“I’ve lost myself and found myself time and again in an unrelenting passion for the sport. It’s not a love-hate relationship. It’s a lost-found relationship. I lose myself in the expectation the game, and find myself in the love of sport.”

— Rachel Dawson

In my sisters old bedroom in New Jersey, a painting hangs on the wall. The words scribbled across the watercolored backdrop read, “We lose ourselves in the things we love. We find ourselves there, too.”

That quote hits me in my bones because my life has been wrestling match with the sport I love. I’ve lost myself and found myself time and again in an unrelenting passion for the sport of field hockey. It’s not a love-hate relationship. It’s a lost-found relationship. I lose myself in the expectation of the game, and find myself in the love of the sport.

When I hung up the stick and jersey after the 2016 Olympics, I thought that the ebbs and flows of this love, and the dream that had kept me awake at night since I was 12 years old, would cease. For a year, I stepped away from the game, founded Praxis Athlete, wrote some, created some, dreamed some, lived some. I let life lap gently toward me. I slept well at night.

But I missed it. I missed the passion and intensity of the game. I missed the intimacy of the sport experience. I missed the slow, demanding march of growth and learning. I missed the quest, the build, the daring, the vulnerability, the relationships. I missed the losing that came with the relentless quest to discover. I missed the wresting match.

So after a year of lapping in life, I made the decision to coach. I went to Virginia. I coached and loved it. I gave myself completely to it. Yet, the deeper I went into college coaching, the more I lost touch with myself - and the uniqueness of my talent, voice, and soul. I became an answer-giver rather than a question-explorer. I stopped writing and creating. I became the exact person that Praxis Athlete was developed for.

It seemed that the more I asked myself to ‘play the game,’ and be what I thought the world of college field hockey told me I needed to be in order to be a winner, the more I lost connection to myself, my passion, my curiosity and most of all, to the people I walked beside.

“I had stopped listening to the inner voice, and started measuring success by the crowd’s and critics standards. ””

— Rachel Dawson

I began to doubt my ability to coach because I knew, deep down, that I was losing touch with what lit me up about coaching - the real and vulnerable connection to people. I had put myself in a box, the same box that trapped me as an athlete. I lived in fear of not living up to expectations. I had stopped listening to the inner voice, and started measuring success by the crowd’s and critics standards. I started to compare and judge because the culture of college coaching made me feel like I had to either climb the ladder or fade into irrelevance.

People kept asking, “Do you want to be a head coach?” I hated the question. I wanted to invest in people and help them become as good as they could possibly be. My desire was to learn, grow, and create, and from there, see what was possible. The expectation of becoming a head coach crowded out my desire to learn and grow. The expectation wasn’t only external. It was internal. I forced it upon myself to fit in.

I was shoulder-deep in the hockey hustle, when Covid happened, and life paused. In the pause, I reflected on life and got brutally honest with myself. I wasn’t at my best. I wasn’t growing, or thriving. I was doing the very thing that scared me the most - I was playing small. I wasn’t being led by my dreams. I was being pushed by my fears.

I started to write again, to ask questions again, to put myself out there again. In the exploration, I realized that I’d gotten comfortable with being comfortable. I was simply playing along. I wasn’t serving the world or my talents honestly. I was ‘playing the game’ - and in that game, I’d lost myself. Again.

So I made a choice to do the thing that I knew I needed to do. I chose to find myself. I chose to remember my soulfulness, and in remembering, I remembered what all those years of wrestling field hockey taught me - because I lost myself in coaching, I’d likely find myself in it, too.

Discover Within, Expand Beyond

Rachel