Dear Martina, Thank You. Again.

The letter Martina Navratilova wrote me in 1994, and the one I'm writing back today.

Dear Martina,

Thirty-two years ago, I wrote you a letter.

I was 23 years old, fresh out of college, working at my alma mater, UMass Amherst, where you had just given a talk. I had only recently come out.

To someone reading this today, that may not sound like a big deal. But in 1994, it was. There weren’t many women living openly whom I could point to and think, Maybe I’ll be okay.

You were one of them.

After your talk, I heard that a professor was driving you to the airport. The professor happened to be friends with my boss. My ears perked up. “Could you give Martina a letter from me?”

I don’t remember exactly what I wrote. I wish I did. But I know I thanked you. I thanked you for being visible. For being unapologetically yourself. For showing someone like me that there was life on the other side of fear.

I never expected you to write back. But you did.

I wish I could show you the note. It’s tucked safely away in my apartment, and I’m writing this while away from home. So instead, I’ll share the words that have stayed with me all these years.

Dated December 1994, it read:

Felice,
Thank you for your very kind letter. It is nice to know we can make a difference.
Martina

I’ve carried those words with me for over three decades.

Recently, I watched Chris & Martina: The Final Set, the documentary about your lifelong friendship with Chris Evert. Like so many people, I knew the headlines, the rivalries, the Grand Slam titles. The fierce competitor who never backed down.

What I didn’t know was the young woman behind the headlines. A teenager leaving Czechoslovakia, and landing in America. No family. No familiar faces. For years, no coach. Just a racket (wooden at that!), extraordinary talent, and the determination to build a life from scratch.

As I watched, I found myself thinking less about the championships and more about the person.

Then the documentary took another turn. Cancer. Not one diagnosis, but the reality that both you and Chris have faced it. Two rivals who spent years trying to beat each other, now cheering each other on through something neither could conquer alone.

That’s the Martina I didn’t know. The vulnerable one. The one willing to let the world see that even the strongest among us need help sometimes. When I was 23, I thought courage meant standing alone. Maybe because that’s what coming out often felt like. Maybe because that’s how you seemed from a distance: fearless, self-sufficient, impossible to knock down.

Now that I’m in my fifties, I’ve learned that some of the bravest people I know are the ones who let others carry part of the load. The ones who say, “I’m scared.” The ones who accept a hand instead of insisting they don’t need one.

Watching you now didn’t make me admire you less. It made me admire you more. Because strength isn’t just winning. It isn’t pretending everything is fine. Sometimes strength is letting people witness your hardest battles.

I’ve spent much of my life writing letters. To family, friends, lovers, strangers, lawmakers. To people who unknowingly changed my life. Every once in a while, one comes back.

Yours did. It was only seventeen words, but seventeen words can last a lifetime.

So I wanted to write you one more letter. To thank you again for helping a scared young woman believe she belonged. Thank you for taking a minute to answer someone you didn’t know. Thank you for showing us that courage can look like confidence, but it can also look like vulnerability.

And thank you for proving, all these years later, that making a difference doesn’t end when the applause does.

With gratitude (and my tennis racket, should you ever feel like hitting a few balls),

P.S. Have you ever written a letter to someone who changed your life, even if you'd never met them? I'd love to hear about it.

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