When you’re a child, there are certain rights of passage that are considered building blocks to adulthood. Moments that are anticipated, celebrated and memorialized as the milestones they are.
Yet as an adult, experience provides a type of x-ray lense through which to view the real formative moments of our youth. Ones that shaped us, leaving us impacted for decades, despite there being no pomp and circumstance to mark that they occurred.
Somewhere in the midst of the haze of the pandemic – back when days, weeks and months blurred together to form a moment in time – my parents decided to sell my childhood home. It was an emotional endeavor, one that involved sorting through over 40 years’ worth of memories that had been shoved into every nook and cranny of the house.
When I was summoned to the basement to sort through the pile of my stuff that remained despite me not living under that roof for nearly 15 years, I was dismayed by how much I had accumulated. Overwhelmed, I took it home, only to move it all again a year later when my husband and I ourselves relocated, never properly examining the contents that threatened to explode the Rubbermaid bins.
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” It’s one of those easily memorable, effective, hanging-on-a-coffee-shop-wall quotes, that has become so ubiquitous that a google search for its author returns multiple results.
Its appeal, no doubt, is in the inarguable validity of its message. Yet its own introductory phrase – in a world where you can be anything – is what, to me, seems to carry additional weight at a time when hobbies can turn into side hustles, and leaving your mark is only an Instagram account or Etsy shop away.
It’s a custom we undergo nearly every evening: My husband showers while I partake in a likely too-lengthy skincare routine. We share the bathroom, in one of those under-the-radar moments that speaks to the intimacy of a relationship.
The unglamorous ones that, in hindsight, make it achingly clear that you are sharing your life with someone else.
For a significant chapter of my life, running was my outlet of choice. Pre-dawn, feet making music against the pavement, I would settle into the monotony of a rhythm that swallowed me whole.
I felt both everything and nothing while I was running. Mind lost in thought, it was assumed my body would defy the odds. The more extreme the conditions, the better test of my merit.
Darkness. Coldness. Exhaustion. These were the running partners that challenged my soul.
A few weeks back, when Simone Biles made the landmark decision to withdraw from events at the Olympic games to focus on her physical and mental health, my phone quickly became abuzz with people asking how I felt about the development.
The assumption was that as an entrepreneur and coach who aims to highlight the link between wellness and performance, that I’d be applauding the move. Truth is, however, that the incident – and the ensuing public outcry of praise and support – left me rather concerned.
It also left me with more questions than answers, particularly one very pressing one:
HOW do we teach someone to properly address the symptoms of burnout when they don’t have the option of “withdrawing” from life? When there are bills to be paid, children to mind, parents to care for, there is no pause button. Quite the contrary, those carrying the heaviest loads typically don’t have the option to sit this one out.
So while we’re quick to celebrate a decision to step away, I’m wondering why we’re not discussing how the need to do so could have – and should have – been avoided in the first place. If we truly want to address the symptoms – and the damage they cause – why aren’t we getting to the source?
Oh, because this is America. The home of extremes that require equally extreme tactics to balance them out.
So HOW do we teach people to differentiate? To decipher between the need for the savvy “mental health day” to when your situation requires more? How do we teach our children the whens and whys of pushing through versus walking off the court?
Our conversation around mental health in this country haphazardly throws around terms like “boundaries” and “self care” without providing any tangible context as to what this means, let alone how the non-Olympians among us can actually implement these strategies into our lives. It’s no different than how we address nutrition by telling people to “eat clean,” yet we host an obesity epidemic unlike any other.
Coincidence? I think not.
If we really, truly, deeply are going to get serious about mental health – beyond just patting ourselves on the back for a dialogue that is literally decades overdue – we have to move beyond hashtags and influencers letting us know it’s ok to not be ok. We have to activate our emergency response and provide tactical, practical advice that leads to relief.
We have to teach people how to spot and stop the warning signs, before the real problems really start.
This is, of course, a herculean task. It requires the mobilizing of many forces – from businesses like mine to mental health professionals to government agencies – to communicate and provide in an effective manner.
But above all it requires a refusal to stop glorifying the crash-and-burn, to stop calling the GOATs role models, when there is nothing about their lives that model our own.
Because it is the parents, bosses, and coaches among us that the kids, employees and athletes are really looking to. The truth is that the concept of a role model – the ones who have the legitimate power to make a difference – really hits much closer to home.
So we not only need to do better but we must, because we, as a country, need to realize we have a legacy at stake.
Not one of gold medals.
But for generations to come.
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