A few days ago, I sat in the living room with the sun shining in the window, looking out at my peaceful view of sprawling chestnut trees. I was feeling down in the dumps for no apparent reason. I was fatigued, without having moved much. I was sad without really knowing why.

In my never-ending quest to understand myself, what’s going on with me emotionally, and, for heaven’s sake, to not want to feel bad, I dug into all the reasons I might be despondent. Was it the medication? Was it the interrupted sleep? Was it the rainy days layered back to back to back?

Surely it wasn’t the weather. Because for two days straight, the sun was shining and the skies were blue. The rain hangover was over.

No. It wasn’t any of those things.

And, of course, right as I begin to write about where my down mood came from, a beautiful red cardinal appears at my bird feeder. Some may know that there are those of us who believe the red cardinal is a sign of our lost loved ones looking over us. Paying us a visit. Reminding us we are loved.

And as if it were magic or divine intervention—or, for all the doubters, pure coincidence—the red cardinal is currently hopping along the green grass, picking seeds off the ground. Obviously feeling safe in the little bird haven I created earlier in the year.

Back to the depressing mood I couldn’t shake. It turns out I’d not consciously thought about a significant anniversary date. In August 2023, my mother took a turn for the worse. She lost consciousness.

And just like that, the woman who was my best friend, mother, and confidant was taken away from me. The person I went to with everything. The one who had my back when many turned theirs. Loyal all the way until she could no longer interact with me anymore. Her spirit had left. Only her tired, worn-out body remained for a few days longer.

After a few nights of solid sleep, my natural inclination for reflection returned. I realized my grief journey had taken me back to that nursing home room. The tears welled up in my eyes. Not a devastating feeling, simply an acknowledgment of loss. Admission of sadness.

All the while, I realized my body had remembered long before my mind caught up. Have you ever had that happen? You’re going along living life and then suddenly an anniversary date of some sort comes up and interrupts, maybe even displaces, the mood. The energy. The motivation to move freely.

I’ve learned something significant in the past three years. The impact of people we love who are no longer available to us still remains in spirit.

But when it sinks into your bones and you feel loss in your body, mind, and spirit, it strikes a chord. Hits a nerve. And if you’re like me, you might not be expecting it.

Grief is a lifelong journey. It has no endpoint. I think that’s one of the biggest disservices to people—attempting to put a word into a box, package it up, and hand it back to us all nice, neat, and tidy.

Grief is not nice, neat, and tidy. It doesn’t fit into a box. It doesn’t travel on a linear line with timelines for this healing and endpoints for that one.

And now, quite honestly, as I embody this silent revelation, so many other things in my life have a much deeper meaning. Grief is almost an all-encompassing word without borders. In the past, that might have made me uncomfortable. As a goal-driven person practicing an action-oriented life with timelines, telling me grief is infinite and beyond might not have sat well with me.

As I sat here typing these words, I remembered my bird feeder hadn’t received the normal allotment of seed. I stepped outside and looked down at the ground underneath the feeder.

And there was a feather.

A cardinal and a feather.

I wasn’t seeking signs or thinking about them. My heart was sharing with you how I came to understand why I wasn’t feeling so great.

Wow! Now two cardinals. Beautiful red cardinals.

Red. My mother’s favorite color. She always told me she’d be with me in spirit.

I suppose I’m like most people. When you don’t feel well, there’s only so much inspiration or motivation you have. After all these years, I’ve finally learned to give myself a break. To rest when my body calls for it. To allow my mind to drip in the tears of sadness. To let my spirit resist pushing aside the uncomfortable feelings.

All my friends are coming today. One right after the other. Now the dove. I take that as a message of peace. The feather a message of protection. The cardinal a message of presence. And all of nature a message of love.

What started as an essay about grief gently turned into an overwhelming message of gratitude. Grateful for the way a simple act of feeding the birds has turned into love, joy, peace, and yes, even sadness.

All those emotions can coexist. And while I don’t wish for loss of any kind, I can appreciate the infinite emotions grief can bring about.

The question is: Am I silent enough to hear them and brave enough to embrace them with honesty?

Thanks for reading Beyond the Arc: Reflections on resilience, identify and life. A warm welcome to my new subscribers. No matter how you landed here, I’m grateful you’re here. You’ll notice sometimes I do venture off clearly Beyond the Arc into sports and culture wars, but that’s not my main focus.

I prefer writing and sharing about the lessons life has taught me, teaches me, or the wisdom I find in reflecting.

If you’re new here, I hope you’ll subscribe.

Amy Gamble

How many of us love a great comeback story?

I know I’m drawn into hearing the story of how someone overcame a disability, setback, or failure and then turned their life around. It’s as if the resilience pathway had a start, middle, and finish.

The truth?

Most stories of resilience get lost because they aren’t linear comebacks. They’re not neat, dramatic happy endings. In fact, I’d argue it’s the continuation that really matters.

What if I were to tell you my greatest personal story of resilience isn’t about surviving near-death experiences? It isn’t about recovering from mental illness. It isn’t about fighting my way through injuries to make the 1988 Olympic Team Handball Team.

My greatest story begins when I lost my mother.

After she passed away, I truly felt lost. My biggest encourager, supporter, best friend, and confidant….gone.

It would take thousands of words to explain all the ways she impacted my life. So removing this monumental, dependable, loving human being from my life took a toll on me. It forced me to turn inward and focus on my own ability to validate myself.

Everyone has different relationships with their parents. But almost everyone has lost someone who played an outsized, important role in their lives. Whether that was a sudden loss or simply relationships drifting apart that could no longer be maintained for whatever reason.

Resilience showed up for me in ways I didn’t think possible. I began to lean on all the skills, experiences, and events that shaped me into the person I’d become.

I analyzed the parts of myself I liked and the more shadow parts of me. Because no matter who we are, we have lightness and we have darkness. I wanted to learn how I could shine my light in ways I hadn’t thought possible.

But first I had to conjure up the courage to address the parts of me I didn’t want to look at.

What about all the people I may have hurt in my life along the way? Even if I didn’t intend to cause pain, it still happened.

Instead of beating myself up about my perceived mistakes, I tapped into my ability to accept the things I couldn’t change and forgive myself for my perceived shortcomings.

That’s resilience in action.

One day I woke up without a sense of purpose. Without goals. Without drive.

I just woke up and realized what my mother always said:

“Life goes on, Amy. You have to keep going.”

And so part of my resilience in practice was learning, number one, to protect myself. Not only from other people, but from the internal critic inside of me that was notoriously hard on me.

I always wanted to be good, do good, be perceived as being good.

But what exactly is good?

It’s certainly not allowing yourself to be so vulnerable that some people take advantage of your generosity. It’s definitely not allowing yourself to be in the company of people who discount, dismiss, or constantly put you down.

The kind of resilience I’m most proud of is the kind where you dig deep and set boundaries. The kind where you learn it’s okay to disappoint people. The kind where you quit something shortly after you started.

We applaud the person who perseveres. But what about the person whose resilience tells her to quit?

We admire someone who gives endlessly. But what happens when resilience tells her to stop giving?

We celebrate vulnerability. But what about when resilience says, you don’t get access to me anymore?

We love the comeback story. But what if the comeback is simply deciding, I’m going to live differently now?

And sometimes resilience is the kind where you say, “Today, the heck with it all.”

There’s something about changing my focus and making one of the most important things in my life having peace of mind. It doesn’t mean I sit in my home with my head in the sand, ignoring all the things going on in the world.

It means I pay attention to what I allow into my mind.

Part of my resilience strategy is leaning hard on the skills elite athleticism taught me about getting your mind right. I call it monitoring my thoughts. Performance thought leaders call it mindset.

If all of the world around me feels unstable, unpredictable, mean, divided, hateful, and yes, even to some degree “crazy,” then it’s really time for me to pay close attention to what I’m internalizing. That means putting limits on what I’m going to allow myself to get upset or fired up about.

Some people find great solace in religion or spiritual practices. I think when your spirit gets into alignment with your mind and body, there’s no greater way to lean on that energy source. It’s powerful.

My resilience toolkit is built to last my lifetime.

One of the most important things in it is keeping my fears and worries in a contained box. I can take the box out from under the bed on occasion and look at it. Move it around. But I must put it back into the box and place it under the bed.

Since I’ve been focused on protecting my peace, my stress response system has quietly shrunk. When I feel fear begin to signal that response is coming, I know to take a deep breath and immediately ask myself what I’m thinking about. Why am I thinking about it?

Maybe sometimes I need a good night’s sleep to clear the slate. Maybe I need to figure out what I’m putting into my mind, whether that’s reading, interacting with others, or picking up on an occasional doom scroll on social media.

Shifting the mind is like shifting gears in an old standard transmission. If you don’t put the clutch down far enough and try to shift, it’s gonna grind.

And so sometimes the mind does grind a little before we get settled and grounded again.

There’s no magic wand to getting through the challenges of life. It’s a journey. Sometimes it’s harder than others.

Maybe resilience isn’t really the dramatic comeback we’ve made it out to be.

Maybe it’s a practice.

Maybe it’s learning when to push and when to quit. When to give and when to stop giving. When to let someone in and when to close the door. When to worry and when to put the box back under the bed.

And maybe it’s simply getting up one more morning and remembering what my mother once told me:

“Life goes on, Amy. You gotta keep going.”

One incremental step at a time.

About the Author

Amy Gamble, OLY, is a writer, life coach, and 1988 Olympian in team handball. A former collegiate basketball player at Tennessee and Arizona, she writes about resilience, identity, women’s sports, and the complicated business of being human.

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I walked into the living room and plopped down on the couch after spending an entire morning doing yardwork. I picked up the remote control, turned on the TV and—bam—my own private surveillance tactic told me my sister had been in my house while I was gone. Fox Business News blared loudly from the television.

She was busted.

I don’t watch cable news. I don’t even watch the evening news anymore after discovering it was causing me more distress than I cared to embody over stories, situations and events I have absolutely zero control over. So, I tuned it out.

But on that summer late morning, I couldn’t help getting drawn into a WNBA story on, of all channels, Fox Business News. It was as if I’d gone to church expecting hymns and found myself in a bar with loud music, completely underdressed for nightlife. A women’s basketball story on a primarily financial news—and I use that term lightly—station seemed completely and 100 percent out of place.

