Sabrina’s story.
Sabrina Shaw is a senior soccer player at the University of Iowa, and the designer of the H3H “Minds Matter” Mental Health Awareness Month Fundraiser.
Sabrina is hosting a H3H fundraiser now through the end of May to help us celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month - here is her story.
I have struggled with mental illness since my sophomore year of college.
I started noticing that the smallest errors during practice would send me into this negativity spiral, and that I’d struggle to even do simple tasks once I had made one mistake. I started to dread going to practices for fear of messing up or being judged by my coaches and teammates - soccer just wasn’t fun anymore. My trainer suggested that I seek help after she noticed I was struggling, but I felt I didn’t need help.
Then I met with my coach, who he told me that I wouldn’t play if I kept performing at my current level. I broke down in tears in his office and admitted I was struggling. He was kind and receptive, and suggested I took a few days off to compose myself and seek support. Even though he handled the situation well, I couldn’t help the gut-wrenching disappointment and anger I felt walking out of that building. I was so upset with myself that on the drive home, I momentarily considered letting myself veer into oncoming traffic. I was immediately shocked by my thoughts and decided I would open up to a therapist and get help.
Since then, I’ve started medication and therapy - which has turned my life around.
I’m not perfect, and I make mistakes at practice all the time. However, I deal with them much better now than I did back then. I’ve been able to forgive myself when I make mistakes and have started to play soccer again simply because I love my sport. There’s still a lot of work I need to do, but now I look forward to practice and the chance to fail and learn from my mistakes.
In 2022, my mental health was in a better place and I decided to start my own business, Urban Wave Embroidery. At first, I created mainly custom orders. Yet over the last few months I realized I wasn’t getting the fulfillment out of these orders that I used to. I decided my business needed to be grounded in core values that I was truly passionate about, and that I could use it as a platform to create pieces that spoke to my mental health journey - and hopefully the journey of those around me.
Today, I’m partnering with mental health organizations to help spread the message of hope and love, and to show other athletes and college students that they aren’t suffering alone.
You can get help, and organizations like Hilinski’s Hope are doing amazing work to reach hundreds of universities nationwide. It’s my pleasure to be working with Kym and the rest of the Hilinski team to release designs of my own that I believe reinforce the core principles of both myself and Hilinski’s Hope.
You can shop the Mind Matters collection now through the end of May - thank you for your support!
