Road To Pro

Corinne Gamangasso is the strongest women I know. She gives 100% to any goal she commits to, whether she’s baking, doing yard work, or being a mom/wife/grandmother. But when it comes to fitness, she’s relentless.  Corinne has succeeded in various physical arenas from marathons to long distance triathlons, to her most recent obsession, bodybuilding. After years of beating herself up running, she chose to switch gears and started building muscle. Last year after the loss of her 27-year-old son, Jordan, she dug deep & turned her gym time into therapy. Every workout was used as an outlet to push herself to another level of pain. Pain she could control. This helped her push through the heavy emotions she was dealing with. At that time, her bodybuilding coach encouraged her to compete in her first bodybuilding competition. At first, Corinne was extremely reluctant because as an introvert, she doesn't like putting herself in the spotlight. Let alone on a stage in a sparkly bikini. However, she decided that pushing herself out of her comfort zone is exactly what she needed to grow as an individual. Corinne’s hard work and courage paid off. She placed 1st in bikini Open class C, 1st in Bikini masters 40+, 2nd in master’s 35+, and 2nd in Bikini Novice. Now, she’s qualified to compete at Nationals where she can hopefully earn her Pro Card. Ultimately, she'd love to compete as a professional, and Nationals is the next step to getting her there. She has done the work and pushed herself harder than anyone I know to grow. I am confident she’s ready to go pro. However, National Bodybuilding Competitions are not inexpensive. In order to compete there is a long list of necessary expenses, and I would hate for money to stop her from achieving her goals... If you’re still reading this let me, tell you a little more of Corinne’s story. When I met Corinne, she was a single mom. Raising her 5-month-old baby girl alone. When she was 10 weeks pregnant, she witnessed the death of her fiancé in a tragic electrical accident. Even though she had been through such a gut wrenching & life changing experience she kept a positive attitude and kept moving forward for her baby girl. I didn’t understand how she was functioning after that, let alone smiling. It was her laughter & cheerfulness that initially attracted me to her. I was also a single parent, raising my son alone. We instantly connected. Over the next few months, we began spending more and more time together. It just felt right. We were married and became an instant family of four. We figured that since we had already started our family, let’s just keep it going. For our one-year anniversary, we were blessed with another baby girl, Alexis. Less than two years after that, Mia was born. We felt like the family wasn’t complete, so we decided to have one more. When we received the news that our next baby, after three little girls in a row was going to be a little boy, we were beyond thrilled. It was so fun and different! There’s a special love between a mom and her baby boy. When he was born, he was perfectly healthy, happy, and so dang cute. When they placed him in our arms, she had a feeling that he wasn’t going to be with us for a long, but quickly push that feeling aside. On February 28, when Cody Nash was exactly 3 months old, we had a business dinner that we had to go to. We aren’t really the type that ever went out on dates, or even had babysitters. We asked Corinne’s parents to come watch the kids while we ran to the business dinner. We said our goodbyes to the kids & headed out. As the meeting ended, Corinne looked down at her phone and saw that she had missed a phone call from her dad. She checked the voicemail and heard the words that every parent dreads. Her dad said “Corinne, we need you to come to the hospital. It’s Cody Nash. Drive safe, don’t speed, but come right away.” We both knew in our hearts everything wasn’t going to be OK. As we pulled up to the hospital Corinnes, dad was standing there, looking completely heartbroken with his arms out to attempt to hold and console us. He took us inside the hospital where our baby boy was. They put his lifeless body in Corinnes arms and told us that he was gone. They had done everything they could. It was sudden infant death syndrome. Corinne’s mom cried and told her that he had only been in the crib for five minutes when she had the sudden urge to go check on him. She immediately started CPR. They rushed him to the hospital, which was about a mile away. After all of the hospital staff’s best efforts, he was gone. The following day was our daughter Mia‘s second birthday. That is a day I will never forget. After spending all night in the hospital, holding our baby, we came home and we were a complete mess. Still in shock, Corinne realized we couldn’t let Mia‘s birthday be forgotten, so we went to the grocery store, bought a birthday cake, balloons, and a few gifts and made our best attempt to sing her happy birthday. Her bright blue eyes and big smile lit up the room during the little celebration for her. We headed to the funeral home to start figuring out what would happen over the next few days as we planned our baby boy’s funeral. A few weeks after he passed away Corinne was sitting at the cemetery. Just praying and begging God to let her feel her baby Cody there with her. After a long time waiting, she felt it was time to get back home to me and the kids. She got in the car shut the door and heard a little voice say, “I’m here mom don’t forget my brother.” That was a beautiful moment in our life. It was then we realized we had one more spirit waiting to come down and join our family less than a year later Jacob Brennen was born in our family now feels complete. I don’t want to keep referring to all the hard times that we have experienced, but about two weeks after our little boy passed away. Corinne was given a fortune cookie by her little brother and best friend, Bryce. The fortune read, “there’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be worse.” I remember her reading that and saying this is the dumbest fortune ever…. It couldn’t possibly get any worse. Well, we were wrong. Another two weeks went by and Bryce, who had given her the fortune cookie was in a horrible motorcycle accident and passed away. It got worse. I don’t tell you these things because I want you to feel bad for her. I share them because we have learned that we need to be grateful for what we have right now. And that life is short, and it is our obligation to live our lives to the fullest. I know it sounds so cliché, but it is the truth. Even with all these heartbreaking and soul crushing experiences, Corinne has a smile on her face. She is an amazing mother and grandmother, with an attitude of optimism. She goes through this life with true grit. Help me to help her get to the next level.