I grew up around women who were almost always taking care of someone else. They worked long hours. They raised children. They carried churches, neighborhoods, marriages, and entire families in ways that history has become remarkably comfortable overlooking. Looking back now, I realize that very little about their lives suggested they should have had time to recover.

From the outside, they didn’t sit down long enough. But they did.

Sometimes I get asked when I became an athlete. It is an innocent question, usually asked while I'm standing on a golf course, carrying a travel bag through an airport, or talking about PARLO. People assume there must have been a first swing, a first competition, a first jersey as if athleticism arrives the day someone hands you a uniform.

I never know how to answer because the truth is, I don't remember becoming an athlete, but I do remember becoming visible as one.

For generations, the golf establishment has sold us a very specific, sanitized image of the athlete: the clean, the polished, the "untouched” presence of men. And here was one of the greatest to ever do it, carrying a different visual language on her skin. No press release, no announcement, no disruption. Just presence. As a tatted athlete myself, I felt that. It’s a quiet rebellion. The culture shifts by existing so fully that the old standards begin to look flimsy by comparison.

Black sapphic love was not a new experience for many women, but it was one that was mostly kept private. To be Black, a woman, attracted to women, and an athlete put too many targets on one’s back. Living freely meant escaping into quiet moments wrapped up in your woman’s arms after receiving scrutiny on the golf course. The Invisible Clubhouse was the post-round kiss on the cheek that passed as a “good job, friend”, but meant something so much more between the two of you. Deep love and connection were subtle because it had to be for survival. But we knew. We always know. 

The sports world is obsessed with the language of endurance. It can map your output to the decimal point, track your progress over a decade, and detail exactly how hard you pushed your body to the limit. Yet, it has never found a word for what happened after—the deliberate, sacred, and often exhausting work of putting ourselves back together so we could stand upright for another day.