Last season, Cavs All-Star Kevin Love revealed that he struggles with mental health issues at times. Since then, he has become an advocate for the ailment.
On Sunday night, Love and the Cavs were in Phoenix for a matchup against the Suns. Love was held out of the game for precautionary measures, but that didn’t stop him from meeting up with one of his biggest supporters.
A young Cavs fan named Mase Kuret made a sign with Love’s slogan written in bold letters: “Everyone is going through something.”
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As part of his essay for The Players’ Tribune, Love revealed that he suffered a panic attack. The incident he refers to happened on Nov. 5, right after halftime in a home game against the Atlanta Hawks.
For the majority of his life, Love kept his mental health issues under wraps, fearing that it would somehow make him a lesser man in the public eye:
“So for 29 years, I thought about mental health as someone else’s problem,” Love wrote. “Sure, I knew on some level that some people benefited from asking for help or opening up. I just never thought it was for me. To me, it was form of weakness that could derail my success in sports or make me seem weird or different.”
Now, however, Love has become one of the many faces of mental health awareness:
“Mental health isn’t just an athlete thing,” Love wrote. “What you do for a living doesn’t have to define who you are. This is an everyone thing.
“No matter what our circumstances, we’re all carrying around things that hurt — and they can hurt us if we keep them buried inside. Not talking about our inner lives robs us of really getting to know ourselves and robs us of the chance to reach out to others in need.”
Hopefully, Love’s message will continue reaching those who need to hear it.