop gold in the 2012 Olympics.
It was an emotional moment for those who knew her background, seeing her step on the platform to be crowned as the world’s best. She was just a teenager whose childhood background was so terrible that she couldn’t talk until she hit five years of age.
When she talks about her background, it’s clear that her experiences ran deep. But even with all that, she managed to overcome. Shields is a sign of hope; she’s an inspiration and a living testimony that one can become whatever they want to be however challenging their background is as long as they remain focused and positive.
“I was an angry child,” Shields said to Al-Jazeera. “[But] at 13, I got baptized and started going to church and it changed from there. I started boxing. Before I started boxing, I was in a real dark place. I would sit in my room and—I didn’t have a bed, I had a couch—I leaned it up against the door. No one came to my room. My mom said, ‘Something is wrong with her. She doesn’t talk to anyone.’”
For someone who’s achieved such a feat, she should be a widely known figure. But that isn’t the case. Even after she stepped on that medal platform to take her gold, not so much was said about her. She wasn’t widely celebrated for having brought gold to America from the London Olympics.
That obscurity could change when T-Rex, a documentary that explores her life, was finally released.
While there are people who may earn a gold medal, only a few can make it through the kind of upbringing Shileds faced.
“My mom, yeah, she took care of us, but I was pretty angry,” Shields said to Yahoo! Sports. “We never used to have enough food in the house. She always had men over. All men aren’t bad men, but it was like, these guys who were her friends were like perverts and molesters.”
It’s sad that even her mother didn’t believe her whenever she told on the men for sexually molesting her.
Filled with anger, she got to the gym after her father, who was often behind bars, told her about Muhammad Ali and his daughter Laila, who’s also a boxer. She vented her anger on the punching bags and kept rising through different levels.
Now she’s a black activist. She tries to inspire other kids to live positively and focus on their dreams.