WNBA Athlete Imani McGee-Stafford Talks Mental Health, Black Women and Sports

There can be stigma to mental illness particularly in sports, but Imani McGee-Stafford of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, formerly of UT Women’s basketball, wants to change that.

McGee-Stafford grew up in an abusive household. She turned to drugs in high school to cope with the resulting depression, nearly losing her college scholarship to UT Austin and her basketball career in the process. She is open about her struggles, including multiple suicide attempts. She says learning to be vulnerable and accepting her “full identity” as an athlete with depression helped her thrive.

“I hate the word survivor,” she says “because it attaches you to your trauma permanently. I don’t want to give people that tried to break me that shine all the time. I’m good.”

She spoke with “Into the Fold,” a podcast produced by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at The University of Texas at Austin.

In the episode, she shares her powerful story about mental health, resilience, black women, sports and the ways that those different elements affect one another.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

HOST: Hi, this is Ike Evans of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, and you’re listening to “Into the Fold.”

The Hogg Foundation is a strategic grant maker based at The University of Texas at Austin. To learn more, visit us at hogg.utexas.edu.

So, we have done two prior episodes that explore the relationship between sports and mental health, particularly for African American athletes. With its large and lucrative athletics department, sports are a huge part of UT culture. At the university, we cheer for athletes’ physical exploits, using them to boost school pride while also consuming them as entertainment. But that doesn’t change the fact that athletes, especially at the highest levels of collegiate and pro-sports, is a job — and a punishing and demanding one at that.

Here at the Hogg Foundation, we are interested in how mental health shows up in the places where people live, learn, play, pray and work.

Big-time sports is work, and the playing field or the court is the workplace. Our guest, Imani McGee-Stafford, is formerly a member of the Texas Longhorns women’s basketball team and now plays for the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA. Her struggles have included depression and multiple suicide attempts. We’re coming to you from the Black Student Athletes Summit on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. I’ve talked to plenty of academics about the issue of sports and mental health. Now it’s time for an athlete’s point of view. Imani, thanks for joining us.

IMANI MCGEE-STAFFORD: Thank you for having me.

HOST: You’re back at your Alma Mater attending this summit. You gave a talk just now at the luncheon, the keynote address. So for those who weren’t able to make it, what did it cover and why did you think it was important to attend this event.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Anytime I get to come back to my Alma Mater, I jump at the chance. I love this university, so that was already — I was going to come back regardless, and I think that the work that they’re doing at the Black Student Athletes Summit is really important. My keynote was nurturing the full identity of the black student athlete. I think we all too many times failed the black student athlete by only caring what they do on the field, the court, in the pool — whatever it may be and once they enter the real world, they’re not equipped with the tools necessary to survive because they’ve been an athlete for four years, and no one has taken the time to nurture the other parts of their identity.

HOST: OK, so for those who are not familiar with you and your story, can you give us an idea of what it is that you’ve come through, but also not just that, what the game changer was for you that put you on the very positive path you’re on now.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Yes, I’m very blessed to be here. I grew up in an abusive household — by no fault of my parents. They just weren’t prepared, and I kind of fell through the cracks. I was sexually abused from the ages of 8 to 12 and also neglected, and I was very depressed because of this, and when I turned about 15 or 16, I started kind of having nightmares and terrors and remembering my abuse, which led me to make bad decisions in terms of drug use, which almost had me throw away my entire future by losing my basketball scholarship. Luckily, my head coach gave me a chance. She understood and gave me a chance, and when I got here, I received the mental health services I needed my entire life without any repercussions, without any consequences, without stigma attached to it.

HOST: Now, I’m … I don’t know. This may just be me. I’m always interested in basketball players, especially because of their size.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: (laughter)

HOST: You’re 6 foot, 7 inches tall.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Yes sir.

HOST: And with size comes visibility and also expectations. And when you have a height advantage, there’s a sense that the game should come more easily or more naturally, or that however dominant you are, you should be more dominant still in some way. More rebounds, more blocked shots — you should always be a dominating presence on the court. I seem to recall another interview that you gave where you basically said that centers, which you are, tend to get yelled at the most. I don’t know. Can you say more about what that’s like and how that feels?

MCGEE-STAFFORD: I think especially being myself, I’m 6 (foot) 7. I grew very quickly. I was 6 (foot) 5 at 13. You automatically … people automatically expect you, like you said, to very good and very advanced and dominate and very strong and aggressive.

HOST: Which I mean — let’s be honest — sometimes you, in fact, manage to do.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: (laughter)

Sometimes I like to, and also just coming from the lineage I have. My brother is an NBA champion. My mother is an Olympian, Hall-of-Famer, so everyone expected a lot of me immediately. And I did not live up to expectations. And being a center, especially like you have to run the entire court every single time. You got to get rebounds, and you also have to listen to the point guard and understand what’s going on with the game. So, I think being a tall player — a player with a lot of expectations — is definitely hard, and you definitely do have that extra burden, but it goes back to knowing what your self-worth is and knowing that if I give 100 percent, that’s good enough. It doesn’t really matter what other people expect me to do because I’m doing this for me.

