Brittney Griner Celebrates First Birthday at Home Since Release from Russian Prison

In April, Griner announced she was working on a "raw, emotional" memoir recounting her 10 months in Russia

Brittney Griner is celebrating her first birthday at home with family and friends since her release from Russian detainment.

Griner turned 33 on Wednesday, and the Phoenix Mercury player's wife Cherelle Griner posted an Instagram reel filled with memories set to Ruby Amanfu's "Happy Birthday (I Love You)."

"Happy birthday my love! God did his big one with you 👑 I couldn’t ask for a better soul to do life with! Celebrating you is easy and to love you is an honor ♥️," Cherelle wrote. "Cheers to another year baby 🥂."

One year prior, Griner's lawyer Maria Blagovolina told PEOPLE how the athlete spent her 32nd birthday inside a Russian penal colony.

"It was an unusual birthday today," Blagovolina, one of Griner's lawyers and a partner at Rybalkin Gortsunyan Dyakin and Partners, shared, adding that Griner's birthday was "of course a difficult day for her, you can imagine because she is all alone in a jail in a foreign country."

Griner's lawyers delivered her numerous letters of support during their visit. "We brought her a lot of letters, birthday messages from all over the world, from her family, from friends, her team; and that was very important for her."

Griner's lawyers say she "very much appreciates the support and love she's been getting," and was "really happy to receive" the letters. "She feels the support. So this was good."

Related: WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert on Reaching Record-Breaking Season: 'It's All Hands on Deck' (Exclusive)

The WNBA champion’s life and career suddenly came to a halt in February 2022 when she was imprisoned in Russia on charges U.S. officials heavily disputed.

She was finally released in a prisoner exchange between the two countries last December and made her emotional return to the court in May.

Upon her return, Griner said the adjustment back to her everyday life has been "a little overwhelming," per CNN, and that being back in her Mercury jersey and in the team’s arena was "a surreal feeling.”

Griner didn’t appear to miss a beat once the season began, though. The former WNBA Champion led the Mercury in points in rebounds all season, scoring 17.5 points a game and grabbing 6.3 rebounds a night.

Her performance was good enough to earn her a ninth selection to the WNBA All-Star Game in July, where she dominated with two dunks in front of a raucous Las Vegas crowd that gave her a standing ovation when her name was called during the lineup announcements.

“To have that ovation and all those little memories that I can cherish now, it means the world,” Griner said afterward.

Related: Brittney Griner Says She and Wife Cherelle Bought a Home in Phoenix and Want to Stay: ‘This Is It’

In April, Griner announced she was working on a "raw, emotional" memoir with publishing company Alfred A. Knopf recounting her 10 months in Russia.

The athlete will detail the "tumultuous events of 2022 that both reshaped her life and captured the world's attention" when she was arrested at an airport near Moscow in Feb. 2022, according to a press release for the project, which is scheduled for a spring 2024 release.

The book will include previously-unheard details about Griner's "stark" living conditions and the "terrifying aspects" of day-to-day life in a foreign prison.

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The release promises that Griner's "intimate and moving" memoir will explore how the global #WeAreBG movement supported her during her detainment and why she was even playing in Russia to begin with — pay inequity.

The 2024 memoir will be Griner's second with the publishing house. She released her first book, In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court, in 2015.

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