This story recounts the author’s experience of boxing, from sparring to real fights. It describes her feelings and how boxing changed her life, set against the backdrop of her mother’s death from cancer. It’s a story of strong and soft female bodies, of building a body and of seeing one disappear, of chosen and unwanted pain. The parallels between the two stories are very touching \u2014 seemingly different, but ultimately so similar. Many of Whitwham’s feelings resonated with me, and I also viewed her relationship with her mother and her grief with a sense of longing. A beautiful book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s cold outside. I haven’t eaten enough. I’m still learning how to treat myself better. As I work through this new violent streak, I’m understanding I need to look after myself. When we are home, I make myself a proper meal. It is hot, full of carbohydrates and cream and it is delicious. I feel better. We eat at the table together, my daughter and I, both of us tired and hungry. The pasta fills us, and we are warm, fed. I will not skip meals. I will not treat myself as if I don’t need to be well. I will not live as if I can live on nothing.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This story recounts the author’s experience of boxing, from sparring to real fights. It describes her feelings and how boxing changed her life, set against the backdrop of her mother’s death from cancer. It’s a story of strong and soft female bodies, of building a body and of seeing one disappear, of chosen and unwanted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19209,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[270,279],"tags":[109,104,32],"class_list":["post-19190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2025","category-year-of-reading-2025","tag-pain","tag-revenge","tag-women"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/getty-images-ri5GXaWwGkc-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1690&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19190"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19212,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19190\/revisions\/19212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}