We Matter

by Etan Thomas

  Etan: One of the things I always hear young people saying at these events and panels is that they don’t want to open up about something they are dealing with or struggling with because they are afraid of people teasing them. Talk about how you were able to overcome the haters.

  Holdsclaw: I remember when I went to live with my grandmother and lived in the projects, but I went to private school. I moved to a new neighborhood and I didn’t go to school with any of the kids in the neighborhood. They would tease me all the time. “Catholic school girl, private school girl, what, you think you better than us? Oh, we’re not worthy of the private school girl who is so high and mighty and better than all us lowly ghetto kids.” I would be like, “I don’t think I’m better than anyone. I have no choice in this. My grandmother is making me go to that school, so you’re gonna make fun of me?” Then, like you said, it was about my feet: “Oh, you got big feet, you got bigger feet than all the boys . . .”

  I was having a pretty tough time there for a little while. I remember coming home telling my grandmother they won’t stop teasing me, and she told me, “Don’t worry about them, you just stay focused.” She just poured into me nonstop. And I was really focused as a kid because of her. I remember her telling me that I didn’t have to be a product of my environment and telling me that it’s okay to be different and I didn’t have to be like everybody else . . . And I remember my grandmother telling me that one day the same people who once laughed at me and made fun of me were going to be singing a completely different tune, and her words definitely came true. It was like she could see the future . . . I am so thankful I had my grandmother to guide me through that process.

  Etan: You were a media darling, you were the female Jordan, and then you saw the media turn on you. Talk about how you were able to use your platform to speak about mental health issues.

  Holdsclaw: It was really hard because I was always seen in a positive light in the media, then all of a sudden there was story after story and people didn’t know what was going on with me because I didn’t really speak about it. So what I learned during those types of situations was: if you don’t speak about something, people are going to start creating things. And that’s exactly what happened . . . It really started to dig at me until finally I spoke up and explained in detail what really happened, and I saw an immediate shift.

  As soon as I started to stand on my own and live in my truth, it was amazing how quickly things changed. I had media people coming up to me apologizing, saying that their moms or wives or husbands have struggled with this also, and they were sorry for how they covered my story and ran with rumors and speculations, and I really saw how the current media culture really works. They build you up, and as soon as something happens, it’s almost like a resentfulness, like, “You let us down.” So I tell young people, especially young athletes, to always remain balanced and know who you are and don’t be afraid ever to speak about your truth . . . Own your own truth and stand up on your own story.

  Etan: It’s interesting that when athletes speak out about different causes, oftentimes they are standing alone and they don’t necessarily get support from their peers.

  Holdsclaw: Oh, definitely . . . My expectation was that I was the only athlete dealing with something like this . . . so I started speaking about it and teammates started coming to me in private and thanking me for having the courage to come forward with what I was dealing with, and saying that they themselves have been dealing with the same thing or something similar. And that kept happening. Even today I have athletes from all sports—football, basketball, tennis, soccer—who . . . want to pick my brain about it, because it’s something they personally are dealing with, and we have become our own community, so to speak. We help each other and encourage each other.

  Etan: I saw you participate in a panel with Metta World Peace, formerly Ron Artest, and he talked about how he was encouraged by you and influenced by you to speak about his own mental health struggles.

  Holdsclaw: I watched Ron growing up, and I knew him and the things that he struggled with as a kid, but I always knew the core of who he was. And he was always a really good person and a really giving person. And even when he went through this tough time, to see people attack—they just want to attack; they have no idea. And it was tough to see because I feel like I want to protect him, you know? . . . But looking at him grow into the person that he is today, and the work that he’s doing, to advocate for mental health and just being open . . . It’s really courageous once you find that power in your voice and understand the power and influence that you can have.

  Etan: There is this stigma with male athletes—female athletes as well, but especially male athletes—that if you say anything about mental health, it’s like you become a leper. That’s one of the things you mentioned that has to change.

  Holdsclaw: The culture has to change. It hurts my heart hearing about all of those stories and hearing how all of these guys were not properly treated and how so many of them ended in tragedy . . . We have to keep putting the message out there and hopefully over time it will change, and we can’t be afraid to stand up to the establishment and the institution. There have been so many situations where I have been on panels with really esteemed people in sports, and I’ll be getting so frustrated because they’re telling me how I should feel and I’m looking at them sideways like, Have you had mental health issues? Have you experienced a manic attack? Have you personally experienced the emotions and feelings of having suicidal thoughts? You’ve studied it and I respect you for studying it because that’s needed, but allow me or the person who has actually gone through this and experienced this to express how we feel . . .