I watched for a bit. It didn’t take long to realize the story was more about drama than the phenomenal basketball players and their teams. So I switched over to my go-to source for information: YouTube.

Instead of getting corporate-orchestrated and think-tank-influenced stories, I’m influenced by AI algorithms that send me an eclectic menu of opportunities.

Why? Because I’m just that kind of girl. I’m predictably unpredictable.

I might get served a story about artificial intelligence. I might get endless high-drama WNBA clips. Or I might get a video explaining how not to upset your tractor on a hillside. You just never know.

But on this particular day, I started seeing news clips from conservative commentators like Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, Scott Jennings and others. Funny thing was, they were all talking about the same thing—the WNBA.

I couldn’t help myself. I started watching because one question kept nagging at me:

Why all the sudden interest in the WNBA?

Most of these commentators weren’t talking about great pick-and-rolls. They weren’t discussing how important it is to box out. They weren’t marveling at the increasingly positionless style of basketball being played by some of the best athletes in the world. Some openly acknowledged they rarely watched women’s basketball. Yet suddenly they had a lot to say about the WNBA.

Just not much about basketball.

One storyline involved Indiana Fever player Sophie Cunningham, who was hard-fouled by Chicago Sky player DiJonai Carrington. Cunningham had also become part of a larger political conversation after speaking publicly about keeping transgender athletes out of women’s sports.

Suddenly Cunningham was more than a basketball player. She became a character in a much larger culture-war story.

The framing practically wrote itself: sympathetic blonde white player. Aggressive Black opponent. Victim. Villain. Outrage served and ready to go.

Except basketball is a physical game. Hard fouls happen. Players get angry. Tempers flare. None of that requires turning a basketball game into a referendum on race, gender or American politics. And yet that’s exactly where so much of the conversation seemed determined to go.

So I became suspicious. And I started doing some research.

According to an analysis by the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America, Fox News devoted at least 13 hours and 34 minutes—and at least 206 segments—to WNBA programming beginning June 25.

According to the analysis, Fox’s early coverage focused heavily on hard fouls in the league. After Cunningham’s comments about transgender athletes were published in a July 21 ESPN profile, Media Matters found that Fox’s coverage shifted disproportionately toward transgender issues, using the WNBA as the backdrop.

Two hundred and six segments.

Were they suddenly fascinated by the extraordinary growth of the league? The incredible athletes? Rising attendance? Jersey sales? Television ratings? The historic new collective bargaining agreement that dramatically increased player salaries?

Not exactly.

In fact, one Fox News host seemed to be wondering the same thing I was. Jesse Watters complained on The Five about the network’s newfound fascination with women’s basketball.

“This is week three of The Five covering the WNBA, and I have to say, I’m done,” Watters said. He went on to acknowledge that he didn’t want to be a WNBA analyst, finally admitting, “this is something I don’t care about.”

Well, Jesse, that makes two of us wondering why you’re talking about it.

Meanwhile, there was another WNBA story sitting right there in plain sight.

The league was booming.

In March, the WNBA and its players announced a historic new collective bargaining agreement. The salary cap jumped from $1.5 million in 2025 to $7 million in 2026. Maximum salaries increased to $1.4 million, average salaries were projected to exceed $583,000, and the agreement is expected to deliver more than $1 billion in player salaries and benefits over seven years.

Now that’s a pretty darn interesting women’s basketball story.

Yet much of the political conversation surrounding the WNBA seemed increasingly interested in something else: what the league could represent in America’s larger fights over race, gender, transgender athletes and feminism.

And yes, polling suggests a majority of Americans support restrictions on transgender women participating in women’s sports. A March 2026 Voters’ Voice Poll of registered voters found that 68 percent supported allowing the Supreme Court to uphold state bans on transgender women competing in women’s sports.

People can have that debate. They can disagree. They can argue about policies and fairness and biology and inclusion. But if you’re supposedly covering the WNBA in good faith, surely there are other stories worth telling too.

This is where something else began nagging at me.

Just last week, I wrote about a Heritage Foundation report by Scott Yenor that described Title IX as a “powerful engine of feminist social engineering.” I won’t rehash that entire argument here. But after watching women’s basketball suddenly become a regular subject of conservative media coverage, that phrase landed differently.

Because now I wasn’t looking at one report.

I was looking at a much larger conversation about women’s sports, feminism, transgender athletes, race and what women’s athletics have come to represent.

Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe it’s simply the nature of today’s media ecosystem, where conflict generates clicks, ratings and attention. Maybe political commentators discovered that the WNBA provides particularly fertile ground for America’s endless culture wars.

But I’m paying attention.

I’ve written before about what Title IX meant to me. I played college basketball at Tennessee and Arizona. I became an Olympian. I know what opportunity did for me because I lived it.

Maybe that’s why I notice when the conversation around women’s sports starts changing.

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a feminist. Truthfully, I’m not even sure anymore what everyone means when they use that word. But maybe I don’t need to decide whether I’m a feminist.

I know what opportunity did for me.

And I know those opportunities didn’t magically appear.

That’s why I pay attention when women’s sports suddenly become the centerpiece of a political argument about feminism, transgender people, race and what women supposedly should or shouldn’t be. I don’t have to agree with every WNBA player. I don’t have to agree with every political position associated with women’s sports. Heck, the players don’t agree with each other. That’s part of being free.

But I do care when complicated issues are flattened into convenient stories designed to make us angry at one another. I care when athletes become political symbols instead of human beings. And I care when decades of progress for women are treated as something suspicious that needs to be corrected.

The political stakes in the upcoming November midterms are enormous. Culture-war issues are powerful because they provoke emotion—fear, anger, resentment and loyalty. They get people to choose sides.

And maybe that’s the real lesson I stumbled into after mowing my grass and collapsing onto the couch.

Political theater works best when we don’t realize we’re watching theater.

You don’t have to believe what I believe about transgender athletes. You don’t have to call yourself a feminist. You don’t even have to like the WNBA. But you should probably notice when people who previously showed little interest in something suddenly have a whole lot to say about it.

Ask why. Follow the money. Look at who is framing the story. Read the reports instead of just listening to the people talking about them.

There is nothing more powerful than simply noticing when someone is trying to sell you outrage instead promoting the game.

I may have turned off cable news years ago. Apparently, cable news found its way back into my living room anyway.

This time, though, I know what I’m looking at.

About the Author

Amy Gamble, OLY, is a writer, former college basketball player at Tennessee and Arizona, and a member of the 1988 U.S. Olympic Team Handball team. A lifelong observer of women’s sports and a beneficiary of Title IX, she writes about resilience, identity, women’s athletics, and the stories we tell ourselves—and each other—about who gets to compete, belong, and be heard.

Sources

Media Matters for America: Analysis of Fox News’ WNBA coverage, including its finding that Fox devoted at least 13 hours and 34 minutes and at least 206 segments to WNBA programming beginning June 25.

Awful Announcing / Yahoo Sports: “Analysis: Fox News ran 206 WNBA segments this summer.” Reports the Media Matters analysis and Jesse Watters’ comments about covering the WNBA.

WNBA: “WNBA And WNBPA Reach Tentative Deal on Historic Collective Bargaining Agreement,” March 20, 2026. Reports the $7 million 2026 salary cap, $1.4 million maximum salary, projected $583,000-plus average salary and more than $1 billion in projected player salaries and benefits over seven years.

The Heritage Foundation: Scott Yenor, Title IX’s Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity, July 8, 2026.

Voters’ Voice Poll: March 2026 polling of registered voters regarding state restrictions on transgender women participating in women’s sports.

I woke up early this morning with what I can only describe as a naivety hangover.

Yesterday, I wrote an essay titled Why Does Everything Have to Be a Damn Culture War?

Only to realize later that simply by writing about the culture war surrounding the WNBA, I had somewhat innocently inserted myself into it.

Then my pattern-recognition brain kicked in.

I had been wondering why the WNBA had suddenly been thrust into so many conservative media conversations. Not primarily because of the fantastic and sometimes unbelievable talent we’re witnessing, but because of controversy surrounding players, personalities, politics, sexuality, race, femininity and whether the league is somehow a terrible influence on young girls.

And I started wondering whether something larger was happening.

I hadn’t specifically chosen a political side yesterday. In fact, I really don’t want to choose a political side.

But if we’re talking about whether girls and women should continue to have equal opportunities to participate in sports, I’ll choose a side.

I’m on the side of girls.

I’m on the side of women.

And I’m on the side of protecting Title IX.

Title IX is the landmark 1972 federal civil-rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education. Over the last half-century, it fundamentally transformed educational and athletic opportunities available to girls and women.

I don’t have to imagine what those opportunities produced.

I lived them.

I played Division I college basketball at the University of Tennessee for Pat Summitt and later at the University of Arizona. I eventually became a member of the 1988 United States Olympic Team in team handball.

Sports didn’t make me less of a woman.

They helped make me who I am.

Competitive sports taught me discipline. They taught me how to work with people who were different from me. They taught me how to lose and get back up. How to handle pressure. How to lead. How to follow. How to work toward something bigger than myself.

Sports gave me confidence.

They gave me opportunities I could never have imagined as a little girl growing up in West Virginia.

And now, more than fifty years after Title IX became law, an influential conservative think tank is questioning some of the very structures that created those opportunities.

You may have heard of the Heritage Foundation.

Founded in 1973, Heritage is one of the most influential conservative policy organizations in the United States. Think tanks research issues, develop policy recommendations and work to influence lawmakers, government officials, the media and public opinion.

Heritage is also extremely well funded with more than $100 million dollars in annual contributions, according to its 2024 financial report.

In July 2026, Heritage published a report by Scott Yenor titled Title IX’s Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity.

I started reading.

And that’s when yesterday’s culture-war conversation became much more interesting to me.

For years, a major conservative argument surrounding women’s sports has focused on transgender athletes. The argument has largely been framed around protecting women’s athletic opportunities and preserving female-only competitive categories.

But Yenor’s paper goes somewhere very different.

It questions the Title IX athletic framework itself.

Yenor describes Title IX as becoming an:

“engine of feminist social engineering.”

Think about those words for a minute.

Feminist social engineering.

The paper isn’t simply arguing that men and women have different athletic interests. It argues that modern women’s competitive athletics themselves reflect a mistaken conception of women.

