Essays

Relationships that never leave you.

About Fight School,
the book

I am thankful for my struggle because without it, I wouldn’t have stumbled upon my strength.

– Alexandra Elle

Fight School explores how women fight when the world feels stacked against them.

My husband and I owned an award-winning ad agency with a friend, our lives fused by creativity. He was the visionary, I the ballast. But he spiraled: imagining himself as a savior, filling our home with strange packages. The same year our partner and our oldest child both got life-changing diagnosis.

As refuge, I took up martial arts and poured myself into sparring. I couldn’t win an argument with my husband, but I could take a blow to the head.

Fight School braids two threads together: One, the tangles and heartbreak of a marriage and business unraveling, is narrative tumble down the mountain. The other, the rebirth of my own strength, finds footing in hope and emotional recovery.

Fight School joins the conversations of family, love and tough choices in Strangers by Belle Burden, Next of Kin by Gabrielle Hamilton and, most poignantly, by In Love from Amy Bloom.

What battles should we choose; how should we fight for ourselves and our families, and when should we let go, despite love?