Punch first, kick second. Punch first, kick second. The words play over and over in 35-year-old Valerie de Roche's head as she practices karate at her gym.

It's very difficult for me to do a punch with my right arm and at the same time to keep my right leg behind me. I have to focus a lot.

Back when she was a child, Valerie didn't understand why some moves were so hard for her to master. Growing up in Montreal, it seemed like things came much more easily to the other kids at her karate school.

The other ones were moving with grass and balance. I was like, oh, there, what she did was really good. And then I thought, there's something that's stuck at my place.

There's something wrong with me. Valerie had that nagging feeling for a very long time, but she couldn't put her finger on what exactly was wrong.

What she did know, though, was that she loved karate and that she wanted to spar and competitions and win.

I wanted to compete, so I trained a lot. I was doing my best, first the point kick, then the kick kick. But the coaches told me that I wasn't good enough.

Her karate teacher discouraged Valerie from sparring and competitions, fair of combat. They told her it would be too hard. They wouldn't even let her train for it.

But Valerie has never been the kind to give up. She realized very early on that if she wanted to compete, she would have to keep going on her own.

I learned to persevere, even if nobody believed in me. Even if I was different.

Bienvenue and welcome to the Dual Lingo French Podcast. I'm your host, Gophain, M'Poutouwelle. Every episode we bring you fascinating true stories to help you improve your French listening and gain new perspectives on the world.

The storyteller will be using intermediate French and I'll be chiming in for context in English. If you miss something, you can always skip back and listen again. We also offer full transcripts at podcast.duolingo.com

A quick word about Canadian French. You may notice that some words ending in certain vowel sounds like the EUX in VE and D, have an added R sound at the end.

Sounding more like VIR and DIR. You may also notice that words ending in an R sound like professeur sound a little more stretched out. Professeur.

Valérie remembers feeling out of sync with the people around her from very early on. At school during recess, other kids would be playing in the school yard. Valérie, on the other hand, had a different idea of fun.

I was in the school of recreation with a dictionary. I would open it and I took a piece of paper. There were also old pages on historical characters. I remember the page on Benito Mussolini.

That's right. Ten-year-old Valérie would learn entire pages of the dictionary by heart for fun. She was super smart, but socially she could be painfully awkward, like one time when she was playing with a little girl at the pool.

She was so big and she was dead. And I started to laugh.

Valérie had laughed not because she thought that the little girl's grandmother's death was funny. She laughed because she was happy to be talking with a friend. Happy because the little girl trusted her.

When Valérie realized that she'd laughed the wrong thing, she felt terrible.

It's an episode that I never forget. It wasn't easy for me to communicate with others. I had the impression that I never understood people around me. And even more, they didn't understand me.

Unsurprisingly, Valérie wasn't a big fan of group sports. But one day, she and her mom went to pick up her older brother at his karate class.

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