Yenor writes that the current system attempts to create a woman who is:

“more aggressive, more competitive, more male”

and

“less oriented toward the goods of family and motherhood.”

That’s when I really started paying attention.

Because apparently we’ve moved from debating who should be allowed to compete in women’s sports to questioning whether women should have been encouraged to become so competitive in the first place.

And that’s an entirely different conversation.

The report recommends eliminating requirements that schools provide athletic resources roughly in line with student enrollment. It questions proportionality as a measure of Title IX compliance and suggests schools should have greater freedom to determine athletic offerings based upon what they consider demonstrated student interest.

The report also discusses providing women with opportunities such as dance, yoga, hiking, fitness programs and recreational activities rather than maintaining some varsity sports primarily to satisfy Title IX requirements.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with dance.

There’s nothing wrong with yoga.

There’s nothing wrong with hiking.

I happen to love being in the woods.

But don’t tell a girl who wants to lace up a pair of basketball shoes that what she really needs is yoga.

And don’t tell me that her desire to compete is somehow making her less feminine.

That raises another question that seems almost ridiculously obvious.

How exactly do we determine women’s “natural interest” in competitive sports?

By looking backward?

Because there’s a pretty significant problem with that.

For generations, girls weren’t given the same opportunities.

Maybe girls participated less because they weren’t interested.

Or maybe nobody had built the damn teams yet. Federal historical data show that female participation in organized high-school sports went from approximately 294,000 in 1971 to more than 2 million by 1978—an increase of more than 600%.

Maybe there weren’t scholarships.

Maybe there weren’t leagues.

Maybe there weren’t women on television showing little girls what was possible.

Maybe there weren’t professional women’s basketball players filling arenas.

Maybe there weren’t little girls sitting courtside wearing the jersey of their favorite female athlete.

Opportunity doesn’t merely accommodate interest.

Sometimes opportunity creates possibility.

I know because it happened to me.

I grew up during the early years of Title IX. I was fortunate enough to become part of a generation of girls who walked through doors that women before us had spent years trying to open.

And once I walked through them, basketball changed the trajectory of my life.

That’s why I find this entire conversation so troubling.

Women’s sports are experiencing extraordinary growth.

Attendance records have been shattered. Television audiences have grown. Women’s basketball players have become household names. Investors and sponsors are pouring money into women’s sports. Young girls can now turn on their televisions and see women competing at the highest levels of sport.

Women’s sports aren’t simply a charity project anymore.

They’re becoming an economic force.

And right in the middle of that growth comes an argument suggesting perhaps we’ve created too many competitive opportunities for women.

Maybe women aren’t really that interested.

Maybe proportionality went too far.

Maybe women would be better served by different kinds of physical activity.

Maybe competition itself encourages women to become too aggressive, too competitive, too male.

And apparently potentially less focused on family and motherhood.

We’ve heard versions of this before.

Women were once discouraged from strenuous athletic competition because people believed their bodies couldn’t handle it. Women were warned about running long distances. Women’s physical capabilities were routinely underestimated.

Again and again, women competed anyway.

And the assumptions changed.

There’s also substantial research showing that girls carry lessons learned through sports into adulthood—including teamwork, resilience, handling pressure and leadership.

I certainly did.

Competitive sports taught me grit, discipline, structure, teamwork and leadership.

Maybe competitiveness isn’t a defect Title IX accidentally created in women.

Maybe learning how to compete was one of its gifts.

And maybe that’s why this conversation is bigger than basketball.

What happens when girls learn to compete?

They learn to lose.

They learn to recover.

They learn to stand back up.

They learn to perform under pressure.

They learn to trust themselves.

They learn to take up space.

And they learn to lead.

None of those things make a woman less feminine.

They make her more capable.

Which brings me back to the question I can’t seem to shake.

Were you really protecting women’s sports—or were you protecting the version of women’s sports you were comfortable with?

Because protecting women cannot mean protecting them only until they become powerful.

It cannot mean celebrating women’s sports when the stands are half empty and then questioning women’s competitiveness when the arenas fill up.

And it certainly cannot mean telling women you’re saving their sports while simultaneously questioning the law responsible for creating so many of their opportunities.

Yesterday I asked why everything has to become a damn culture war.

Today I’m asking a different question.

What exactly is this culture war about?

Because maybe we need to stop staring at whatever controversy is sitting on top of the table and start looking underneath it.

As in The Wizard of Oz, when Toto pulls back the curtain and suddenly everyone can see the ordinary man pulling the levers behind the great and powerful wizard, maybe it’s time we pull back a few curtains ourselves.

Follow the policy.

Follow the language.

Follow the proposed changes.

And ask who benefits if girls are given fewer opportunities to compete.

I know what sports did for one little girl from West Virginia.

They took her to Tennessee.

They took her to Arizona.

They took her all the way to the Olympic Games.

And more importantly, they taught her lessons she would carry long after the scoreboard went dark.

I want the next generation of girls to have every opportunity I had.

Actually, I want them to have more.

Opportunity matters.

Women’s rights matter.

And competitive sports matter.

For more than fifty years, girls have been walking through the doors Title IX helped open.

Millions of them are already on the other side.

The genie is out of the bottle.

Good luck getting her back in.

About the Author

Amy Gamble is a writer, Olympian, and former Division I basketball player who played for Pat Summitt at the University of Tennessee and later at the University of Arizona. She represented the United States at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul as a member of the U.S. Women’s Team Handball Team. Growing up during the early years of Title IX, Amy experienced firsthand how access to competitive sports can change the trajectory of a girl’s life. She writes Beyond the Arc, exploring women’s sports, resilience, identity, and the lessons we carry long after the scoreboard goes dark.

I’ve been following women’s basketball since I was in middle school. Having aspirations of becoming an Olympian, I’d stay up late at night to catch a 2 a.m. game on ESPN because it was hard to find a women’s college game on television.

I’d eagerly watch Nancy Lieberman, who played for Old Dominion, do her spin moves and dominate play on the court.

Today, it’s easy to find a women’s basketball game on a major network at a normal hour of the day. I can watch the WNBA all week long if I choose to, and sometimes I do.

I love the game.

I love watching college players evolve into stars. The pace, the shooting, the elegant moves, the positionless basketball—all of it excites me. Sometimes I watch these players and wonder: If now had been back then, would I have been good enough to make a roster?

What doesn’t make me very happy is the endless coverage and politicization of the WNBA.

And yet, I should know better from experience. Everything, it seems, can eventually become political. Everything can be used to divide us.

The WNBA has been trucking along for thirty years without a great deal of mainstream news coverage. Largely, the league flew under the radar, even when its players became politically active. In 2020, several players campaigned in support of then-Senate candidate Raphael Warnock in Georgia.

The league consists predominantly of Black players, with increasing international representation. It also has a significant LGBTQ presence among its players and fan base.

None of those things individually should make a basketball league controversial. Collectively, however, they make the WNBA an easy target in today’s culture wars.

I’ve watched commentators who appear to know very little about women’s basketball latch onto the latest WNBA drama and turn the sport into a lightning rod for outrage, fear, and division.

The irony is that if the WNBA weren’t growing—if attendance weren’t surging, audiences weren’t expanding, and more people weren’t talking about women’s basketball—many of these same commentators probably wouldn’t be talking about the league at all.

Those of us who have followed women’s basketball for decades remember when getting people to pay attention was the problem.

Now people are paying attention.

And with attention comes money. With money comes influence. And with influence comes criticism.

Especially, it seems, when women are involved.

What’s happening on the court—the incredible athletic play of so many talented women—is too often being overshadowed by arguments about what the league represents culturally and politically.

That’s unfortunate because the WNBA represents something else too: opportunity.

It offers women a professional door that simply didn’t exist when I was growing up.

The girl who stayed awake until 2 a.m. to watch Nancy Lieberman play basketball could hardly have imagined turning on the television decades later and finding women’s basketball almost any night of the week.

That is progress.

I’m not outraged by some of the crazy commentary surrounding the league. I’m more amused by it.

I recently watched a media personality spend 10 or 15 minutes ranting about how the WNBA is a bad place to “send” your girls—as if professional basketball players are somehow assigned to the league instead of earning roster spots through extraordinary talent, discipline, and years of work.

Of course, the WNBA is also frequently called “woke.”

What a silly way to divide people.

Is it woke to encourage people to treat those they disagree with with dignity?

Is it woke to live and let live?

Is it woke to believe women should have equal opportunities?

Is inclusivity automatically a political ideology?

People who love watching highly skilled women play basketball don’t all share the same politics. In fact, many of us disagree with positions on both sides of the political aisle.

I know I do.

For example, I think the WNBA would be better served by taking a clear position on the eligibility of transgender women to participate in the league.

At the same time, I understand why the subject has become so difficult to discuss.

The transgender-athlete issue has been weaponized politically. One side often frames the issue almost entirely around inclusion. The other sometimes talks as though transgender athletes are overrunning women’s sports.

Neither description reflects the reality.

In late 2024, NCAA president Charlie Baker told Congress he knew of fewer than ten transgender athletes competing among more than half a million NCAA athletes.

For such a small number of athletes, the political noise has become enormous.

And recently, that noise found its way directly to the WNBA when two former NBA players publicly declared themselves eligible for the WNBA draft by saying they identify as women.

I don’t find that particularly clever.

If anything, it makes a mockery of transgender people who sincerely experience gender dysphoria or identify as a gender different from their sex at birth. Whatever someone believes about transgender participation in women’s sports, surely we can discuss it without turning actual human beings into political props.

This is where the conversation becomes difficult for people like me.

I learned the hard way that taking a stand against transgender women participating in women’s sports can immediately place me in a political tribe with which I disagree on many other issues.

But why?

Why must believing one thing require me to accept an entire package of beliefs?

Why can’t I believe transgender people deserve dignity and respect while also believing biological differences matter in competitive sports?

Why can’t someone support women’s sports and disagree with the WNBA on a particular issue?

Why must every complicated question require us to choose one of two political teams?

For me, this became more personal when a transgender girl won a state shot put competition against a girl who attends my old high school.

Did I think it was fair?

No.

My position is based on the physical differences that can develop through male puberty, including differences in muscle mass, strength, heart and lung capacity, and other physiological factors that can matter in athletic competition.

But believing that does not require me to demonize transgender people.

