2. Asking Why

Something that's really helping me in this journey is my faith. My parents did teach me the importance of placing my faith and my trust in God. But I think my path kind of changed once basketball started to kind of become the center and the main focus of my life. Basketball became my identity. A lot of people looked at me as a basketball player and performing and all that just became all I wanted to do. And my goals, my dreams were all based on basketball. So that's kind of how it formed into just being my all. Yeah, my first injury, I don't think it made me want to give up on my dream, which was to keep playing and play professionally. I mean, I had people around me saying, You're young, you know, you got time to get back, you got time to be 100% you. But you start reading things on the Internet and it's like you're never the same when you come back from ACL surgery. It was very painful, but I think I was able to learn so much coming out of this first injury, leaning on basketball and the things that I thought basketball was going to give me just was-- isn't going to be enough. Because basketball can be taken away from you instantly. Transferring to Iowa State, there was high expectations. I was playing my 13th game. A few minutes into the game. I tore my ACL again. It was the strangest feeling I had because it's like, why? And why would this happen again to me? I felt like I was 100% ready to kind of play this year and kind of start my professional career, but very strange feeling of just total defeat. It just kind of added on to more things I had to learn and grow in. You know, it's-- it's something that is out of your control and it's something that happens to a lot of athletes. From my second injury, I was able to grow even more because of what I learned in my first injury. I was able to kind of not feel as much pain, as much sadness the second time. Trusting the process, learning about enjoying the journey rather than the destination. Just kind of move forward into what would be the next step for me. I think placing my faith in the center has kind of redirected me and given me an anchor, a bigger vision of life and of what I need to value and put as my priority in life.