Seven. That’s how often I’d cross the white lines confining the dirt game I love. Seven innings. No matter what happened the inning before–crushing an extra-base hit, snagging a line drive at the hot corner, striking out, or not executing a play—I’d still cross the chalk and there would always be another chance, another game.

I have been involved in sports for as long as I can remember. I have also struggled with my mental health for years now. I have struggled with anxiety, depression, and OCD. Playing sports while dealing with these struggles has shaped who I am as a person and player today. I have been through a wide variety of experiences and issues regarding mental health as I’ve also been involved in sports.

As an athlete, and especially as a female, we can often feel the need to put on a smile and make it seem like we are always feeling and playing our best. It can feel like there are teams or coaches relying on you to always be there and to make every play perfect. We fight repetitive feelings of anger or sadness in order to seem put together and not “dramatic” or “over reactant” to our surroundings and games. This mindset can become extremely unhealthy though. Choosing to put how you look on the outside over how you feel on the inside can severely negatively affect you mentally and physically. It will also affect how you act and feel on and off the field.

In the Spring of 2016, I was at a mandatory extracurricular event for my introductory Communications class at the University of Maryland. My professor at the time, Luke Capizzo (now Dr. Capizzo), was an advisor for a student group called TerpTalks – it was UMD’s version of TedTalks. Twice a year, TerpTalks put on a showcase where several of the 30,000 or so UMD students would share their story. A story about anything. It was that night in the Spring of 2016, sitting in an auditorium in the Stamp Student Union at UMD, that I knew it was time to tell my story.

Being a student athlete is one of the hardest things to do. You have to be able to balance school every day, practice, workouts, and a social life. Being a student athlete is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, but it is also one of the hardest things I have ever done. Not only is being a student athlete hard, but trying to get recruited to play your sport in college adds 2x the stress. 

I’ve tried to write this over and over but was unsure of how to start, because where do I start? Within the past five years, I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve found myself, I’ve lost myself, then picked the pieces up and found myself again. But still, I went through all of that and don’t quite know who I’ll be when the ball stops bouncing in my collegiate career.

The act of intentionally showing up for yourself, even when you don’t see progress, is progress in and of itself. At the start of my recovery I was so focused on measurable success seen in numbers, people, and cooperating with societal perspectives. I took a year away from my sport, scared of what people would think when I return, scared of where my times would be compared to years prior. It turns out success is not measured in numbers or unsolicited opinions. Showing up for yourself culminates in a seed of optimism; an optimistic outlook saved my life. Mindset is more valuable than what any diet or physique can provide. A mindset with morals, values, humor, and intelligence, is what makes us all beautifully human.