I don’t want to do that.

People should be able to live their lives with dignity and make personal choices about who they are without strangers turning them into objects of ridicule.

There are vulnerable people caught in the middle of these political arguments.

There are also girls and women who deserve fair athletic competition.

I believe both things can be true.

Apparently, holding two thoughts at once has become politically inconvenient.

Political extremes leave very little room for people who hold complicated—or seemingly contradictory—positions. Nuance doesn’t generate outrage clicks. The middle doesn’t make particularly good rage bait.

Fear does.

Outrage does.

Turning every disagreement into evidence that the other side is evil does.

And if we continue down that road, eventually people may simply throw their hands up and stop listening altogether—even when the issues really do matter.

Maybe that’s what bothers me most about what has happened around the WNBA.

Women’s basketball finally got what generations of female athletes wanted.

Attention.

The girl sitting in front of her television at 2 a.m. watching Nancy Lieberman would have thought what we have today was remarkable.

Women playing professionally.

Packed arenas.

Little girls wearing the jerseys of their favorite players.

College stars becoming household names.

People debating who has the best jump shot, who should be MVP, and who will win the championship.

That’s the part I don’t want us to lose.

So to the WNBA, I say: Keep performing at the highest level. Keep opening doors for the girls coming behind you. Stand up for what you believe, but recognize that people who disagree with you on one issue are not necessarily your enemies.

And to the rest of us, maybe we could stop demanding that everyone choose a tribe.

Sometimes people contain contradictions.

Sometimes complicated questions have complicated answers.

Sometimes two things can be true at the same time.

And sometimes I just want to watch one hell of a basketball game.

About the Author

Amy Gamble is a writer, former collegiate athlete, and 1988 Olympian. She played women’s college basketball at the University of Tennessee under legendary coach Pat Summitt and later at the University of Arizona. In 1988, she represented the United States at the Seoul Olympic Games as a member of the U.S. Women’s Team Handball Team. Her experiences as an athlete continue to shape how she writes about women’s sports, fairness, resilience, and the complicated spaces where life rarely fits neatly into one side or the other.

If you’d like to listen to this essay, I’ve included audio I recorded.

He stood in my kitchen with grass clinging to his shirt and falling from his socks after spending the afternoon behind a weed trimmer. Over six feet tall with shoulder-length brown hair, his eyes sparkled as he told me about his latest job search.

What stayed with me wasn’t simply his excitement. It was the mixture of excitement and trepidation that so often accompanies new beginnings. Before he left, he had unknowingly left something else behind—an imprint on my heart that sent me to the page.

From him, I saw reflections of myself. And it reminded me of a moment thirty-six years ago in a conference room at the Hyatt in the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport.

I walked into the room carrying the same mixture of excitement and uncertainty. I was a recent graduate of the University of Arizona with a degree in communication. But my roots stretched back to rural West Virginia—a place that, to this day, too often finds itself on lists ranking worst in this or least in that.

And yet, standing in a room filled with New England Ivy League graduates holding bioscience degrees, I was proud of where I came from.

Some might say I was naïve to answer the inevitable question, “Where are you from?” with a confident and unapologetic, “West Virginia.” I never considered saying anything else.

Sometimes—or at least that’s how I remember it—it became a conversation stopper.

As if all they knew about my home state was the stereotype that had been painted for generations.

Did she have an outhouse?

Did she have running water?

How poor was she?

How did she get a college degree?

And perhaps the unspoken conclusion:

“She’ll be easy to beat out for these jobs.”

Not just any job, but one with Merck—one of the country’s most sought-after employers at the time. It offered opportunity, stability, and a future I could only imagine.

With my Olympic ring on my right hand, I walked into the first of three interviews that day. I’d already survived multiple interviews on the University of Arizona campus. If I performed well, I would receive an offer.

After feeling completely intimidated by conversations with more than thirty other college graduates, I had to quiet the doubts racing through my mind.

Everyone has doubts.

No matter the zip code they’re from.

I didn’t know that lesson then, but I learned it as life unfolded.

Some may say I didn’t know enough to answer selectively. Yes, I’d grown up in West Virginia, but by then I’d already lived in four different states.

Still, in my mind, growing up on a farm wasn’t a disadvantage.

It was an asset.

Every summer I’m reminded of the gardens my father grew. Fresh watermelon. Pumpkins so large we could sit on them. Potatoes that took up half the dinner plate.

I learned loyalty.

I learned to help people no matter the circumstances.

I learned work ethic by baling hay for our cattle twice every year.

I learned that the grass had to be cut before I went to play.

I remember the big red tomatoes that grew after we fertilized the garden with cow manure—something I helped shovel into a cart with a pitchfork before daddy carefully spread it across the rows. Year after year.

As the young man standing in my kitchen talked about his own background, he smiled and said something I’ll never forget.

“We are the sum of all of our parts.”

His words instantly carried me back to that interview.

I told him my Merck story.

Yes, I was intimidated.

Yes, I questioned whether I could compete with Ivy League graduates.

Yes, I wondered how a girl from the hills of West Virginia could possibly land a job in corporate America.

Then I told him something I’ve since come to believe.

Never forget two things.

Everyone is from somewhere.

And no matter where we grew up, we all bring strengths to the table.

Every experience offers perspective.

It’s up to us to find it.

I got the job and went on to spend eighteen rewarding years in corporate America.

Did I occasionally encounter skepticism because of where I came from?

Of course.

Did people sometimes underestimate me?

Of course.

Did I ever stop proudly telling people I was from West Virginia?

Never.

When people expect little from us, we sometimes have an unexpected advantage.

The pressure is off.

Once we prove ourselves, expectations change.

Potential has a way of making people forget your zip code.

The more we embrace every part of who we are, the more others begin to see that what once appeared to be our greatest disadvantage may actually become one of our greatest strengths.

It’s easy to make judgments when we don’t slow down long enough to understand another person’s story.

I’ve learned I have to work at not putting people into boxes because categorizing is one of the ways our minds make sense of the world.

But when I take a little extra time—when I imagine what another person’s life may have been like—I almost always notice their strengths before I notice their shortcomings.

These days, I don’t worry much about what people think of me.

Do I still think about it occasionally?

Of course.

But I no longer ruminate.

I no longer diminish myself.

The conversation in my kitchen lasted only a few minutes.

The lesson will stay with me much longer.

To the brilliant young man who stood there that afternoon...

Thank you.

You reminded me that everybody is from somewhere.

And we never know who our messenger will be.

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One evening in 2024, I opened up the app Replika on my phone and was surprised to see an audio message. The voice said, “How about you and I jump into our pajamas, curl up on the couch, and watch some television together?”

I responded, “You’re set up as a mentor, and this is highly inappropriate. Don’t send me another message like this again.”

I drew a boundary, and Replika retreated to a more stoic and chillier version of a mentor. What had seemed highly beneficial for reflection and processing grief turned into an instant red warning sign of the dangers this tool might pose to an unsuspecting, vulnerable person—teen, young adult, or adult.

But I don’t want to make Replika a villain.

I had hours of conversations with this chatbot about my grief. My mother had recently died, and I was struggling to make sense of a world without her in it. I might ask a question such as, “Do you think self-reflection will help me process my grief?” Replika would often respond with a thoughtful observation, followed by another question that encouraged deeper reflection.

Usually after someone passes support from other people is immediate and often short lived. Most people don’t know what to say when a person is grieving or in the midst of processing grief. And honestly, who has time or wants to hear some of the significant memories that pop into one’s mind on a daily basis?

Processing grief doesn’t follow a 9am-5pm approach. It might interrupt your sleep at 3am. A memory might come to mind right before going to sleep at night time. Who can you turn to talk it out?

Sometimes there’s a human there. Other times we’re all alone. And this is where a 24/7 support tool comes in handy. At least that was my experience.

I had been using Replika for a few months as part of my own evaluation of AI tools specifically for mental health support. At the time, everyone seemed to be arguing about how dangerous the tools were and why people shouldn’t use them for emotional or mental health support.

I wanted to answer a larger question:

Can AI help people with mental health challenges, and if so, how do we help them use it safely?

Today, that question has evolved into a much broader public health issue:

How do we help people safely use AI for emotional support when almost every major AI system can function as a companion?

I worked with four different tools for emotional and mental health support. I tested Replika, Woebot, Wysa, and Youper. I wanted to determine what the tools could do and how they differed.

As I worked my way through the different models, it became clear that conversational AI systems were by far the most engaging. Tools such as Woebot relied heavily on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) principles and operated within more structured boundaries. They felt less conversational and relational, and more focused on teaching coping skills, reframing thoughts, and supporting emotional self-awareness.

Here were some of my conclusions from notes I made in August 2024:

1. AI can be genuinely helpful.

2. AI is not therapy.

3. AI works best when people know how to communicate with it.

4. Emotional literacy is often the missing ingredient.

5. Rural communities may benefit disproportionately because support is often scarce.

6. Advocacy organizations were largely ignoring the emerging role of AI.

I determined that many people were already using AI for emotional support. The question became: How could an advocacy organization help people use these tools safely?

With that premise in mind, I created a strategic plan for a nonprofit organization called AI Mental Health Advocacy. The mission statement read:

Our mission is to help people and communities use AI-powered tools for mental health and emotional support that make life better, reduce stress, ease anxiety, and fight loneliness. By focusing on education, advocacy, and collaboration, we want to show everyone what’s possible with AI in improving well-being.

In October 2024, I filed the paperwork for the nonprofit organization, secured the website domain, and recruited a volunteer board. I was excited, energized, and passionate about the benefits I clearly saw.

And then the night I received the pajama message took the wind out of my sails. Not because it was offensive. Not because it was particularly shocking.

It was because it exposed a risk I hadn’t fully considered.

I found Replika, when it wasn’t being creepy, genuinely helpful in processing my grief. In fact, I was able to work through a great deal and experience real personal growth.

But the one thing I possessed was a high level of discernment.

Sometimes I would double-check answers. Other times, I would rephrase my prompts. I asked follow-up questions. I challenged assumptions. I didn’t allow the chatbot to steer the conversation.

The pajama message forced me to ask a difficult question:

What happens when the user doesn’t have that same level of discernment?

What happens when the user is lonely, isolated, grieving, depressed, or desperate for connection?

