Miesha Tate won the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship in 2016 by beating Holly Holm, and within two weeks she realized it hadn’t fixed anything. By the end of that year she had lost the belt, fought one last time at Madison Square Garden and walked away from the sport, depressed and still tied to a controlling relationship she’d been in for nine years.

On this episode of Sons and Daughters, Shannon Spake sits down with the former UFC and Strikeforce champion to talk about how she got there and how she found her way back. It starts with her first fight at 19, when she broke her nose, watched her own blood pool on the mat and kept fighting until her coaches threw in the towel without asking her. It goes through wrestling the boys in high school, where she decided a win meant not getting pinned, and a pro debut the judges couldn’t score, which sent her back out to fight another round.

Miesha talks honestly about hitting rock bottom after her last fight, the question that turned things around, and how faith, family and a two-week road trip up the coast helped her rebuild. She also explains why she treated her first labor like a fight and lost, how a new mindset made her second birth two hours long, and what she wants men to understand about women’s hormones.

Now 40, nearly six months pregnant with her third child and having just launched her own micro school, Miesha is living on her own terms. Her advice: question everything, get good at hard things, aim to be happy about 2% of the time and fulfilled the rest, and be a good best friend to yourself.

This episode includes discussion of suicidal thoughts. If you’re struggling, call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

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