Acting has been a passion of mine since I was young, I took acting classes through most of high school and years following while training MMA.
In sports, you deal with disappointment often, but it's how you handle it and come back from it that shapes you. All these lessons are transferable to life and have really helped me with the adversities I've had to deal with in life.
I want the women's division to have that legitimacy, I want it to have that intensity and the aggressiveness, and I feel like that's where I personally can contribute.
Sonya is the way she is for a reason and I love enlightening the fans on what those things are because so many people are going through similar experiences and have amazing stories I love to hear and relate to myself.
I think back to when I was in high school, to 17-year old Daria, who was dating guys and thought that that was the only way of life. I was very confused, and it was definitely manifesting itself in other parts of my life that were unhealthy.
With any minority group, it takes a strong presence in the public eye to make a change because everything nowadays is social media.
Being a lifelong athlete, I am a firm believer that I am who I am today because of sports. Not only did it give me structure and a solid foundation, but it gave me a sense of failure and how to overcome failure.
I've had tattoos since I was like 16, but if you would have asked the younger me to get a tattoo that symbolized my sexuality, I would have told you no, because that's how not okay I used to be with it.
I didn't want it to feel like I was shoving my sexuality down people's throats.