HOST: Yeah, and now you’re doing it for a paycheck.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Which helps. (laughter)

HOST: Which helps, and I would think that you’ve probably gotten somewhat better at managing expectations.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Yeah, you definitely have. The difference between college and pros especially is that in college, they need you. They invest money into you, and they can’t replace you, at least not immediately. So, they’re invested in you, and they want to drag you along to get you where they can get so they can get the most out of you. In the pros they, can just replace you. And now it isn’t a bargain anymore. If I don’t like you, you get cut, and that’s your paycheck. So you kind of have a reinvigorated sense of drive and determination.

HOST: OK, so the world of sports is its own community. At the Hogg Foundation, we think it matters in our messaging to highlight a community’s strengths as well as areas of need or greater investment. So how has the community of sports helped you cope with some of these challenges?

MCGEE-STAFFORD: I think at the bare minimum, basketball is a vehicle. A lot of things I’ve experienced, people that I’ve met, this opportunity — just speaking with you now has come through sport. Basketball gives a lot of people and a lot of kids a chance to leave their neighborhood and leave their surroundings and experience more and better themselves. And that’s something that everyone doesn’t have the chance to do. I’ve traveled to maybe four or five countries, and I’m only 23. And that all came through basketball. I got a free education through basketball, so it definitely gives you a lot of opportunities and that community — you get the feel, and at that young age, it gives you self-esteem. You get to see the work and see the outcome.

HOST: Yeah, and I for one am very interested in African American women and their work, and in my opinion there’s always a chance that the crisis narrative kind of displaces everything else, but there’s so much good and so much resilience in the different kinds of work that people are doing. I think sports can be as good as anything else at bringing that out.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Yeah, we definitely have to tell stories of triumph and stories of success as opposed to the same old “woe is me” story, because most of us get through it. And we get through it positively.

HOST: Yeah, I had an interview just recently with a young lady named Jameisha Brown. She’s a Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M, and she used the wonderful phrase “post-traumatic success.” She’s been through some stuff too. So that’s what that made me think of just now. So somewhere along the way, you discovered poetry as a creative outlet and something that lifts your spirits. How did that come about?

MCGEE-STAFFORD: I used to think I was going to be the next Alicia Keys when I was kid. Everyone in my family sings, and I can hold a tune for a little bit, but had I kept up with it, I probably would’ve been really good. But I used to write songs, and then one day the song didn’t have a beat, and we were doing a poetry kind of chapter in seventh-grade English, and I fell in love with it. And then I would write and kind of keep it to myself. When I got to college, I went to the International Poetry Festival that Austin holds every year. I fell in love with slam poetry and spoken word, and it kind of introduced me to performing my poetry and sharing it more often, and it’s given me a voice I didn’t know I need — didn’t know I had, for that matter. And it’s definitely just been a very positive coping mechanism for me in my life.

HOST: OK, and so there’s a lot of value in telling your story, but I think there’s a limit to what we get out of just kind of consuming other people’s pain. Kind of related to what I just said a minute ago, and you are more than just your mental health story. So what other things interest, engage, or excite you?

MCGEE-STAFFORD: That’s so true, and it’s one of the biggest things that kind of scare me about telling my story and why I kind of don’t touch on my youth a lot now these days. I’m kind of like “uh, Google it.” (chuckles) Because I think you are more and I think when you … like, I hate the word “survivor” because I think it attaches you to your trauma permanently. I think it’s great to have that moment when you finally get through it, but I think you can move forward from that. And I don’t really want to give the people that tried to break me that shine all the time. Like I’m good and I made it through. I really enjoy reading. I have a poetry book coming out next month. I love to cook. I’m very like happy homemaker, Suzy. I love the Food Network and HGTV, and those are like the things I do to get my mind off of things and just chill out.

HOST: OK, and so now that you are flourishing, what forms of emotional maintenance or self-care kind of help you to stay on track?

MCGEE-STAFFORD: I still have a therapist. I’m an avid believer in a therapist in crisis and a therapist when you’re doing good. Kind of the same way I am with prayer. Pray when you’re down, pray when you’re up. And I know myself well enough now to know when I need to ask for extra help. I know when I’m getting too low. I know when I’m like severely depressed. I can tell myself and see my triggers now, which I wasn’t always able to do. Things that would be the end of the world are like a step in the path, and I know how to take the steps back to get to where I need to be.

HOST: OK, Imani, so we did mention your interest in poetry. I was hoping that you’d be willing to give our listeners a sample of some of your work.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Yes sir.

HOST: Whenever you’re ready.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: This poem is called “Healing.”

You all realize how far you’ve come, until one day the pain won’t be there anymore.

It will be foreign, no longer comforting.

It will be replaced with a smile or something more genuine.

You won’t know whether to label this feeling happiness because that has been something that has always been pleading for you, and you won’t want to let this feeling go so easily.

You will learn to be OK with being more firework than atom bomb, more bark than bite.

The softness suits you.

The weight of that armor was never yours to carry.

You should’ve never had to protect yourself that way.

Learning what love truly feels like will be a difficult process.

It will mean that learning the abuse that has tricked you for years and bearing your heart in trusting.

This has never come easy for you, but I promise you’re up for the challenge.

HOST: Thank you so much for that.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Thank you.

HOST: OK, she is Imani McGee Stafford of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, formerly of UT Women’s basketball. We are talking about mental health, resilience, black women, their work and all the different ways that all of those different elements impact one another. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to talk to us.

MCGEE-STAFFORD: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed speaking with you.

♪ (music) ♪

Read more about this story at hogg.utexas.edu.