Last we shared about @johnwall, he had appeared on tv, impromptu in an interview w Salvation Army logos in the background, just a few weeks back, pouring his heart out about the difficulties of the last few years (& actually – looking back now, all the difficulties that came even before that).
I said it in that last post & will say it again now in this post, after JW was able to share at length, a piece in The Players’ Tribune, which came out yesterday – this man is HERO for what he is doing.
Some of the excerpts of the most vulnerable & relatable pieces are on the following slides➡️.
In an age where athletes & celebs are getting paid big endorsement dollars to throw around a DSM5 label & champion a product right off that bat, that’s not what Wall did at all here. Those messages where the label is the focus, double down on the erroneous belief that there is a group of “affected” people, that this celebs that’s sharing the label is now a part of, separate from the “unaffected” group of the “rest” of us.
Instead, Wall shared his “stuff” (just like everyone has stuff) in even greater detail than he had in the tv interview:
A father in jail when he was only 1…a man who later died of liver cancer when John was just a young child. A brother who was also incarcerated. This left John as the only solid male figure in the house. His mom became his best friend as a result. They’d speak as adults, 6-7 times a day.
She’d then pass of breast cancer (his best friend, taken from him!), as John was dealing w an infection from a major surgery, that kept him sidelined from the one thing that allowed him to escape the challenges of life – basketball.
That’s just plain real. That’s the stuff we can ALL relate to. Loss, relationships, parents, brothers, injuries sidelining us. And guess what – that led him to suicidal ideations. How important of a message IN Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, that this brave man showed -suicidal thoughts can happen to ANY of us, no matter our financial situation, no matter our accolades, & no matter if we have a “label” or not.
This man is a HERO…& I’m rooting like crazy for him to succeed.