  I think that a lot of times people who are professional doctors and educators and PhDs in this field, they just need to listen sometimes. People don’t want to always hear about statistics and things like that, they want to hear about real-life experiences . . . That’s why we like to read autobiographies and see how people overcame and what they had to go through to get where they are. It inspires and empowers us; we just have to allow and encourage people to share more. It’s so important to build a community of support . . . because you really need all the support you can get.

  Etan: Talk about Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw and the public’s response to the documentary.

  Holdsclaw: We are screening the documentary at various colleges and universities, youth programs, to really just allow the public to put a face with mental health . . . It gives people a lot of hope because a lot of people in this country are experiencing some form of mental health issue. People think it’s not that many people, but it really is. I will be at a random place and people will come up to me and say, “Hey, I saw your documentary and was so touched and this is what I was dealing with.” In fact, I was driving from the airport this morning, and the driver asked me what I was here for, and I told him I was speaking at a mental health seminar, and he said, “I thought that was you, Chamique. You have been such an inspiration for me because I am diagnosed bipolar and I didn’t want to tell anyone because of the ridicule and the stigma that comes along with it.” You just never know who you touch, and really, a lot more people are dealing with mental health issues than people think.

  Interview with Soledad O’Brien

  Chamique Holdsclaw is shining a spotlight on a topic that many people are simply uncomfortable speaking about. And not just in sports, but all across America. According to statistics, there are almost forty-three million adults under the age of eighteen in the United States who are suffering from some type of mental illness. But there’s still a stigma behind it. So people are forced to keep quiet, living in shame and in silence.

  During the question-and-answer session of the Harlem program that Chamique participated in, one of the young women raised her hand and said that anybody who is different at her school is ridiculed, and that she wanted to get all of the girls together and fight against the bullying. Another young lady also shared tha
t she got ridiculed. And one by one, Chamique responded to all of their questions and comments, often with personal anecdotes.

  But then another girl raised her hand and asked a question that was really difficult for me as a father to hear. She said that a lot of the boys at her school feel that they can sexually harass females and get away with it. I saw Imani look at me in shock. I saw a teacher’s mouth drop wide open. The girl went on to explain how as a result, a lot of the girls at her school wear baggy clothes and sweatpants. The fact that they felt this was a solution—rather than addressing the boys’ offensive behavior—touched on an issue at the heart of a much bigger problem. I had a very disturbing discussion with CNN host and acclaimed journalist Soledad O’Brien on this topic. It was difficult for me to hear some of the things that Soledad said, but she raised vital issues that I needed to address with my daughters.

  Etan: What is your primary message to young women in these troubling times?

  Soledad O’Brien: Remember when you were on a panel at my event at Stony Brook a few years ago, and you told the story about your son and how he was already baffled, at the age of nine, about some of the things that he was seeing and beginning to understand in society? It’s pretty much the same exact way with young women. On one hand, you hate the idea that you get to be the bearer of bad news and you want them to walk through life a little unaware, believing everybody’s good . . . and everyone loves you, and everyone wants to see you succeed. Then all of a sudden something happens, invariably, and you sort of have to have this conversation. Basically, we have to inform young women that a lot of times, life is simply unfair. And some of the stuff that’s unfair is unfair for really, really terrible reasons that connect to our nation’s history; that we are probably never really going to solve . . . You really have to have these conversations with young people early.

  Etan: And sometimes you don’t even know where to start.

  O’Brien: I think, again, that’s just a continuum of the messaging that girls get all the time in their lives, right? Which is, “We don’t want to hear from you. Make sure you’re likable. Don’t have an attitude . . . And make sure that you’re selling what you think is pleasant and likable about yourself, ALL THE TIME.”

  I don’t think for any young women watching that terrible Sandra Bland video, that was the first time that they heard the word “mouthy,” and especially not for a Black woman. The message is, “These are the things that make me uncomfortable about you, and if you don’t watch it . . . I’m going to take it out on you; and if you’re a police officer, obviously that means one thing; and if you’re a teacher, that can mean something else; and if you’re a person in the community, that can mean something else.” And I think that message is sent to girls all the time: “This about you makes me uncomfortable.”

  I think that a lot of people have a very hard time with young women feeling a little bit powerful, and feeling a little bit strong, and having a voice . . . so they go out of their way and that translates into, “Don’t be mouthy, keep your mouth shut, I don’t want to hear from you, you need to do this.” There’s another subtle part of it that is, “Nobody likes somebody like that. Nobody wants to hear from you.”

  When Sheryl Sandberg started with the whole idea of, you know, “Don’t use the word ‘bossy.’” And I’m like, “Well, why not? What’s wrong with being bossy? I’m the boss here. This is my company. I have nine people who work for me. I literally pay nine people, right? I am the boss, so yes, on occasion I am bossy because that is my job.” But, you know, the idea is that nobody likes a little girl who’s bossy.

