OMFG yes Viv. Nothing quite like waking up and checking twitter/instagram and being bombarded with pictures, retweets and news that a player that has suffered an ACL injury is running again. This is a huge deal. If we are all over the moon, happy and excited just imagine how she feels!!! How her family feels!!! her teammates and the club too. And, as some of you know, today marks 6 years since she signed… so lots of good stuff.
But what does this all mean? To me, its very simple, duh. It means she’s running, she’s recovering, she’s taking it one day at a time. I’m not trying to be clever, my point is that with things like these, and adversity in general, we have to be present and focused in the moment to overcome things little by little, yet the real good news to me isn’t her actually running.
Problems aren’t gonna fix themselves and our attitude is key. So to me, the real important thing when I see the pictures is that Viv is smiling. That speaks volumes to me and I’m absolutely here for it. There’s also something to be said about taking time off that I’m sure makes players think about the sport slightly differently since they digest it in a different way. Not sure this is exactly true but let me try to explain my point.
A few months ago I was playing indoor soccer here in Los Angeles. I was on goal and caught a normal, routine, pretty average ball but it pinched something in my bicep that hurt terribly. Seconds later I threw the ball out and hurt my forearm too. It was terribly painful and I knew, immediately that this wasn’t normal and I started freaking out about my career as a drummer.
Aside from the recovery, the worry, etc what I’m trying to explain is that during that time off, I still had to “practice” and had music to real and I had to get my mental game on point. I didn’t have a choice. I knew that I could get asked to play any day, at any moment and I needed to be prepared somehow. I could barely move my arm but I knew that adrenaline would help me get through but no adrenaline in the world would help me remember songs, know their structure, choose the right percussion and cymbals for the songs and all of the other things I needed to keep in mind. I usually do this with or without the injury, but when I couldn’t do anything at all I was forced to listen to music in a way I hadn’t done in years and I feel I learned a whole lot.
When I think about the players and how frustrating it must be for them I can related, albeit not fully, but enough to know there are different ways of taking in what we see, when we are usually a part of it. it’s interesting, weird, frustrating and deeply inspiring as well.
Here’s the latest episode of That Arsenal Women Podcast
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THAT ARSENAL WOMEN PODCAST on:
A very subjective look into AWFC 
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