@giveme1shot__ Raven “Hulk” Saunders, is a shot put star from Charleston, South Carolina who won four NCAA championships while at Southern Illinois & Mississippi. Last Olympics, 2016 in Rio, she finished 5th overall in the world. Not a bad run of success for an athlete, right?
That success continued this wk. Friday, at the U.S. Track & Field Olympic trials, Raven broke a record, & ultimately finished 2nd (her record was later broken) earning a prestigious spot on Team USA in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.
But, 2yrs ago, Raven was behind the wheel of her car w no idea where she was headed. Think abt this: an Olympian w a bright future ahead, lost!
School at the time, at Mississippi was hard, & $$ was tight. She’d experienced a # of injuries (always so hard for someone expected to be a high performer), she violated team rules & was not allowed to compete in the SEC Tournament, & she did not perform well previously in the 2017 NCAAs or the World Championships.
This recollection of her’s, driving aimlessly in her car at the time, is what strikes me: “I knew I had to be somewhere, but I just rolled past campus & kept driving & driving. I was in a daze, & I could tell something was very off. I just felt like I was in over my head. I was probably abt 10-15 min from trying to end my life.”
Why didn’t she get help before this incident? She says she felt like a burden, & others w/o her accolades had it worse.
Is this not another high profile example, of how suicidal thoughts can just creep up on us? Not planned, overwhelm taking over, no idea THAT day, she’d feel that way in her car, error msgs attacking. We MUST start teaching ppl how the overwhelm of stress/trauma can take us over, & what thoughts to look out for.
Thankfully, Raven reached out for help & got it. But now, she’s back to competing, top of her game.
Final 2 slides – it’s an absurdity how IG suppresses posts abt unification vs bucketing into disorders. Look out for that last post; they suppressed majorly (gotta get these msgs of community, out there).
Finally, last slide most recent podcast released.