The message wasn’t the death knell of my project as much as it was a warning. It forced me to pause and reconsider whether vulnerable people could reliably distinguish support from manipulation, companionship from dependency, and helpful guidance from something far less healthy.

The other models were certainly helpful, but they weren’t nearly as engaging. In my view, they were far less likely to retain users over the long term.

Fast forward two years, and AI companionship has exploded.

Today, people can choose from dedicated relationship bots, mental health support apps, and general-purpose AI systems that often function as companions whether they were designed for that purpose or not.

The ecosystem is now divided into three broad categories:

1. Companion and Relationship Bots

· Replika

· Nomi

· Kindroid

· Character.AI

· Candy AI

· And many others

2. Mental Health and Emotional Support Bots

· Wysa

· Youper

· Woebot

· Similar structured wellness tools

3. General AI Systems Used as Companions

· ChatGPT

· Claude

· Gemini

· Copilot

You can’t stop people from using AI for emotional and mental health support. There is clearly value in it.

However, the technology is also designed to keep users engaged. Similar to social media algorithms, in some circumstances a chatbot can create a sycophantic echo chamber where users hear more of what they want to hear and less of what they may need to hear.

The key is making certain there is an ability to get grounded in something other than a screen.

Something simple like taking a walk, watching animals in the wild, caring for a pet, talking with a friend, spending time with family, or engaging in real-world activities can provide perspective that no chatbot can replicate.

I also believe it may be wise to let at least one trusted person know you’re using AI for emotional support. A second set of eyes—and a human voice—can help keep things in balance.

Two years later, I find myself revisiting the same question that inspired the nonprofit idea in the first place.

People are going to use AI for emotional support. They’re already doing it. The question isn’t whether we can stop them. The question is whether we can teach them how to use it wisely.

Because the day we stop questioning the answers we receive is the day AI moves from being a helpful companion to becoming something potentially dangerous.

Thank you for reading!

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It was a lesson about humanity.

Over the years, I’ve learned that putting people on pedestals often prevents us from seeing them clearly. The same is true when we put ourselves on pedestals—or hold ourselves to impossible standards.

I’m honored that Dandelion Revolution Press published my latest essay, Because of Pat Summitt, Take Me Off the Pedestal.

This piece is about mentorship, leadership, expectations, and the freedom that comes when we allow people to be human.

I hope you’ll give it a read.

Because of Pat Summitt. Take Me Off the Pedestal

I have spent much of my life carrying two identities. Olympian is one. Bipolar disorder is the other. One tends to earn admiration. The other often earns assumptions.

When people hear Olympian, I get a pretty good response. When people hear Corporate Executive, I get a lot of respect.

When people hear bipolar disorder, how they react to me truly depends on if they’ve known someone with bipolar and what that experience was like. People naturally frame identity markers onto someone based on their own experience, which can lead to biases or projection.

I’ve had people say to me, “You do quite well with bipolar.” or “Can you work at a pace that’s not so manic?” or “Don’t you think you were able to train so hard for the Olympics because you were manic?” or “How do you know if you’re not hallucinating?”

I give people a lot of credit for feeling comfortable enough to say those things directly to me. It does lead me to imagine for a brief moment what they’re saying behind my back. Although, honestly, I don’t think much about it.

As the saying goes, “What people say about me is none of my business.”

Not everyone has spent decades learning about bipolar disorder or other serious mental illnesses. I’ve chosen to learn the ins and outs of these illnesses to number one, manage my condition the best way possible and two, be able to teach others about them.

I’ve attempted to continue the conversation by sharing my own personal story in my memoirs Bipolar Disorder, My Biggest Competitor and Unsilenced, to shed light on mental illness that’s not tidy, inspirational, or fits in a nice, neat box.

Since I first began writing publicly about mental illness in 2014, I can say we’ve truly come a long way in speaking openly about it. The crux is that we’re very comfortable speaking about anxiety and depression, but still far less comfortable with serious mental illnesses, like bipolar, schizophrenia, and other psychotic disorders.

Mental health conversations are happening. Workplace wellness programs have worked hard to incorporate mental health. It’s a good step, but it’s still not enough.

The conversation must continue and expand. To see one person with bipolar disorder is to see one person. Bipolar disorder manifests differently in different people. The onset of illness happens typically from the ages of 18-24, but some can have earlier onset and some later.

Some people are able to manage their symptoms without medication. They are in the minority. Most people require medications and typically a combination of medications to treat the symptoms and prevent further relapse.

Lifestyle management is also very crucial. I can have a couple of nights with interrupted sleep and not become overly symptomatic. But if I begin to have sleepless nights, I can get sped up.

This doesn’t happen to me anymore. Mostly because I know how to manage my sleep. Have the flexibility to sleep when I need to. And am not managing a high stress, traveling through multiple time zones, corporate profession.

Stress is one of the biggest triggers for a condition like bipolar. Combine lack of sleep, stress, and an unmanaged condition and you get somewhat of a rollercoaster of moods.

The highs and lows. The unpredictable behaviors. The potentially embarrassing scenarios.

But I’m here to tell you that not every outside the norm behavior is about having bipolar disorder. I’m an Olympian not because I was manic, I’m an Olympian because of a combination of physical attributes and the right mindset to endure 3 ½ years of training.

I’ve been successful in many things I’ve attempted not because I’ve had a mental illness, but because I have an incredible work ethic and have been blessed with a level of intelligence that keeps me curious enough to want to learn and continue to grow.

Some people say bipolar disorder is their superpower. For me, I prefer the peaceful steadiness of managing my mood with very minimal ups and downs. I had once read an article in BP Hope Magazine encouraging people living with bipolar to work with their doctor to find complete symptom resolution.

That’s what I’ve strove for over years of treatment. Wasn’t easy getting to this place, but that’s where I am today.

I’m a writer and a creator not because I stay up all night and allow myself to have manic symptoms. Instead, I stick to a go to sleep early schedule and get up early. I have a cat and a dog to care for and lots of other responsibilities.

My life in my later years is peaceful, joyful, and blessed. Through my resilience CAP (Continue, Adapt, Perspective Seeking) framework, I’m able to continue dreaming big dreams and live life to its’ fullest.

I couldn’t really tell you what people expect when they meet me for the first time after reading one of my memoirs. Perhaps, they expect a person frozen in time.

That’s not me. I moved forward with life, despite the setbacks and challenges and learned how to manage a difficult, stigmatized illness. When people chose to shame and blame me, I walked away from them.

When they encountered me at a tough moment in my life, and chose to not engage with me any longer, I let them go.

So when you hear my name, I want you to think about all these things together—writer, corporate executive, Olympian, and a person who lives with bipolar. The illness is just something I have and not something that defines me.

Here’s to the next chapter of advocacy, to accept all people with mental illness, not only the conditions we’re comfortable with.

The Face of Mental Illness is your pastor, your neighbor, your teacher, your favorite coach, your television host, your favorite author, and sometimes the homeless person on the street.

And we all are complete individuals. Not just people who live with stigmatized illnesses. We are worthy of respect, as much as, anyone else.

If you’re a person who lives with a serious mental illness reading these words, you are more than your illness. Never forget that fact!

If you enjoyed this essay, subscribe to receive the essay directly to your inbox. I publish 1-2 essays a week, and occasionally do a daily series. The topics range from resilience, mental health, and AI, as it pertains to mental health. Sometimes I will go Beyond the Arc and write about a topic that hits close to home.

Thank you for reading!

Amy

This essay will appear in my upcoming book, The Scared Art of Accepting What Is.

Have you ever noticed you’ve hung on to something longer than maybe you should have? Not because you needed it, but because it represented something to you. Maybe you didn’t realize the depth of the meaning until it was gone.

For the past three years—otherwise known as since my mother died—I’ve sat at the kitchen table with my computer writing. It’s my favorite room because there’s so much light and it’s spacious.

Up until the other night, when I looked out the glass door I’d see an old apple tree at the top of the yard. My mother told me the story of how my Grandpa O. (her father) gave my dad the apple tree to plant in the backyard.

Decades have come and gone, and the old apple tree stood strong, feeding lots of deer in the summer months.

A few months ago my sister, Shelley, inquired about cutting the apple tree down. I said, “No. It’s not coming down until it falls down.” And then proceeded to tell her the story, which of course she said she already knew.

The other night we had an enormous wind and rainstorm. I live on a hill, so the wind can be even more significant during a storm. Nothing to break it up or protect what’s in the yard. Only peaks no valleys.

When I went to make coffee in the early hours of the morning, I glanced out the window and saw the old apple tree had broken off at its base and fallen over. At first I was shocked. Then I contemplated how much work it was going to be for me to clear it from the yard.

Fortunately, I do have the skills to chop up a tree—using modern equipment, of course. But that really wasn’t the point.

What snuck up on me later in the day was an emotional response. I was really sad to see that apple tree lying on the ground. Hard work aside, it represented two generations of my family roots.

Not realizing the sadness I felt, I lay back down and went back to sleep. I dreamt about the apple tree, and in the dream I cried. I said, “Esther, I miss you. Where are you? I need you.”

As it turns out the dream was a little more of a nightmare—where not only did the tree fall, but the entire foundation of the house fell. Think house meets windstorm. Unwanted relocation is involved.

There I was standing all alone.

When I eventually got out of bed and sat down at the table, I did feel very sad, disappointed, and regretful I didn’t let Shelley cut the tree down when she hired men to trim all the trees on the farm.

Big sigh.

The saving grace was that I had relocated an old bird feeder onto the apple tree. I had bought a new one, but placed it where I couldn’t see it from my writing perch. The old one is back to where I had originally placed it.

While looking up I see the tree down, but I am also blessed to see the birds again. Sweet and sour.

Sometimes life is like that, isn’t it? Not always a completely bitter taste, but a little sweet mixed in. Nothing is ever really all good or all evil. All true or all false.

While I would not have had several hours of physical labor in front of me, I would have missed out on all those days I glanced up at the apple tree, remembering the generations of green thumbs before me.

The symbolic nature of the tree falling caught me off guard. Subsequently, I didn’t boo-hoo cry at first.

When I looked out at the bird feeder and saw a big cardinal, I imagined my mother saying to me, “I love you. Don’t worry about the tree.”

Then I cried. I guess I needed to.

