In 2021, A'ja Wilson opened up about her mental health: “Everything started after we lost in the finals and I ventured outside the WNBA bubble for the first time in three months. Inside the Wubble, I’d had basketball to focus on. Trying to get that title, trying to prove the doubters wrong about our team’s potential ... it was just all-consuming. It was like being sealed off in an alternate reality. And what made it so surreal was that there was so much trauma and emotion and energy going on in the outside world over the summer, while we were inside this literal bubble of sunshine and hotel rooms and basketball. I kind of made myself numb to everything that was going on. I guess that was my way to compartmentalize basketball versus the anguish of the news that I was seeing on my phone. It was like I wasn’t fully processing the grief of it all.
I was just … empty.
Then, when I finally got out of that bubble and I was back in the real world, it was like something broke.
The decompression led straight into depression.
I just felt so angry with myself. I felt like I’d let my team down in the finals. There were a lot of days when I couldn’t get myself out of bed. It was like I genuinely couldn't even control my movements. I was outside my body, floating up in my own head.
You didn’t do enough. You let everybody down.
You didn’t do enough. You didn’t do enough. You didn’t do enough.
You know how that cycle goes, right?
That anxiety gets up on you.
But I didn’t tell a soul. I kept everything from my family, even my parents, because I didn’t want them to worry about me. As Black women, how many of us put on that mask every morning? Gotta be perfect! Gotta be smiling! Gotta be strong!
As Black women, it’s like ... weakness?
Weakness?
We don’t got time for that!!!
I witnessed it with my own mother when I was a kid. She could’ve had the hardest day at work, but when she came home at night, it was all smiles. You would never catch her slipping. Never see her sweat.
How many of us fall into that same pattern? I mean, I have this vision for myself that I feel like I have to meet — not as a basketball player, but as a Black woman in America. As A’ja. I feel like I need to handle every situation with grace and poise and positivity. I can’t let them catch me losing my cool, right?”
playerstribu.ne/Aja
@_ajawilson22 |
@LVAces |
@GamecockWBB