  Etan: Right, that’s true. They don’t say that about young boys.

  O’Brien: Never, exactly! . . . So I just think girls get these messages all the time, and then as you get older, it gets translated into your work life. Your interactions with law enforcement officials or just other sort of official people in your life. It never ends, and so I do believe you have to figure out how to have conversations with young women pretty early on about how they have to advocate for themselves. And how they are responsible for their own story and their own versions and kind of fighting back for themselves.

  Etan: My family was watching the coverage of the presidential election and my nine-year-old daughter heard the vulgar comments Trump made to Billy Bush, and she asked, “Wait, he said he wanted to grab her where? What? What did he say he wanted to do? Why would he say that?” There was so much inappropriate behavior, and you also see what just happened with Bill O’Reilly and his history of sexual harassment, and how it’s been basically tolerated for so long.

  When you said that we have to teach girls to stand up for themselves, and yet we see the actions of people in power like Trump and O’Reilly and their patterns of sexual harassment, how do we prepare our girls for what they are about to face?

  O’Brien: They hear it and I think that no matter who’s president, you have to say, “This is the way you need to think about life and yourself.” Television news was a hotbed of people being groped. I remember thinking, Well, what exactly is considered sexual harassment? Because all of this stuff that’s going on could definitely and should definitely fall into that category. There was a big sexual harassment case, Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, and I remember everyone talking like this was a big new phenomenon. And I remember thinking, Stuff like this happens all the time. When I first started, the number of female editors who would . . . just talk about how their male colleagues or the anchormen they were working with would stand behind them and rub their shoulders and grope them. I mean, it was crazy!

  I was at a journalism dinner and there was a guy there who everybody knew by name. I was wearing a strapless dress . . . and every time he talked to me, and I did not know him well, he would massage my back. He would literally massage my back. And I was mortified. This man could be my grandfather, and what do you do? Do you stand up and freak out? Of course not! You’re at a dinner and it’s an event and it’s a journalism award, so you don’t. And you turn so you can politely and subtly make it so it’s physically difficult for them to grab you . . . and then you dodge and you say, “Oh, I’m going to go get a drink.” And you do what women do, right? You maneuver and you dodge and you duck. And I was a grown person by then, I must’ve been thirty-five years old, maybe older. I had four children by then and I was like, I cannot believe this person is really trying to grope me as if this were okay and a normal thing.

  Etan: So what’s the solution?

  O’Brien: Unfortunately, it happens all the time and, again, I think what people who’ve spoken out against it . . . don’t really understand—first of all, I think there is tremendous shame. The first thing you do is start blaming yourself and questioning yourself . . . Was I flirting with them? Was I wearing inappropriate clothing? Did I smile too much at him? Was this my fault?

  Etan: That’s really messed up. There was one time at my high school with a young girl, and I won’t say her name, but as you were talking I was picturing her and seeing her crying at her locker, and then I was consoling her, and she was saying that something terrible had happened to her but nobody believed her, and I didn’t know how I could help her. I am kicking myself because as an athlete, I could have gotten everybody on the team together and we could have supported this girl. I could have gone to the papers. This was before I really found my voice. I didn’t know how much power I had. I wish I knew then what I know now.

  O’Brien: Well, hindsight is of course 20/20. And you were what, sixteen, seventeen years old? But from the young girl’s perspective, you think, Well, what I really need to do is just remove myself from this. Then you think, Obviously I’m not going to tell anybody, because it’ll only hurt me.

  Etan: But then you have a situation like the one with Bill O’Reilly, who’s had a continuous pattern of sexual harassment for many years and . . .

  O’Brien: Well, because it’s supported, right? I mean, to some degree, you have a culture, right? . . . If you have a culture where every
body’s like wink, wink, you know, no one’s going to go to HR because . . . HR, we all know, is really a way to protect a company. So typically, if you go to HR, it’s probably the first step to you losing your job. For a lot of people, you simply do the math. Is it possible for me to navigate this space where I both keep my job and don’t have to sleep with this guy? . . . That’s the navigation that you do. I do think it’s a really challenging thing.

  Etan: So what can we say to young girls about something like this?

  O’Brien: Well, I think it’s all about finding your voice . . . Start strategically, building your case. Getting witnesses who can, if need be, speak on your behalf and support your claims . . .

  You have to tell young women that they need to have a gut. And they need to trust their gut. Because what happens is, we actually make young women squelch that uncomfortable feeling. So you have to be able to say, “You know what? If something feels icky, it probably is. Your gut is probably right. Just like when you walk down a dark alley and you’re like, Eeeewwwww, this does not feel safe, it probably is not. You have to be able to trust that.”