Let It Hurt Before You Grind

Surgery's done. Right knee's wrapped, ACL's rebuilt, meniscus repaired, and I'm headed home for the next stretch of this. Not the facility, not my teammates for a little while. Home. Family. Slower days.

I almost feel like I need to explain that choice, like there's some pressure to stay close to the team and grind from day one. But I've done this twice before with my left knee, and both times I learned the same thing: you cannot skip the part where you actually feel what happened to you. If you try to, it just finds you later, usually at a worse time.

So here's where I'm starting this recovery — not with a workout plan, but with permission. Permission to say this hurts and this sucks, out loud, without immediately following it up with a silver lining.

I sought something this year. I was two games back from my last meniscus surgery, finally trusting my body again, finally back in rhythm with my team. I had a version of this season in my head, and it just got pushed back by nine to twelve months. That's allowed to hurt. That's allowed to feel unfair. Grieving what you wanted and aren't getting right now isn't a lack of faith, and it isn't weakness. It's honest. God met me in the middle of eleven weeks bedridden with anemia, not because I pretended I was fine, but because I brought Him the actual mess I was in. I don't think this is any different.

That's part of why I'm going home instead of staying put. My family doesn't need me to perform strength for them. I can sit in their kitchen, be quiet, not have anything figured out yet, and that's enough. There's something about being physically near the people who knew you before any of this — before Wave, before UNC, before a single surgery — that puts the whole thing back into proportion. I'm still their daughter, their sister, before I'm anybody's center back.

And slowing down isn't just emotional, it's spiritual too. Being on crutches, off the field, out of the daily grind of training means I actually have quiet time again, the kind I had during that eleven-week anemia stretch that ended up shaping so much of how I see God now. I want to protect that this time instead of rushing past it. Reading, praying, sitting still without a phone in my hand or a schedule pulling me somewhere. I know myself well enough to know I'll want to fill this time with productivity as fast as possible. I'm trying to resist that instinct, at least for these first couple weeks.

But I also know grief and rest aren't the whole story here. At some point, and honestly it might be soon, this turns into work. Real work. The kind where I'm doing prehab in the morning before most people are awake, tracking every rep, pushing through days where progress feels invisible. I've done this path twice already on my left knee, and I know what it takes: discipline that doesn't care how I feel that day, showing up anyway, trusting a six-to-nine-month process I can't shortcut no matter how much I want to.

So this is where I actually am right now. Letting myself feel the loss of the season I thought I was walking into. Being still. Being with the people who love me regardless of whether I'm playing or not. And at the same time, quietly getting my mind ready for the discipline that's coming, because baseline doesn't get rebuilt by accident. It gets rebuilt one unglamorous day at a time.

Grieve it. Then get after it. I don't think you're supposed to choose one or the other. I think you need both, in that order.

More soon.