I wrote Champions Are Made in the Dark for the 15-year-old me.
The girl who didn't have anything to reach for.
Who couldn't see what was ahead of her or know that the life
she was living then wouldn't always be her life.
I think sometimes when you're in the middle of something hard,
people tell you to be strong. They tell you things will get better.
But when you're the one living it, those words don't always mean much.
You need something you can hold onto.
That's part of why I wrote this book.
I wanted to show that where you begin doesn't have to decide
where you end up. That adversity can shape you without defining you.
And that resilience isn't about pretending something didn't hurt
or simply pushing it aside.
It's about learning how to move through it.
There were times in my own life when I couldn't see the person
I would eventually become. I certainly couldn't have imagined
some of the places life would take me.
But I kept moving.
Not always confidently. Not always knowing what came next.
Sometimes the strongest decisions I've made happened
when I didn't feel strong at all.
That's something I understand differently now.
Strength isn't the absence of struggle —
it's the decision to keep moving with it.
If this book reaches someone who is standing where I once stood —
someone who can't yet see beyond what they're going through —
I want them to know that this moment isn't the whole story.
You can overcome.
You can move through adversity.
You can become more than what happened to you.
Maybe that's what I would have wanted someone
to tell the 15-year-old me.
And maybe that's why I finally wrote it down.
Tui Katene
Author of Champions Are Made in the Dark