Becca Jarrett
This blog post was adapted from a TEDx Talk given by Rebecca Jarrett in May, 2022
In the last year, I experienced a range of loss that I never could have imagined. Some were marked by distinct moments — I tore my ACL and meniscus on September 1st, changing my college soccer career in an instant, a close friend of mine died by suicide on March 1st, bringing my world to a screeching halt — while others happened over time. Many of my friendships changed as people came and went slowly, my priorities shifted, and certain goals that I once held firmly to slowly faded into the background.
I hurt my knee in September. It was the day before one of the biggest games on our schedule and it happened while doing something I’ve done a million times before. No contact, nothing out of the ordinary. And yet, in a split second, I went from feeling invincible to being utterly helpless. The second it happened I knew exactly what I had just done and I couldn’t believe it. In my many years of playing high level sports, I’d never really been injured before and I didn’t know if I was cut out for 9 months of rehab.
Fast forward 9 days, I had surgery, I was in a hotel with my mom, and I had yet to fully grasp what was happening. I remember laying in bed that night, with my leg wrapped up tight from hip to ankle, and the local news playing on the TV. I wasn’t really paying attention, and then, all of a sudden, I realized they were talking about me. I’m not sure what about that brief news clip snapped me back to reality, but all of a sudden, this was real. I would not play this season, I was about to be on crutches for at least 6 weeks due to my meniscal tear, and I had a really long and hard road ahead of me.
I became entirely reliant on other people in those first few weeks and I quickly learned that I needed to ask for help. I couldn’t drive, so friends chauffeured me around. I needed both hands to move, so I couldn’t carry anything and walk at the same time — in fact, my dad came down to Charlottesville and walked into multiple lecture halls carrying my things for me during those first months.
I quickly realized there were a million things I’d taken for granted to this point. However, physical challenges and overall lifestyle adjustments aside, the hardest part for me was, and continues to be, the mental and emotional experience.
Although I’m not quite finished with my recovery yet, the light at the end of the tunnel is near and I am still on track to hit all of the goals I set for myself at the beginning. I wholeheartedly believe that would not be the case had I not started sharing my highs and lows with friends and family and even started seeing a sports psychologist. I had to talk through things to make sense of what was going on. I needed advice often. I asked for help daily. And I grew to be okay with that.
As I said at the beginning, I lost a friend a few months ago — and in a similar vein, the only possible way to make sense of the world without her in it and cope in her absence was to be around people who loved her as I did. To talk about her and to laugh about shared memories, but also to process our sadness. Over the last couple of months, the student-athlete community has lost too many incredible young people in the battle against mental health. In this unfathomable sadness, I have seen my peers rally together to start the necessary conversations about mental health.
Here at UVA, two of my teammates approached me about joining them in starting something really special. Together we built UNCUT at UVA, an online storytelling platform for Virginia student-athletes to truly come as they are. We publish stories about injuries, mental health, personal passions unrelated to sport, and so much more. In working on this project, during a season of my life with many moments of heartbreak and tremendous pain, I have been reminded once again that it is so important to share the many parts of our journey, in real-time, with those around us, even the parts that sometimes go unnoticed. It is nearly impossible to succeed without it.