One year ago, under “what do I want to do this year?” I wrote “start a mental health movement with Common Goal” in my journal. This was nearly a year after losing my best friend and Stanford teammate, Katie Meyer, to suicide in March 2022.
Her death hit hard. Really hard. After she died, I felt called to do something that could have helped a younger Katie. I didn’t want anyone else’s family, friends or communities to have to go through something so tragic.
The task of changing a culture of mental health in sport felt too big for me, my Stanford teammates, or us professional players to do alone. We needed a collective, a collective that could channel the grief of Katie’s death into something that would change the soccer industry and potentially even save lives.
Could I have imagined that first scribble in my journal would lead us to where we are now? No. Not at all.
I had totally forgotten about that journal entry until a few days before the Create the Space mental health retreat we hosted in San Diego with Common Goal last week. I was flicking through the pages and paused on 1 January 2023: “Wow, no way.” I messaged Lilli Barrett-O’Keefe, the executive director of Common Goal, who had jumped on this journey with me, to reflect on our year building this movement together. Common Goal is an organization that convenes professional players, brands and non-profits to work together to create change in and around soccer.
It’s hard to put into words the magnitude of what we accomplished over the last year. After many hours drafting, redrafting, scoping and rescoping, a journal entry manifested into an international movement to put players’ mental health first – all players, at all levels of the game.
Last week, at the inaugural Create the Space retreat, we brought together 20 players, with each NWSL market represented, and 25 youth coaches from organizations or academies that operate in the same cities as the clubs. We have the power to affect future generations’ relationship with their own mental health and I want to make sure that all communities have access to holistic support.
The 25 coaches are working in some of the most marginalized and underserved communities across the United States, where BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and refugee youth are far too often sidelined from the field and from life-saving mental health resources. It’s time these communities, that are often the most in need of these resources, are put first.
Many professional players feel they have existed in a culture of silence too, unable to be fully themselves, fully vulnerable – and vocal in that vulnerability – in a sport which puts results above people. This retreat was meant to give everyone, truly everyone, a place to use their voice and most importantly to be heard. Really heard.
Common Goal’s Create the Space retreat was incredible.
It’s hard to put into words what it feels like to read the response from players and coaches in the Guardian’s article. It humanizes us all. We all went into the weekend, not as coaches or professional athletes but as people. Stripped of our crests, our caps, our appearances, our teams, our differences. Each of us stepped through those doors looking to gain something for ourselves, our relationships and our varied communities.
The power of our collective experience and our individual growth in just a few days is hard to convey. We co-created an environment that allowed us to be vulnerable and build connections with each other. The facilitators that Common Goal brought together were so intentional at curating the retreat, every element of our time together was crafted to encourage deep introspection to allow us to foster a true sense of community.
I don’t know what comes next. A year ago, it was only an idea jotted on to a journal page. Now we have a family of 20 professional athletes across the entirety of the NWSL. In that sense it would be silly to try and guess at what’s possible. It was an experience so deeply personal and so overwhelmingly collective at the same time. There will be a bit of Create the Space in every game to come this season, that is special.
It was important for me to write to you all but, equally, I know that this piece will not do justice to what was said behind the closed doors in the quiet hotel overlooking the bay in San Diego that hosted the inaugural retreat. Myra Sack, founder of E-Motion, taught us all to move with our grief and to let it fuel us. I will never stop moving forward and I will continue to bring Katie along for the ride with me.
I now know I am not alone. I hope you know you are not alone either.
• In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
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