Everything Ivy Christensen has been through in her life has taught her to be resilient.

She got her tattoo, a large phoenix on her back, to communicate that, she said.

Christensen, a freshman bioengineering major, designed her tattoo and got it in August, a week before she began school at Syracuse University. With the wings and head looking upward, Christensen said, it appears to be soaring through the sky.

Growing up, Christensen and her younger sister, Holly, were raised by a single mother. Times were often hard, Christensen said, and living in a small Pennsylvania town, it was difficult for her mother to find work and support the family.

Despite the challenges that came with her childhood, Christensen said she was able to learn how to be resilient and work hard, even when things didn’t go as planned.

 

As a senior in high school, Christensen had an opportunity no other girl in her school had in almost 25 years; to go to the state track meet four years running. Since the seventh grade, she had been a medal- and trophy-winning runner. From her freshman to junior year, she competed in state competitions, and as a senior she was looking to go one last time.

Unfortunately, Christensen’s dream was crushed when the qualifying race ended how all others hadn’t; she came in last place.

She was devastated. But soon after, she realized she could use this defeat to grow.

“I came back and I realized that I needed that one moment of complete failure to really realize everything I had been given the whole time,” Christensen said.

Her tattoo reminds her that she can overcome anything and that every time she does, she will be stronger, she said.

The phoenix also represents why she loves running. Like her sport, it’s not about competing with other people, Christensen said, but about making herself better, similar to the way a phoenix is reborn from its own ashes.

“You can take something in your life that you think is difficult or hard and you can make it into something beautiful,” she said.

Published on October 13, 2015 at 12:03 am

Contact: emmichae@syr.edu