Don't be afraid. Don't be ashamed. Don't ever apologize for your sexuality. Just be you.
Spreading the positivity is just as important as telling the difficult stories.
Equality for all is what we should all want, between race, religion, gender, sexuality... it doesn't matter.
I realized - and I think I learned this at a young age - that anything that's worth anything, you're going to take a risk to get there and it's not going to be easy.
Being a lifelong athlete, I am a firm believer that I am who I am today because of sports. Not only did it give me structure and a solid foundation, but it gave me a sense of failure and how to overcome failure.
To force something that was not organic to who I am was tough on me, and so I can relate to all those girls and guys out there going through the same thing.
I think no matter what your job title or role in life is, it's important to just take pride in what you do and do it well.
I look up to and have learned a lot from the women before me. With that said, there has never been a woman in this ring with the experience that I have in fighting.
Everything is social media nowadays, everything is sports and entertainment.
I love every minute of being inside that squared circle.
When I was 14 years old, I said, 'Mom, I want to fight MMA.'
I just think I'm very honest and I say how I feel. Some people like that about me. Some people hate that about me.
With any minority group, it takes a strong presence in the public eye to make a change because everything nowadays is social media.
I really want to utilize my MMA knowledge in my WWE performance.
I just, I was in such denial within myself for the longest time, just because of the place I grew up in. Like, it wasn't common. I didn't know anybody that was gay. I think I had one gay friend in high school and she never even, like, came out. It was just, like, we all just knew.
I was in my junior year of high school and I had been playing soccer and basketball almost my entire life, and I wanted a change of pace. I wanted to do something more, something different. That's when I found an MMA gym about 45 minutes from my house and fell in love with the idea of becoming a professional fighter.
I do feel pressure, but I put it on myself because I want to represent the LGBTQ community in a place where they've never really been represented that much, being the WWE and professional wrestling in general.
I've had tattoos since I was like 16, but if you would have asked the younger me to get a tattoo that symbolized my sexuality, I would have told you no, because that's how not okay I used to be with it.
My first time being inside the Performance Center was for the WWE Tough Enough tryouts, and although I knew hardly anything about sports-entertainment, I knew I wanted to be a part of this place.
We're all equal and we should treat each other as such.
