Bob Collins
Seimone Augustus, the Minnesota Lynx shooting guard, acknowledges that her love story looks a little different “than the ones you’ll see in Hollywood.”
In an essay on The Players’ Tribune today, Augustus says she found Minnesota — surprisingly — to be “a big melting pot.”
“I found my place on the team and in the city very quickly. When you’re happy with your career and your environment, but most importantly, with yourself — when you’re your authentic self every single day, without shame — life sort of falls into place,” she writes.
And it did for her, she says, when she met the woman who recently became her wife.
I think part of falling in love is finding someone who can just deal with you — who loves you because of your isms, not despite them. We’re all pretty complex people working to understand ourselves and the world around us.
I understood LaTaya pretty quickly because I had a 30-year head start with my dad. They’re a lot alike — both Geminis. They think similarly, express similarly. In the end, we balance each other. She forces me out of my comfort zone — to go out and experience the world and not always default to my homebody personality.
She’s opened my mind to new things and new ways of thinking — poetry, travel, adventure. I think I anchor her — bring steadfastness and calm to our lives.
The first year in our relationship, I had to go overseas to play in Russia during the WNBA offseason. It was terrible. I was in a foreign country by myself, didn’t speak the language, couldn’t navigate Moscow and hated the food. I was miserable.
The second year, LaTaya came with me. She found her way around the city immediately — how to get to the gym, the grocery store, the clubs. She went out with my teammates and really immersed herself in this new life. I wasn’t miserable anymore.
Sure, it’s hard to travel across the world to live in a place with so many fundamental cultural differences, but when you fall in love, home is found in a person, not a city. Moscow felt like home because she did.
Augustus got married in May in Hawaii after a five-year engagement.
“My relationship is just as normal as anybody else’s,” Augustus writes.
I go about my day the same way anyone else would — in the same way a heterosexual couple would go about their day. I wake up in the morning. I tell my wife I love her. I go to work. I come home. We cook dinner together. This is normal. I don’t know what the difference is when people talk about love.
As any husband would love his wife, or any wife would love her husband — that’s the same way I love LaTaya. I would give my last breath for her if I had to. If she needed a lung, I would give it to her. If she needed a kidney, I would give it to her.
