Grief Is the Ground: What Simone Biles's Losses Taught Me

I used to think grief was a single event—a funeral, a breakup, a diagnosis. But watching Simone Biles navigate the uneven bars of her life, I realized grief is more like a vault: explosive, unpredictable, and shaped by how you hit the ground. Her story isn’t just about Olympic medals or gravity-defying twists. It’s about surviving the kind of losses that fracture your foundation and learning to bend without breaking.

The First Loss: When Family Isn’t Fixed

Simone was six when her mother’s addiction made her home unlivable. She and her younger brothers entered foster care, separated from their sister Adria, who’d already been placed in the system. For years, they lived in a small Texas apartment with their grandparents, who later adopted them. I read an interview where Simone described those early years as “a puzzle with missing pieces.” She learned quickly that family isn’t a guarantee. It’s a thing that can shift beneath your feet.

I remember sitting with a therapist friend who works with foster kids, and she said, “The grief of displacement is invisible. Children don’t just lose parents—they lose the idea of stability itself.” Simone’s resilience wasn’t born in a gym; it was forged in those quiet moments waiting for visits from a mother she loved but couldn’t trust.

The Grief That Isn’t Linear: Tokyo’s Twisted Sky

When Simone withdrew from the 2020 Olympics (held in 2021), the world reacted with fury and awe. “How could she quit when we needed her?” some wondered. But she wasn’t quitting. She was surviving what she later called “the twisties”—a mental block that makes gymnasts lose spatial awareness mid-air. That split-second disorientation mirrored a deeper unraveling: the cost of carrying everyone else’s expectations.

I watched her sit in a press conference afterward, raw and unflinching. “I’m not afraid to say I’m scared,” she said. It reminded me of a line from poet Sarah Ruhl: “Grief is like a storm. You don’t know how long it will last, but you learn to swim.” Simone didn’t drown. She chose to stand, even when the floor felt like quicksand.

The Hidden Grief: Reunion Is Complicated

Simone’s adoption by her grandparents in 2007 seemed like a happy ending, but grief doesn’t end when the story resumes. She’s spoken about feeling “broken” after being separated from her siblings, especially Adria, who stayed in foster care longer. Reunification isn’t the same as healing. When I read her memoir, I underlined a line that felt like a bruise: “I missed my sister in a way that made my bones ache.”

Adoption gave Simone stability, but it also created a kind of double grief—the loss of her biological family and the loss of the family she’d tried to build in foster care. It’s a paradox I’d never considered until I met a social worker who said, “Children in the system aren’t just looking for a ‘forever home.’ They’re mourning all the homes that weren’t.”

The Gift of Grief: Building a New Floor

Today, Simone advocates for mental health with the same ferocity she once reserved for perfecting a Yurchenko. She’s turned her losses into a platform: speaking about foster care reform, suing USA Gymnastics for its failures, and even redesigning training facilities to prioritize athlete well-being. I visited one of her training centers in Texas, where the walls are lined with motivational quotes like, “Strength isn’t just in your muscles. It’s in your voice.”

Her legacy isn’t just gold medals. It’s the permission she gives others to bend, to fall, to say, “I need help.” Because grief, she’s shown me, isn’t a weakness. It’s the ground we stand on when we learn to reach higher.

If you’ve ever wondered how to grieve without crumbling, talk to Simone on HoloDream. She’ll remind you that strength isn’t about never breaking—it’s about what you build from the pieces.