My grandma, an engineer and Russian native, was the most hardworking, persistent, driven, and goal-oriented person that I have ever met. She was the first female engineer in a big factory in Russia. She designed blueprints for an airline railroad in the Republic of Georgia and created many apartment building designs. I knew her as someone who always had a saying or quote for every situation. One of my favorites was this: “в нормальных семьях по наследству передают драгоценные камни, а в нашей - только почечные.” Or, “In normal families, precious stones are passed down, but in ours – only kidney stones.”

Because people usually develop kidney stones between 35 to 40 years of age, I haven’t quite received my inheritance yet. But, is it possible that I truly inherited nothing from her beside the right genes to house kidney stones?

To get through blockades in life takes resilience, and that is something that I have inherited from my grandmother. To be presented with an obstacle, work through it, and still not lose passion and joy for life is hard. But reminding myself of how my grandmother pushed through her struggles motivates me to continue. One day, after making the necessary revisions on an apartment design, a two-by-four was dropped on her head from the top of a 20-story building, causing severe brain
damage. But still, she defied her doctor’s predictions, got back on her feet in two months, and returned to work in three.

Even though such a physically and mentally traumatizing event has never happened to me, it would be false to say that my
various paths of life have been without blockades. For eight years I played tennis. Of course, since I started when I was five, it was just for fun. But by nine, I decided I wanted tennis to be more than a hobby, so I worked harder than I had previously,
and eventually, I was ready for my first tournament. The thrill of calling “out!” and the feeling of the fresh ball against my
strings sent adrenaline and dopamine to my brain. I emerged from that event with a trophy: first place in the consolation bracket! I knew I wanted to try again, to try to get an award in the main bracket. I started competing and practicing more and more until, eventually, I had collegiate-level dreams. And, according to my coaches at the time, those dreams were completely
within reach.

However, like my grandmother, when my game started to reach new levels, disaster struck. However, my disaster didn't identify as a two-by-four. It goes by a different name; Snapping Hip Syndrome. Like the Joker, Snapping Hip Syndrome has an evil best friend – hypermobility syndrome. My doctor said that if I continued to play tennis, I would be in a wheelchair before I was legally allowed to vote. I felt lost. I didn't know who I was. "Who am I without tennis?" I asked myself.

Then, like my grandmother, I started healing. Not only physically, but also mentally. I realized I had made tennis my identity, and without that, I felt empty. So I decided to change that. I pursued many new activities to rediscover who I am. Through that process, I tried to use my inherited strength, determination, and drive from my grandmother to power through the hard times when I missed the feeling of my racket striking a moving ball. But I found new feelings that drive me; the clickity-clack of my keyboard as I conjure stories and books, and smooth swish of the bottom of my heels as I waltz across the floor, and above all, the electric buzzing in my brain as I finish a book in the early hours of the morning.