Money Can’t Buy Happiness - The Backstory:

Upon graduating college, I did the normal thing: I got realistic. My first self-help discovery was the recognition that a degree in communication and rhetorical studies had an interesting ring to it but that ring was hardly one that lands its graduates a job plated in gold-enriched paychecks. So, I did what any she-jock in my place would do. I set out to prove to the world that I wasn’t just another middle-of-the-road athlete whose only mental gain from her college experience was an increased fear for punishment through fitness. So, in the same moment that I hung up the cleats, I was going to - however painfully - simultaneously lose the athlete image (which, mind you, was the only image I knew how to represent to that point) in order to rebrand myself as as a competent, commanding and influential woman backed in the sort of hard work that naturally manifests a destiny blanketed in success.

I knew if I were to have any hope at creating that woman (and if I had any prayer of tricking any future employer into believing I had half of a brain and might be of some use to his or her organization), I had to go back to school. After all, the quickest way to hide the raw truth that you’re an idiot is to get a huge and wildly respected degree. After obtaining an accelerated master’s degree from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, I was off to the Big City (New York of course) to prove I could make it in the corporate big leagues.

My stint as a suit-clad, heel-wearing, entry-level farmhand in a big Manhattan agency was nothing short of what I heard it might be. The fast-paced, blood-sucking industry exploding with sleep-deprived and wildly successful businesspeople is one that promises to leave Louis Vuitton heel marks all over you if you miss one beat. All those people toting designer labels and Starbucks coffee in each hand (with an extra pot brewing at their desk) are alive and rushing around as we speak. The life and the job were everything I bargained for. Back then I felt, even if only for a moment, as though I had made it. The one thing I couldn’t explain was why “making it” left me feeling really empty. 

While the streets of New York have the potential to create for you an avenue tiled in dollar signs where power waits with arms wide open to take you in at the other end, something was telling me that sort of success was not the type I so desperately yearned to attain. That attempt at success couldn’t quiet a deeply-rooted and insatiable yearning I couldn’t understand or explain. All I could make from it was the knowledge that I was on the wrong path. The more I tried to ignore this strange feeling, the heavier laden I felt that this “making it” was not the one I was put here to conquer.

On February 27, 2007, while working a press conference at the Home Depot Center in California, I stared out a window that spanned the entire wall of the room as if a panoramic to what I thought was one of the most beautiful soccer fields I ever before laid eyes on. As I picked up the LA Times, the first story my eyes focused in on was one that announced the second coming of - what was then called - the WUSA (the first women’s professional soccer league in the United States that folded after just three short years). My heart fell into my big toe and, as I lowered the paper to allow my eyes one more look at that soccer field, every strange feeling that emerged within me to that point, like a flash of lightening, made complete sense. The very game that I was working so hard to push aside was calling me back. In my desperate effort to become somebody, I left a big part of myself behind - and that part of me was determined to win back my full attention.

I knew exactly what this all meant on that February day three years ago. With complete disregard for anything else in this world, I, at that moment, told myself that if I found two credible sources to reinforce the idea that I had even a chance at making this league, I’d leave my job immediately.

Sources secured and on April 27 of that year, I donned the heels one last time before I traded them, once again, for cleats and left the Big Apple to chase a dream far bigger than myself. In the time period between that summer and now, I’ve slept on countless pull-outs, couches, floors and spare beds across the east coast. I’ve eaten more peanut butter, eggs and oatmeal than any one person should dare to consume in a lifetime. I’ve gotten injured, failed repeatedly and felt like I’d lost my mind more than once. All the while, I knew with every piece of me that this was the road I was supposed to travel. Regardless of the outcome, I was going to satisfy that feeling that burned within and not simply rebrand myself, but also redefine the very concept of success as I understood it along the way.

What I didn’t know then was that the competent, commanding influential woman prided in integrity I sought to find and become couldn’t be created out of some man-made mold in Manhattan. That person does not require the approval of others and does not come to be because of a certain job. The only way I could become this person was to create her myself - which meant everything I did had to prepare for her to surface. A job that failed to be backed by passion prevented me from finding that. In the very humbling path toward chasing a dream, I found what burned inside me and what continues to set my soul on fire. For me, that thing is the love of a simple game. In following my own heart, I learned that work without passion is meaningless and, therefore, cannot possibly be called success. More importantly, I found that when passion drives work, success becomes a natural by-product simply because true happiness buttresses it all. And, that’s a formula to live by because suddenly paychecks plated in gold don’t matter any longer. Success becomes personal and has no choice but to come alive.

I continue to work daily to polish that woman I set out to find after receiving my second college diploma. From now on, however, I will never again do it without first making sure the very things that give me purpose and meaning are at the heart of it all. I conquered a dream because every fiber inside me called it into being. My experience taught me something I will never forget: Each of us has that thing that burns so searing within, that it sets our entire essence on fire. Avoid it, the fire dies and numbness takes its place. Embrace it and it lights your whole world to the point that suddenly nothing is impossible. Welcome the blows that bring you to your knees because every time the wind is taken from your chest in effort to follow it, the Big Guy is just increasing your lung capacity so you can breathe in the incredible blessings that are coming your way.

This blog is written with all this in mind. It came to be because of the many loved ones in my life who wanted to be kept informed during every step of my journey to fuse together my wildest dreams and passions with my career. What began a year ago - in 2009 - as humble and grateful email updates of progress and setbacks has now turned into a blog that documents much more than that. Now, I become a professional soccer player. So, now, the purpose for writing changes. The new goal is to tell a story of Women’s Professional Soccer from the eyes of a small-town kid that achieved a dream with no more to her name than a passion and faith that refused to quit and the selfless support of those that love her. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I do.