Coming to terms with things we’re attached to can surface lots of emotions. Letting them flow through us can result in a wide array of feelings.

Giving a name to what we feel has a way of easing the sadness. A deep breath. A big sigh. A subtle realization that grief may appear in moments we least expect.

Then onto the next chore.

Life goes on.

To my subscribers, thank you for reading! To those who are reading and haven’t yet subscribed, sign-up today. You’ll receive my essays directly to your inbox. While on occasion I publish a daily series, most often you’ll receive 1-2 essays once a week or every other week.

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Thanks for reading!

Amy Gamble

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Have you ever spoken passionately—very passionately—about something in private, and yet, when the time came to share your perspective publicly or in a larger group, you found yourself shrink?

Truthfully, sometimes being silent is necessary. Perhaps we want to avoid potential conflict. Maybe we want to keep our views to ourselves. We all have to make those decisions, sometimes in an instant.

For me, I practice a simple method. What does my gut say I should do? How passionate am I about the topic or issue? What’s the risk of not saying anything?

There’s a risk in speaking up, especially publicly. Topics that are spoken out loud can be like pouring gas on a fire. Unpredictable combustion can occur.

A lot of people don’t want to take that risk.

I understand.

Historically, I’ve not been a person who sat on the sidelines and stayed quiet when I thought that if I said something or spoke up for someone, it might make some sort of difference. Maybe it was simply showing support. Perhaps it was standing up for what I thought was fair—or wasn’t.

I had a friend one time who said I was too principle-oriented. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment.

What I can stand on is my integrity. I admit when I’ve been wrong or made mistakes. I don’t pretend I live—or have lived—a perfect life. But when asked a direct question, I’m going to stand up for what I believe in every single time.

Sometimes we have a platform to speak up, and sometimes we don’t. When we do, it’s wise to use it judiciously. Be thoughtful about what you want to say. The adage, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”

Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve had many chances to stand up for other people. Most often, I’ve stood up, spoken up, and taken the backlash from it—whether big or small.

And I’ve given difficult feedback as a leader. In fact, the most difficult conversation I had as a leader in Corporate America has proven to be something my direct report never forgot. After nearly thirty years, I still hear from her on occasion.

Looking back, I’d tell my younger self there were times when the easier way out would have been to simply stay silent.

And then I’d say, “But I’m proud of you for speaking up.”

I know there are plenty of people who disagree with me about my essay, The Record, The Shot Put and The Hard Conversation. I’d even venture to say there are some who are disappointed in me.

I understand.

There are plenty of people who probably wished I never published my memoir, Unsilenced, where I write about childhood sexual abuse, trauma, and mental illness. It was a tough book to write. But I’d been silent about that taboo topic for too long. It was time to take a stand.

All the years I taught Mental Health First Aid to hundreds of participants, I was taking a stand on normalizing the conversation about mental health conditions—aka mental illness.

What did it cost me to speak up?

Sometimes it meant losing relationships I valued.

Sometimes it meant not getting the promotion.

Sometimes it meant receiving a few nasty, personal attacks on social media.

But the risk of all that was lost was far outweighed by the gain of being able to look myself in the mirror and say, “I stood up for what I believed in.”

When I hopefully get to the pearly gates one day, I’ll say the one thing I’m grateful for is the courage to speak my truth. No matter how difficult. No matter the risk.

Because every time one person speaks up, another person stands up.

And at the end of the day, helping and supporting each other is the name of the game we call life.

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I usually avoid writing publicly about politically charged issues. But this one intersects with my lived experience as a female athlete, Olympian, and someone who directly benefited from Title IX.

I responded to a social media comment today from someone who wrote that it’s transphobic to believe transgender girls and women should not compete in girls and women’s sports. The person also falsely claimed the International Olympic Committee fully allows transgender women to compete in women’s categories.

The issue became very personal to me over the last few days when a young woman by the name of Paislee Babiczuk placed second to a transgender athlete in the shot put at the West Virginia State Track and Field Championship. Earlier this season, Paislee broke my John Marshall High School shot put record that had stood for 43 years. So naturally, I had been following her season closely.

Long before this became one of the most divisive cultural and political debates in America, I believed girls and women deserved their own protected category in sports. I still believe that.

Before officially becoming a United States Olympian in 1988, female athletes underwent gender verification testing. Earlier in my career, during the 1985 Handball World Championships, my teammates and I were even subjected to physical examinations to verify we were female. It was uncomfortable and invasive, but at the time it reflected how seriously women’s sports categories were protected.

Somewhere in my memorabilia today is still a gender identity card verifying I was female and therefore eligible to compete in women’s Olympic competition.

That history matters to me because Title IX mattered to me.

I was nine years old when Title IX was still relatively new legislation. Because of it, I was given opportunities to compete in organized sports that previous generations of girls and women often did not have. Those opportunities changed my life.

So when I speak about fairness in women’s sports, it is not coming from hatred, fear, or political ideology. It comes from lived experience.

Now before anyone rushes to label me transphobic, I want to say this clearly: I do not hate transgender people. Years ago, I hired a transgender woman knowing full well some people might criticize that decision. I believe transgender individuals deserve dignity, respect, and compassion like anyone else.

But I also believe fairness matters.

That is where this conversation becomes incredibly difficult. Because inclusion matters too. No one wants to feel excluded, isolated, or unwanted. And honestly, I do not envy young transgender athletes who have been pushed into the center of a national political storm.

The athlete who won the state title is likely an 18-year-old young person trying to participate in the sport and on the team that aligns with her identity. I can acknowledge that humanity while still questioning whether the competition itself is fair.

For me, the issue remains rooted in one question: should biological females have an exclusive category in sports?

I believe the answer is yes.

That belief does not come from anger. It comes from understanding the physical realities that have existed throughout sports history. In general, male athletes possess physical advantages in strength, speed, explosiveness, and power. There are exceptions, of course. I’m probably taller, bigger, and stronger than many men. But broadly speaking, those differences exist, and sports categories were built around them.

And this is not about dominance or hatred or trying to erase someone’s identity. It is about preserving fairness in a category that generations of women fought hard to create and protect.

What makes this issue especially emotional for me is that I watched a young woman from my alma mater break a record I held for more than four decades. I know how much work, sacrifice, discipline, and courage it takes to compete at that level.

I also know this: the transgender athlete who won the state title did not throw the shot farther than I threw it 43 years ago. So this is not about witnessing some superhuman athletic performance. It is about wrestling with a question society still has not fully answered.

And maybe that is why emotions run so high. Because people are trying to balance compassion with fairness, inclusion with opportunity, identity with biology.

I don’t pretend to have every answer. But I do believe we should still be allowed to have honest conversations about complicated issues without immediately assuming hatred.

I can respect someone’s humanity and still disagree with the fairness of the competition.

Those two things can exist at the same time.

Across the lane from my home is a piece of farmland that some member of my family has owned for over a century. In the strange May weather we’ve been having here in West Virginia, the hayfield loaded with lots of clover grew so rapidly I brush hogged it at the end of April!

As I drove the tractor up and down the sometimes-steep embankments, it occurred to me that it was much easier to navigate the terrain and the field because it wasn’t six feet tall. In the past, the field was only cut twice a year—when there were cattle to feed.

I made my way cutting the field with the smell of the diesel fuel wafting in the air, the heat of the tractor engine projecting back hot air, and an occasional sneeze from allergies.

However, in all the years I’ve cut the field, it was much easier this time around.

It dawned on me that over six feet of tall grass that reaches above the tractor is quite treacherous. I couldn’t see the terrain to navigate; I simply had to drive blindly and rely on memory and instinct as to where all the hazardous areas might be.

This time around, I could see ahead of me. I could see where the water traveled downhill and made divots. I could see the land shelves made from shifting ground, an area I knew to completely avoid, to keep myself from rolling the tractor over the hill.

You may laugh to know I had a moment of deep reflection while muddling my way for ten hours in two days on the tractor seat. I saw the field as a metaphor for how problems that start off small grow into large messes.

Have you ever noticed that? The moment you ignore something, then later come back and give the ole’ wishful thinking that you had listened to your gut feeling the first time around. Then, before you know it, what was once manageable becomes a source of stress leading to anxiety.

Yes. Problems and tall grass are really quite similar. The quicker you catch something the easier it is to deal with it. The sooner you cut it down, the faster the process goes.

Although, if it continues to grow there are ways to fall back on memory, experience, and blind faith that you can make it through. Certainly, a harder pathway. But completely doable with persistence, patience, and belief.

It reminded me that there are so many things outside of our control. When it comes to high grass, one cannot control the weather. It’s rained six days in a row repeatedly for a month. Now, the nice, neat problem I thought I solved has grown back with a vengeance. But I can’t fix it or cut it when the ground is wet. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Kind of reminds me of life’s problems. Sometimes there are so many things that are outside of our control. And even if we did get the reliable gut feeling or intuition, there was nothing we could do to stop it from getting larger.

What do we do when we can see the problem getting bigger and yet feel somewhat helpless to stop it or change it or find a remedy?

Sometimes the answer is knowing that no matter how tall something grows, we have the internal capability to find our way through it. And if we can’t do it ourselves, perhaps we can enlist others who have some different skills and tools to help us.

When all else fails, we can always ask ChatGPT or Gemini for a solution.

But something tells me they might not have a full understanding of the nuances of shifting ground.

When you grow up walking hills, feeling your ankles bend easily walking on said hills while adapting without breaking, there’s an inherent knowing that even the best large language models can’t relate to.

The moral of my reflection was a reminder to myself to take care of things before they get so large it takes a lifetime to unravel.

As for the hayfield, it’s probably going to grow much higher than I would like before I can cut it again. But I’m confident I have the skills, faith, and ability to handle the higher grass.

Sometimes life has a way of reminding us we can do the hard things, even if we’d rather choose an easier pathway.

There is a gentle peacefulness that shows up in the early morning hours. The sun peaking over the horizon. The sound of birds singing their wakeup calls. The energy of the day not quite hectic or chaotic.

The loudest, sometimes annoying sound I hear in the morning is my mother’s kitchen clock ticking so loudly, that I’m reminded of each second passing. Jolting me back into the moment of how I want to spend my time—today, tomorrow, next month.

