Lorena Abreu, 25 years old McAllen, Texas.
This is my story.
Parkour is where sport meets art.
Where discipline meets creativity and
basically it's just really fun and I
think everyone would enjoy doing it.
I am a jack of all trades, master of none
I like to jump on things, but I'm also
video editor. I like to sing, dance, play
ukulele. I do some of everything.
I was always a very hyperactive kid, God bless
my mom.
Students and teachers called me monkey
girl, it was definitely an insult but, I
mean I kind of deserved it.
One day we were talking and I told Lorena,
"I should have seen this coming
because you taught yourself how to flip
when you were four years old," and she
told me "No I didn't," and I said, "Yes you did, and I have footage."
I went to an open gym
one day and I met some of the local
practitioners. What I watched them do
looked like the absolute funnest thing
ever.
I actually started making videos
for their social media just for free
because I wanted to be around parkour.
There I met my friends. They were
basically my coaches and they never
babied me, they never treated me like a
girl.
This is like actually one of the
biggest jumps I've ever done period.
My very first drop precision, a standing
jump for one thing to another thing. I
was just really scared I couldn't commit
for it. They told me "you know you can do
this, you should do it." And I finally went
for it and I stuck it and I realized
parkour is the best thing ever.
A lot of people ask me, "How do I become
not scared like you?" And I tell them what
are you talking about? I am not a super
brave person.
I was scared literally 100% of the time.
To me, parkour is not about overcoming
fear, parkour is about managing your fear.
How do I balance
doing so many different things? When I
find the time I pick up my ukulele and I
like to sing with it. It is the only time in my life
that I'm not thinking worrying about
everything else I have going on. Parkour
grew from a fun thing I did from
time to time, to a full-blown passion, to
thankfully my job. I've had a few
milestones in my career. First
advertisement campaign for big sports,
brand, working for an esteemed circus, and
I would just see pictures of myself and
think "Oh my goodness me in the fifth
grade would have thought this was
amazing!"
I'm also really smugly satisfied to be
making a living from the exact thing
people used to make fun of me about. I am
perfectly happy with the fact that
anything can happen tomorrow because I
have become the person my tiny monkey
self wanted to be, and that's all you can
really ask for.
