It is an honor to introduce you to one of the most extraordinary people I know: my cousin, Kendra Schnip.

Although our journeys have been quite different—she is a brain cancer survivor, and I have CP—we can relate to each other in beautiful ways, and our shared challenges have brought us closer.

Kendra and I worked together to weave her thoughts and memories into a blog post. Her voice and her strength shine through her words; I am in awe of her and her journey, and I know you will be too. This is her story.

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Grasp, glide, extend, and push … keep the toes pointed and legs straight. 

I am seven years old, executing that bar routine I have excelled at in all of my workouts and have practiced hundreds of times before this moment. It’s time to show the judges and my coaches what I can do, I’d told myself—I must nail it over and over and over again, showing them that I deserve to move up to the next level. 

I turn, flip, land, perfectly steady. The audience claps as I pose with my arms over my head, pride rising in my chest. My coach and my teammates are cheering too. 

That perfectly steady, Junior Olympic gymnast who ascended the ranks in the competitive gymnastics world would come to find out that life is full of surprises.

Years later, the dependable balance and coordination that once took me to great heights began to deteriorate. Nothing was the same … walking down a hallway became a game of pinball—hitting one wall and bumping into the other. Gymnastics workouts turned into nothing more than an embarrassment. Skills I had once completed with grace and balance became completely unattemptable.

The doctors did endless tests. Appointment after appointment, they would tell me that I was fine … that I was just going through a growth spurt. But I knew I wasn’t fine. Something felt very, very wrong.

I was barely a teenager when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

The news absolutely crushed me. I felt as if my world came crashing down.

I realized that there were two ways of looking at this situation.

I could tell myself that my life was over and that I’d never be a functioning human being ever again—or I could tell myself that everything around me was changing, and I’d have to find an alternative route to the finish line.

I chose the latter.

Now you could no longer find me doing tumbling passes in the gym. Now, I was fighting to sit up in a hospital bed after brain surgery, my head covered with bandages. Instead of doing handstands, I was fighting simply to stand again—to balance as I took trembling steps into a wheelchair to stroll through the hospital hallways. I fought through chemotherapy treatments that took my strength, changed my body, and made me sick to my stomach—and through radiation that made me exhausted and weak.

Through it all, I was blessed with family that never left my side. “One treatment closer,” they reminded me: “Each round of treatment will bring you one step closer to the finish line.”

Months into treatment, my legs were still not steady—the cancer took that from me—and my voice shook from my brain surgery. But all those years as a gymnast had instilled in me an unshakeable drive to move forward. Once again, it was time to take a breath and let my resilient gymnast spirit take over: I fought, and I fought, and I fought. 

When I finally found out that I was in remission, that long journey of uncertainty became a little more certain. 

I have been in remission for many years now, but my body still bears evidence of the battles I have fought. If you stopped to chat with me on the street, you would notice that my voice still shakes with every sentence I speak, and my hair didn’t grow back quite the same way after chemo. You might also notice that I struggle with balance as I move from place to place … and I have challenges that aren’t visible too. 

But I am not broken. My legs may be unsteady, but now … knowing just how fragile and precious life is … I make sure every step is meaningful. My voice may be unsteady, but I have used it to raise money and awareness for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Jimmy Fund: two organizations that continue to transform the lives of children battling cancer. 

I am no longer perfectly steady; I am so much more than that. 

I am whole, I am strong, and I embrace my uniqueness. 

I am perfectly unsteady.