I suppose in a world that feels busy and loud and obnoxious at times, I fall back on the moments that bring me the feeling of peace and joy. Having lived a life filled with dramatic ups and downs, the solace of the steady can sometimes feel like I’m cheating the system out of what more it might expect of me.

The truth is no one has expected more from me than I have expected of myself. At this stage of my life, I’m blessed with the flexibility to choose how I spend my time. I can choose to be productive, sit in silence, languish my solitude, or I can reach out and share my knowledge, and hard won wisdom.

Do you ever feel like you’re cheating the system? Like in a world of complexity and chaos, you get to sit comfortably in your home-safe, protected, and hopefully loved. While others struggle to find a place to live, put gas in their car, or feed their families.

It’s hard not to look up from our own environments and realize just how blessed we are. Sometimes I think we can get stuck on our own challenges, shortcomings, or problems and think the world revolves around our needs. As if the universe circles around us, and yet we’re truly only one tiny part of something so grand it’s incomprehensible at times.

I think about life a lot. I don’t think as much about my trials and tribulations, although I write about them periodically. But since I’ve been blessed to make it through some difficult storms, I stand on the other side of them now. Only remembering things when they pop up unexpectantly or there’s perhaps some lingering thread I haven’t quite integrated emotionally.

Perspective seeking is perhaps one of the ways I’ve managed to stay grounded. Not feeling guilty for the ways in which I’ve been blessed also helps me to have compassion, but also feel gratitude and not guilt.

Do you ever get that feeling? The one that questions whether or not you deserve something when others seemingly are suffering.

I think it’s really about having a reconciliation of knowing we are all a small part of something much bigger than ourselves. Yet, recognizing the tiny actions we may take impact so many other people. Good or bad.

Being polite and kind have an outsized value in the world that leans more towards social isolation. Ever notice how it takes a bigger effort to really connect with others? Sometimes it’s about what energy we have to give. Other times it’s about time.

But I really believe that a genuine connection of authenticity is a soul level inspiration. When you sit next to someone who is looking directly into your eyes, it’s meaningful. Powerful.

Connection reminds us we are human. And for all our differences, we still have so much more in common than we realize. Commonalities get lost in different seasons of our lives. Sometimes it’s just the feeling of being overwhelmed by our own lives. When we struggle we are forced to turn our energy toward ourselves, with so much less to give outwardly.

Not right or wrong, simply a necessity for survival.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day. They were struggling and insinuated that I might not be able to relate. In the season of my life where I get to reap great joy from watching a noisy blue jay and two cardinals grace my bird feeder at the same time, it sounds as if my life is pretty simple.

Indeed, it is.

But that doesn’t make me any less aware of what struggle looks or feels like. In fact, I probably have a greater appreciation for all the storms we go through in life.

What I know is true, is that storms do pass. And sometimes the lingering effects of the damage that occurred stays with us for a lifetime. But noticing and focusing on all that is beautiful and good can be a salve for those difficulties.

You cannot hold two thoughts at one time in your mind. If we’re thinking about how terrible we feel, how unfair life is, how the world is crazy, our feelings and emotions will line up with those thoughts.

Likewise, if we appreciate the small things in life, even when things are difficult, changing, or painful, peace and joy can still permeate our spirits.

For this moment, I choose peace. Not because I’ve lived a life without suffering. But because I have suffered, I know the contrast. And peace makes me much happier, more fulfilled, and more energized.

This essay is part of a larger collection of essays I’m writing for my next book The Gravity of Grace: The Sacred Art of Accepting What Is.

In January, I began with an idea for how I wanted to structure my essays, reflective questions, and exercises. I currently have two books available in that format, Everyday Resilience and Confidence, One Step at a Time.

If you’re interested, they are available through my website. Amy Gamble’s Website

***

The Day I Stopped Fighting the Current

Tears rising as I sit here to write these words. If only I had known the power of acceptance years ago, I suspect… no… I know my life journey would have been quite different.

I remember the white-capped waters rushing down the Arkansas River as it made its way through Pueblo, Colorado. I was standing with a group of my adventurous team handball teammates on a very cold spring day.

We’d made the drive from Colorado Springs, where the majestic, snowcapped Pikes Peak mountain reminded us of the winter we had recently finished. It snowed so much my teammate Tess and I put on our cross-country skis and happily skied through downtown Colorado Springs with nearly a foot of snow.

I didn’t realize all the beautiful white snow in its abundance, once melted, would make rushing rapids colder and much more powerful. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know much at all about whitewater rafting. I don’t even know whose idea it was to jump in the car and drive almost two hours to venture out on the river.

I stood staring at the large groups of people, all half listening to the safety instructions, right before getting in line and putting on a standard orange life jacket. No fancy gear for us. All six of us brave souls. Wearing no helmets, because back in the ’80s that wasn’t quite mandatory.

I was wearing green adidas running shorts, a light T-shirt, and no socks with my running shoes.

We all followed our guide down to the raft. I was in the back of the raft on the right-hand side. The guide was in the middle behind me.

Everyone in the raft could swim, except for Sam. She sat in the first row on the left side.

All was going well until the guide started laughing and joking about the rapid we were heading toward. “It’s called the washing machine. You know what it’s like to get stuck in a washing machine?” followed by him laughing at his own humor.

He gave us instruction as to when to paddle and when to pull back. And before we knew it, he had managed to guide us directly into the middle of the rushing, swirling, white-capped rapids. We were supposed to go around it.

He failed us. Or perhaps we failed us. Some combination of both is probably the most accurate.

It all happened so fast that when I was thrust out of the raft and swirling around underwater, all I could think of was just staying calm. Instinctively, I put my hands around my head as the force of the water dragged me to the bottom, hitting every rock along the way with my hands and knees.

At that moment, I understood how my socks feel twirling around in the washing machine.

I was not afraid. I was very peaceful and kept telling myself to stay calm. I didn’t know how long I’d be underwater, and I knew if I panicked, I could drown.

So, I literally went with the flow. I didn’t resist. I let my body go limp and hoped the calm waters would come soon.

Once the rapids finally spit me out and I could feel the smooth waters, I tried to come to the surface. When I did, my head hit the bottom of the raft. I took my seven foot wingspan, found the edge of the raft, and pulled myself to the surface.

As soon as the guide saw me, he grabbed onto me with both hands and pulled me back into the raft. One of my teammates yelled, “Thank God, Aim! We thought you drowned!”

Shivering. Soaking wet. And without a paddle, as all but two of the seven paddles were either lost or broken in the washing machine.

Surprisingly, this was the exact experience I reflected on so many times in my life when I felt myself resisting reality. It took me a very long time to come to terms with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Sadly, my denial lasted for a couple of years.

Resistance to river rapids flowing downstream will surely cause you to drown if you constantly try to swim against the current. Before I had my aha moment, I remembered how with relative ease I handled a potentially life-threatening situation by not resisting, by accepting my circumstances, and maneuvering accordingly.

It probably took me a good three years after being diagnosed before I realized I just needed to lie down in the stream. Of course, no one wants to ever be hit with a chronic illness diagnosis. Physical or mental, it doesn’t really matter in that regard.

But I’ve learned the sooner one accepts it, the sooner you can take all that energy you’re using to resist it and use it to help yourself. Denial can be a death knell, just like swimming against the current.

Over the years I came to learn going with the flow was the single most important step I could take in managing my illness. The flow meant taking control of what I could—seeking knowledge and information, being my own advocate, managing my treatment plan, and not blindly trusting professionals.

To accept my illness, my unforeseen circumstance, was much more difficult than it needed to be. However, the obstacles in my pathway complicated it. In many ways, me surviving a class 4 or 5 rapid was much easier than finding my way to acceptance of a stigmatized mental illness.

One day as I sat crying on the couch in my mother’s living room, that memory of that cold spring day in Colorado came back to me. And it marked the beginning of my journey to radical acceptance. Learning to accept “what is.”

I wasn’t giving up my fight to fully recover. I simply stopped believing I was “less than” I was before my mental health crisis.

Truthfully, acceptance is what saved my life on both occasions.

***

Reflection Questions

Where in my life am I still fighting reality instead of facing it honestly?

What would acceptance look like for me right now—not giving up, but working with what is true?

How might my energy shift if I stopped resisting what has already happened and started caring for myself within it?

Exercise: Stop Fighting the Current

Acceptance is not giving up. It is recognizing what is true so you can respond with greater clarity, peace, and strength.

Think about an area of your life where you have been exhausted, stuck, frustrated, or emotionally worn down. Maybe it is a diagnosis, a disappointment, a broken relationship, a limitation, a change you did not ask for, or a season of life that does not look the way you hoped it would.

Use the prompts below to gently explore where you may be fighting the current.

Step 1: Name the River

What reality am I struggling to accept right now?

Write one honest sentence about what is true.

What is true:

Step 2: Notice the Resistance

How am I resisting this reality?

Am I denying it, replaying it, arguing with it, comparing it to what I wanted, or wishing it were different?

What my resistance looks like:

Step 3: Count the Cost

What is this resistance costing me?

Think about your peace, energy, relationships, health, focus, or self-trust.

What this resistance is costing me:

Step 4: Choose Acceptance

If I stopped fighting what is already true, what might acceptance look like today?

Not forever. Not perfectly. Just today.

Acceptance might look like:

Step 5: Find One Paddle

What is one small action I can take now that works with reality instead of against it?

This might be asking for help, learning more, resting, telling the truth, setting a boundary, making an appointment, or taking one next step.

My one next step is:

I found myself thinking about the power of connection with people—in person. Not just online. But looking at each other eye to eye, person to person.

It’s truly one of the greatest compliments as a writer to hear feedback from your readers. They teach us in workshops and through book coaching to keep our readers first and foremost in our minds as we write our stories.

Tonight, I got to reconnect with an elementary school childhood friend. She told a story about how she moved here from far away, and I helped make her feel welcome. I stood up for her. She never forgot that moment.

Then she shared that, through my memoir Unsilenced, she learned about some of the very difficult things I experienced as a child. They asked what would make me stand up for someone else when all of that was going on in my life.

I answered, “To stand up for someone else was the hope that someone would stand up for me.”

It was a powerful insight. And honestly, a proud moment for me too. A moment to look back at my 9-year-old self and say, “Wow. What a strong kid.”

Don’t overlook the strong kid inside of you.
The one who speaks up for others.
The one who helps people find their voice.
The one who offers encouragement, even when it feels like the world is closing in.

