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Elissa Steamer: Holding on at Home
World champion, four-time X Games champion, two-time World Cup of Skateboarding champion
I skateboard. That’s all I’ve ever done and that’s what I love to do. As soon as I touched a skateboard, I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life.
My sport has given me direction in my life, thankfully. I see people go through their lives and not know what they want to do. Life is really tough like that for everyone, and sometimes that makes it hard for the people around them, too. My parents got divorced when I was 7 years old. I lived with my mom, and my dad wasn’t around as much as he should have been.
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When your family is split up or has any problems, it’s really hard. But you’ve got to realize that they’re the ones having problems; it has nothing to do with you.
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I had a lot of negative energy after my parents divorced and lots of time that I could spend feeling upset. But I just focused on making myself better, and that took up a lot of my time and negative energy that I had and turned it into something positive. Skateboarding is like golf in the way that you’re really only playing yourself, you know? It’s something that you do, and you strive to get better at, but it’s just for yourself, and not anybody else.
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Don't miss Elissa Steamer's video interview on family issues! Link below. | |
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I think our problems as a family, and then the divorce, drove me to become the best I could at whatever I tried. Maybe I wanted to be good at stuff to get attention from my parents, or maybe I just wanted to make myself better. Who knows?
When your family is split up or has any problems, it’s really hard. But you’ve got to realize that they’re the ones having problems; it has nothing to do with you. There are negative ways to deal with that, like doing drugs, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes even, and I’ve tried everything. You don’t want to be like that. It’s a nobrainer that if you’re on drugs, you can’t do what you want to do. You just have to decide what you like to do in life and go the positive route with your time and energy.
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