Many different professional athletes have opened up about mental health and personal issues they’ve dealt with over the years and still deal with on a daily basis over the years, but as of late we’ve seen a lot more athletes open up about their personal lives.
St. Louis Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo is the latest professional athlete to shed some light on his personal issues and the things he has to deal that no one else really knows about and he did so by penning an incredible article in The Players’ Tribune titled ‘There’s a Place You Can Go’.
The 28-year-old King City, Ontario native starts things off by talking about playing on a backyard rink outside Toronto as a kid and the games he would play with his family and friends. From there, he opens up about how hockey has always been the thing that’s helped him escape from life when things get tough and how that all started after one of his best friends as a child passed away from cancer.
“Cosmo passed away on my 11th birthday. For years, I didn’t really want to celebrate my birthday. The day would always bring up a lot of memories. It was the first time that I experienced a sudden loss like that, and unfortunately not the last time. It really shaped my life and who I am as a person, and it still does. It was my first lesson in just how short life can be. My buddy was gone, for no reason at all, and I got to go on being a kid. It was hard to wrap my mind around.
Hockey, for me, became an escape. It was everything. That year, I ended up going to play in the Brick Super Novice Tournament at the West Edmonton Mall. I was on a team with Steven Stamkos, John Tavares, and Michael Del Zotto. We tore it up pretty good out there, but we ended up losing in the finals to a team from Edmonton. The winning goal was scored in overtime by a kid named Jordan Eberle.”
All the time and effort Pietrangelo put into hockey paid off after he was drafted by the St. Louis Blues in the 2008 NHL Entry Draft and the selection changed his life as he’s now the captain of the team and is married to a St. Louis girl, but it didn’t mean things got easier for him.
“It hasn’t all been easy. The last four years, especially, have been a rollercoaster. In 2014, our five-year-old niece Ellie was diagnosed with Wilmots’ tumors, a rare form of kidney cancer. The following year, my youth hockey coach and good friend Tyler Cragg died of brain cancer. He was just 44.
I don’t think I have the words to express how I feel about it, even to this day. When a five-year-old girl gets cancer, and has to have surgery and chemotherapy, what can you say? What can you do but pray that things are going to be alright? Through all of it, I could turn to hockey and to my teammates to distract me for a while, and to give me strength. Thankfully, Ellie was a fighter through it all, and a few months after her surgery, she was shuffling out onto the ice to drop the puck at our game against Colorado.”
Pietrangelo then talks about how much David Backes helped him during his career and helped pave the way for him as the team’s new captain by writing a personal letter to him on the defenceman’s wedding day, which he didn’t end up finding until a few weeks later because Backes hid it in the sun visor. However, after that he went into some more personal things and shared some things he’s never shared with the public before.
“Gabriel Pietrangelo was due in December, right before the holidays.
In June, we lost our son due to complications with the pregnancy.
For a long time, we didn’t talk to anyone about it, outside of our closest friends and family. How do you begin to explain what you’re going through? The single greatest thing we’ve ever been given was taken away from us, just like that. I don’t care how strong of a person you are … you can’t help but ask yourself, “If God has done all of this for me in my life, and given me so much, and if there’s a plan for everyone, then why did this happen?”
“There hasn’t been a single day that I have not thought about Gabriel, or shed a tear for him. Going through that process of grief and having to try to suit up again for a new season, I’m not going to lie … it was very, very difficult to cope. But when we started sharing our story with other people who had lost children during pregnancy, we realized that they struggled with the same feelings. There’s no easy or correct way to deal with it. There’s no playbook. The pain is always there for us, and it always will be. But in telling our story, we hope to honor Gabriel, and to let people understand that they’re not alone in what they’re going through.
I’ve experienced quite a lot of loss in my life, but the one thing that I’m really grateful for is that the game of hockey gives me an escape. It gives me an opportunity to get away from my thoughts for a few hours a day and just concentrate on a game. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes it’s still in the back of my mind. I’m always thinking about my wife now, even when I’m at the rink. But her strength in such tough times gives me strength, and I know that I’ve got a whole support system around me in St. Louis.”
It took a lot for Pietrangelo to open up about all of these things that have happened in his personal life and hopefully his words inspire others to keep fighting when things get tough and life seems harder than usual.
(H/T The Players’ Tribune)