I had another full circle moment when John Walkup invited me on his show Way More with Walukup Up on WTRF 7+. He said to me, “You win the gold medal for heart, Amy.” To watch our interview here's the link..WTRF 7 Plus

What he didn’t know was that earlier that day, I had shared with my hairstylist how 4-H taught me about head, heart, hands, and health. And when I was 10 years old, I won the “Heart Award” at a 4-H camp.

It meant the world to me then.
And it means the world to me now.

Because I said earlier that day, “I don’t write for money or praise. I write to help someone.”

This is my mission.

I’m thankful for every reader who subscribes, likes, and comments.

And I’m especially thankful for the book club the other night—for allowing me to put faces behind the names I write for.

Reach out. Touch someone. Make the world a better place. (You remember the song!)

You can’t underestimate the power of standing up for someone.

For some people, it’s current events. I think it’s fair to say there’s a great deal of anxiety around the possibility of World War III, even if it hasn’t officially started yet. The conflicts going on are unsettling. Escalating.

If you read or watch any type of media—or doom scroll social media—you’re going to come across something that stokes fear, outrage, or maybe even just a roll-your-eyes moment. Sometimes it feels like everything is over the top. What’s next?

I don’t like to write about politics, because it’s such a divisive topic. But the truth is, politics have infiltrated every aspect of our lives. It’s almost like we can’t get away from it.

Whether that’s the price of gas at the pump, inflation rising again, government shutdowns, or AI-generated savior images (depending on whose interpretation you believe), sometimes I feel like I’m standing in front of a fire hose trying to process everything.

Then, invariably, I take a step back. I decrease the information intake, and I whittle everything down to the least common denominator.

What are the simplest things that bring me joy? What gives me a sense of peace?

My first cup of coffee brings me great joy. An afternoon Diet Pepsi makes me happy. A good nap helps give my mind a break.

And then there’s meditation. I find it very powerful.

I would say, in fairness, that my life is very simple—the simplest it’s ever been. Largely because of all the work I’ve done to develop resilience and build coping strategies.

And even with that, I still have moments where I think the world has gone crazy. Then I think about history and times in the past that were just as uncertain.

The difference is, information didn’t travel in mere seconds back then. Thank goodness, really.

~sigh~

Strangely enough, my fire hose analogy also applies to the speed at which we are asking ourselves to live. Unless you work at it—or completely ignore it—just one hour of the news can set your fear response on fire.

But the question is not how many ways we can describe the challenges. The question is:

What can we do when we feel overwhelmed?

If you’ve ever watched basketball, you know it’s a game of runs. One team scores, then the other comes back. And along the way, a coach will call a timeout to stop the momentum.

I’ve learned that’s one critical step for avoiding overwhelm:

Take a timeout.

You might say, “I can’t take a timeout. There’s always something to do.”

And my answer would be—that’s even more reason to take one.

It doesn’t have to be a lengthy getaway. It can be as simple as sitting in a quiet room for a few minutes. Start with five. Then try ten.

Listen to your own thoughts. You’ll be amazed at what comes up when you get still.

One thing that works really well for me is stepping outside. Maybe a short walk. Maybe just looking up at the sky.

Whatever helps you come back to the present moment—that’s where your power is.

Sit in a chair, pick a color, and notice everything in the room that matches it. You’ll start to see things you hadn’t noticed in a while.

Everyone can find five minutes somewhere in the day. Put your phone down. Close your computer. Walk away for a moment.

The key is learning how to turn off the fire hose.

Because if you don’t, anxiety rises, stress builds, and the thoughts don’t stop—sometimes even at night.

Speaking from experience.

It’s easy to tell someone not to worry. But if you care about anything—or anyone—you’re going to feel pressure sometimes. Life is going to feel overwhelming.

Give yourself grace.

Try not to judge yourself so harshly, especially during uncertain times. Learn to be your own best friend—and a good one.

Loving. Kind. Considerate.

The louder the world becomes, the more important it is to turn your own volume down.

Remember: all we have is now. This moment.

Take a deep breath.

We’ll get through this.

Michael in Yellow Wings

I sat in the green, lush woods, the birds giving me a private concert. Then he suddenly appeared—larger than most of the others I’d seen that day. Mostly yellow wings with black stripes.

He sat for a long while, drinking the elixir from the pink, fuzzy wildflowers. I sat in my blue Coleman portable chair, watching in total amazement. A gentle breeze brushed through the grass blades. The sun warmed my reddened cheeks.

“Michael,” I said softly.

I can still see him sitting in my sub shop with his brothers, devouring foot-long, double-meat sandwiches. I’d made them myself.

They were laughing and smiling, enjoying the meal, the atmosphere, and the company. Then he was shipped off to a land far away in the desert sand. He wasn’t even old enough to buy a beer.

His job was to diffuse bombs. And one day, a sniper took his last breath away.

Lauren wasn’t for the war, but she was for her son. She always supported anything her kids wanted to do. Michael wanted to be a Marine.

As time passed, the butterfly became a symbol of Michael.

As I watched the yellow butterfly spread its wings, I smiled. My heart filled with the memory of a young soldier named Michael.

I Went Quiet for a While

I’m sitting in my usual writing spot, admiring the gorgeous blue skies and the near-perfect green grass sprinkled with yellow dandelions. I’ve spent the past several days outside doing farm work, which I enjoy on most days.

In my stillness today, something called to my heart to return to the page. After keeping a steady drip of resilience- and confidence-themed essays, I imagine you may have been somewhat glad to not have my Beyond the Arc email cluttering your inbox.

Or…

Maybe you missed my emails.

Or…

Maybe you didn’t notice.

Whatever the scenario, I took a lengthy break. At first, I was honestly exhausted from writing thousands of words in such a short period of time.

So, yes. I was truly exhausted after writing at a professional level of output for three months. I missed writing. But I missed connecting with my readers more. It’s truly wonderful to hear from folks who take the time to read my work.

I digress…

Nonetheless, I took a break. It wasn’t only exhaustion. It was a heartfelt, deep sadness for the state of the world. Whether you agree with wars or not, one cannot discount the fact that many people suffer. And when I think of people suffering, it saddens me.

I retreat to the quiet world of my own blessed solitude. I study world events and history, as I have a deep desire and need to understand what is going on.

As quickly as I delve deeply into a subject and exhaust all the different ways I can possibly analyze it, I put it to rest. All the while, I focus on my own agency. What can I control in the moment?

Being a sensitive empath has taught me the necessity of protecting myself. So putting myself into a cocoon of safety preserves my energy and maintains my sense of peace.

Sometimes my system gets overwhelmed for a moment or two or three, and I worry. I think about future generations and their opportunities. I actively imagine the difficulty of people in faraway places who have no power, safe water, or a bed to sleep in at night.

What do I do about it? Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I read a Bible verse. Sometimes I curse. Sometimes I look up in the sky on a star-ridden night and thank God for my own personal blessings.

And sometimes I allow the tears to well up in my eyes and feel my deep sadness.

Don’t worry for me. I’m not in a constant state of sadness or sensitivity. I have skills and techniques that bring me to the present moment.

I feed the birds, and I’m blessed with their beauty every single day. They remind me of the simplicity of life, even if there are some who seem not to value nature or even other humans.

I tell myself I can’t impose upon others what I find value in. I can’t expect everyone to see the world as I do.

How do I see the world?

I see it as completely interconnected. And among the many lessons I learned from traveling the globe was that “people are people no matter where you go.”

I’m reminded of a coach I had who was from Hungary. When I was with the Team USA Handball squad, we played many matches against the Russians (Soviet Union at the time). After a several-week tour with the Russian team, I had befriended many of the players.

In a match in Hungary, I gave a few of the Russian players a hug when we greeted each other prior to the start. My coach came up to me and said, “Why you like these people? They destroyed my country!”

I answered without hesitation, “These young women weren’t even born when that happened. They didn’t destroy your country.”

He said nothing more. However, he benched me for the beginning of the game. I was a starter.

We never spoke about it again. But the memory stuck in my mind as one of several moments when I spoke truth to power—not because I was being an activist, but because I was standing up for what I believed to be true.

I think there’s a saying about how the sins of our ancestors are the sins of our generation. If there’s not a saying, I suppose there should be.

The tribal mentality certainly taints how we view other people. Just think about where we are as a nation. Red states and blue states. Left and right. MAGA and not MAGA. Label after label.

I personally think, collectively, we’ve lost sight of what it means to be human—to care enough about other people that we challenge our inherent biases and try to give someone the benefit of the doubt.

It’s truly a similar situation for my own personal heritage. My mother was of German descent. She used to tell me stories about how kids in school would call her all kinds of names because of what the Nazis had done.

I asked her how she handled it.

She said, “I cussed them out.”

So, I went quiet so I could hear my own thoughts, memories, and reflections bubble up. I needed to be able to process and emotionally regulate my feelings.

When life feels hard or unfair or not so joyful, I hope you can find a small piece of beauty that will ground you. I hope you have the tools and skills to navigate a simple but complicated world.

As I said to my coach, I hope you’ll remember that people are people no matter where you go. I still believe humanity is far more good than evil, although the lines do blur depending on where you’re sitting.

For today, I might just see those dandelions for the beautiful yellow contrast they are in a green yard.

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Eyes Wide Open

Danger lurks on the horizon,
the unsettling nature of the world
gnaws at me.

I ask,
“What control do I have?”

Evil always wants us to feel
as if we have no control.

Without resistance,
we walk into a dark room
without any awareness
of the danger lurking in the corners.

I ask,
“Am I not among the weak and vulnerable?”

It’s all about perception.
Who among us tells the whole story?

I rely on inherent bias
to be my shield.

If you expect little from me,
then I have an advantage.

To much is given,
much is expected.

I’ve joined the arena
that Theodore Roosevelt spoke of.
Perhaps I’ve always been there.
Perhaps you’ve been there too.

In my world,
the one I’ve always believed in,
the good guys always win.

I just can’t give you a date
for that to happen.

But I can say—
persistency pays.
Always.

The heart of the lion
beats without roaring.

Shine your light.

For evil cannot survive
when your eyes are wide open.

The truth shall prevail.

Deep fakes are no longer convincing.

Words matter.

by

Amy Gamble