Simone’s Moment

Simone Biles doesn’t have mental health “issues”, not that I see.

I watched her cheer for her teammates after bowing out of the final competition and to me that showed class, loyalty and mental strength. So what if she didn’t compete in the finals - for students back home at the school where I have taught gym for years, 90% look like Simone and regularly worry about their value, they worry about being hit by a parent and in any given day they are scared, depressed and think about harming themselves. They are inner-city youth with dreams and obstacles and they rooted for Simone last week, but they also saw someone unrelatable. They couldn’t ever see a way to be so daring, confident and perfect like Simone. Now they can. She is not perfect, she is just us and she is real. And in leaving the competition but not hiding she moved us into a new era in the national discussion. I think we may look back at this as a moment, a catalyst for more states to increase funding for school counselors, for more administrators to change their own mindset and adjust budgets to make counselors full time not ad-hoc like so many still are, and for more employers and insurers to relax restrictions. Our “mental health” is not an issue—nor is it an illness—not in the way many still describe it, but it is easily influenced and impacted by events around us, and by what we see and hear and what we know. And what I see is progress.