Written with love and faith by @EllaLaverne

I’ve always been jealous of people with hard luck stories. It seems to me that people on their butts make great strides in correcting their situations. It’s like they say, “When you know better, you do better.” Well, after reading this article about Vernon Davis of the San Francisco 49ers and watching the footage of his coach that eventually propelled Davis, I realized that “doing better” is just what he chose to do.

DAVIS WASN’T TOO DOWN AND OUT: He was playing his third year for the 49er’s in 2008 as a first round draft pick which, even if I had to ride the bench, would be a dream job in and of itself. However, his coach not only sent him to the locker rooms mid-game, but he became part of a famous rant which included the phrase, “I want winners” by Coach Mike Singletary who basically says he would rather be penalized than have Davis on the team.

Whoa! I do not envy public figures who work in the spotlight. We share their successes and watch in painful detail their humiliation. This is where Vernon Davis became a little different and where he and I become a little alike.

I am at what I feel is a point that couldn’t get any personally lower than what I am. And believe me, I know at any moment I could dip again. The last sixty days have been oh so torturous for me, but thankfully they came at the best time of my life. This is not a pity party. These are just the facts of my life. In no particular order, I lost my mother, my daughter was taken out of daycare making me feel a little bit guilty that she’s not learning with her peers, one of my teeth is gone, but I can’t complete its exodus without medical insurance which I don’t have. Joelle’s hernia probably needs surgery, but I have to wait until I have medical insurance again. All of this, while I deal with the logistics of opening up my own home office without the benefit of having any space other than my bed and a Disney desk which is technically my daughter’s eating table. And did I mention I can prove that African American people with locks CAN get lice?

There’s no pity party because while all of that is going on I have so many counter balances. I was able to do just enough work to make sure I could pay Santa and it wasn’t something anyone else had to do for me. And Santa was pretty good making sure I had the tools I needed to work at home with less interruptions. I’m writing more which is a dream come true for me and my mom always dreamt that for me, too.

I am learning things totally out of my element and I love that. I’m personally coming out of the little bit of shell I had left, and feeling good just being ME. That’s always a bonus.

So even though I’m not 100% down and out and neither is Vernon Davis, there is always another lesson to learn and more work to do.

MR. DAVIS WORKED HARDER: He became more. He didn’t get defensive or pout and stop working like we’ve seen some other professionals do. Oh, no. He got off his embarrassed butt and proved Coach wrong and in recent weeks became quite the “winner” by making a game winning catch in a play that was designed just for him. He didn’t just step up. He became the kind of teammate that could be depended on that they put their hopes of going to the NFC championship game on his shoulders.

I could have stayed on welfare but I had more to give. I asked for the ball and proved in practices I could handle it. I could think outside and inside the box, could write cohesively, and take the critique my articles needed to get better. I haven’t said “no” yet. I paraphrase a quote my mother drilled into me, “We can do everything. We just haven’t learned how yet.” Hard work proves this to be true quite frequently.

CONTINUOUS BUILDING IS WHAT WE NEED: We need to take the misguided attacks on our persons and just build on it. We need to work harder to prove how wrong our detractors are. We need to use the negatives to make us more positive contributors to our own successes. We need to do better because we know better. It can always get worse, but it can always get better, too.

I don’t stay in bed wallowing because I’ve always known that there was something better out there for me. Just as Davis started his NFL career as one of the best, I started my adulthood in the top ten percent of my class with scholarships to college. Like Davis, there’s a game winning play in me somewhere, and I’m working on my strengths to get to that point where I trust myself to go out there and play my best and have the courage and the confidence of my team (well, me, but I’m trying to stay with the analogy) to make the game winning play.

Sometimes you don’t know how to win until you’ve lost. And knowing that makes me a winner.

UPDATE: I wrote this piece in 2012 and have had plenty ups and downs since then. Watching Vernon Davis play this weekend (Jan 19, 2014) and getting so close to a Superbowl championship made me remember this, one of my favorite pieces.

I consider myself in the "down" phase of life now with all jets firing to get me back to "up." I'll write soon about some of the things that got me here, but I had to put a reminder out to the Universe that El Boogie knows the deal...and I'm surely willing to hold up my end of it.