Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Forward by Abby Wambach

Abby Wambach is a superstar in the soccer world.  She has 184 goals to her name, two gold medals, a World Cup and a Fifa Player of the Year Award.  She was a standout soccer player in high school. And yet, she really doesn't want to be known as just a soccer player, even though that is what she's totally famous for. After retiring in 2015, she started to work on becoming famous for something other than being an absolutely amazing soccer player.

Forward, her memoir, is one way of documenting her journey - from the beginning as the youngest of seven children, through her relationships and struggles with substances as well as her failed marriage and DUI. The book is a very quick read and I'm not totally impressed with MS. Wambach's literary writing ability.  I found it to be quite amateurish really but I enjoyed learning more about her in the meantime. She has struggled with the low self esteem and the need for outside building up that I think a lot of women need.  I wonder how much the US National Soccer Program knew about her substance abuse issues though.  I'm not sure that they were complicit in it, but a Women's National Team Trainer knew about Abby's issues while she was employed with the program, so I'm hesitant to say that the program didn't know about it.

I enjoyed how honest and open she was about the struggles that she has with addiction - it seems that she has taken a tremendous step in accepting that about herself. Perhaps this book provided one of the mechanisms by which she could face her demons and if that is the case, all the more power to her. 

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