My father is Nigerian; my mother is from Texas and African-American. My father was the first in his family to go to university. He flew from Nigeria to Los Angeles in the ‘70s to go to UCLA, where he met my mother. They broke up before I was born, and he returned to Nigeria.
I’m truly excited to be a part of the Reebok family. What really comes through when working with Reebok team is that they live and breathe fitness. They have an incredible heritage in training and know exactly what it takes to help athletes be as fit as they can be.
Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don’t have to obey their own laws. In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want – not only you, your whole family and all people like you.
The best version of surfing is not competing, I think. It’s just… it’s perfect. You’re perfectly present. You’re perfectly in the moment. You’re perfectly not thinking about anything else in the world. You’re just surfing. You’re surfing away with your friends or your family, and that’s it. You’re just there.
Right before the Bush inauguration, many women were greatly reassured when Laura said of Roe v. Wade on the ‘Today’ show, ‘No, I don’t think it should be overturned.’ Three days later, her husband reimposed the ‘global gag rule’ on groups abroad that receive U.S. funding for family planning.
I have a best friend as a husband, and he is my number one supporter. He’s a family man, and he’s always giving back to God. That is what makes him a beautiful man. We’re not perfect by any means, but that makes us beautiful as well. We’re not afraid to say we’re not perfect. We have our disagreements, but that comes along with marriage.
From China and India to Turkey and Brazil, when women have gotten access to education, to family planning and to a vital place in the economy, greater prosperity has followed. And when women are free to speak and learn, they temper the extremes of ideology and fanaticism and raise sons who are less likely to become human bombs.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I actually feel like I come to work stronger when I’ve had a little time on the weekend to step away from it and enjoy my family and other things. I come back energized. If people think they’re going to work 24/7, week in and week out, they’re not bringing their full strength to the table.
I do have a close circle of friends and I am very fortunate to have them as friends. I feel very close to them I think friends are everything in life after your family. You come across lots of people all the time but you only make very few friends and you have to be true to them otherwise what’s the point in life?
You can say I had a severe case of ‘Roots’ envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to… do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.
Haiti, if you’ve ever met a Haitian person, they are just really positive, and literally, if you’re friends with them, then they will do anything for you. So I think that’s something that is, like, a really good trait, and I’m really happy that my grandparents and my dad’s side of the family is like that.
Growing up in eastern Turkey, I was not really involved with the family business – sheep and cow farming, yogurt and cheese making. But I think I learned from my father the unspoken business language or instincts that go back thousands of years.
I think the best thing that I collect is memories. I love traveling; I love remembering stuff, my family, my daughter, my wife. I just love collecting memories of my trips, my experiences. And I think that’s it. I’m not very glued to material stuff.
One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. ‘One-size-fits-all,’ and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is ‘slavery.’
Kids can learn a lot about necessities and wants by recognizing what people live without. A common routine, but one that should not be overlooked, is having a family donation to a charity for those less fortunate. Ask your kids to search for items, toys, or clothes that they no longer use and contribute those items a collection box.
Social class has worked for years. Born into the right family, go to the right schools, even if you’re not super bright to start with, you’ll turn out bright. You go to the right university, you get the right job, you have the right connections, you’ll make it to the top. Job done, very efficient.
I have had the most wonderful childhood, and I was raised in a very loving family. And it was nothing short of an amazing privilege because I was incredibly lucky to be able to play up in trees and make it like silly dens in a bush and stuff like that.
A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common – a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature.
You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it’s not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.
When I put on our U.S. kit, I do it for my family and for my country. But I understand now that I also do it for every single American girl out there who wants to see someone who looks like them – someone whose story reminds them of their own – when they watch their women’s national team.
I believe family first. Blood is thicker than water. I grew up like that, and I want to continue to keep that goal in my heart. Just family first! Just honesty, integrity, and respect. All of that. I live by the code of those things. If you do that you’ll be fine.
A good job is more than just a paycheck. A good job fosters independence and discipline, and contributes to the health of the community. A good job is a means to provide for the health and welfare of your family, to own a home, and save for retirement.
High maintenance means a lot of care. My relationships are high maintenance, my body is high maintenance, and my soul is high maintenance. I really care about my friends and my family; I eat good; I pray a lot. So it’s like, I really care about my relationships with my family, my friends, my body and my soul.
I thought I was going to be an actor. I liked entertaining. I was pretty much tap dancing for attention from a very early age. My family was kind of musical, and there were people in the circus next door and actors across the road. I just enjoyed messing around with music growing up, but I really thought I was going to be an actor.
I’m happy that I have my family, and I’m happy that I had Virginia, where I grew up, to retreat to any time I felt overwhelmed. Whenever there were times when I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me and I was floating in this crazy space, I would stop and go back to that neighborhood and realize nothing’s changed, really.
