Healing Looks a Lot Like T-Ball

Coached my daughter’s t-ball practice tonight. It was pure, unfiltered chaos... in the best way. Dirt flying, gloves on the wrong hands, kids arguing over who gets to run to third base first, another interrupting to tell me about his favorite dinosaur or Pokémon.

But what got me wasn’t the mess. It was the freedom. These kids don’t give a shit about mechanics or form. They just swing. Just run. Just play.

Watching a group of 5-year-olds try to hit a baseball is like watching a nervous system in real time... one kid’s frozen, another’s buzzing with adrenaline, another’s just straight-up yelling into the sky. Every one of them thinks they’re crushing it. And honestly? They are.

And then there was my daughter—beaming like she'd just been handed a popsicle for breakfast and told she could wear pajamas all day while rollerblading through the living room. Didn’t matter that she completely missed the ball. No shame. No apology. Just joy for the sake of joy. Just movement for the sake of moving. That moment hit me harder than I expected... because I realized how far we drift from that.

Somewhere along the line, effort stopped being enough. We started measuring everything—how clean the swing was, how far the ball flew. That’s when the joy started leaking out.

Coaching them isn’t just fun... it’s confronting. Like holding up a mirror to everything we’ve unlearned. I’ve learned that the energy I bring—loose, grounded, patient, a little wild—yields connection. Kids feel that shit. They know when they’re safe to be themselves... and when they’re not.

And damn... what would it take to get that back? What if healing isn’t some grand transformation but a slow, awkward, beautiful return to what we were before we were told to sit still and be good?

We talk a lot about healing like it's this big linear process. Like there’s a clear beginning, middle, and end. But healing doesn’t work like that—not really. Healing is falling down, dusting yourself off, forgetting which base you were running to, and laughing anyway. It’s returning each day with the same crooked swing, hoping something connects.

Healing looks like t-ball because it allows space to fuck up without shame. It’s where the whole dugout still cheers even when the ball rolls two feet. It’s being seen in your wild, unpolished effort—and having someone tell you that showing up was more than enough.

Sometimes, healing looks like standing in the wrong spot with your glove on your head, and someone still tossing you the ball just to see if you’re ready this time.

Sometimes, healing just looks like letting yourself miss big and smile anyway. Like showing up messy and being celebrated for the effort, not the outcome. Like swinging with everything you've got—even if the ball sails past and you lose your shoe in the process.

Let’s stop pretending we outgrew this. Let’s call it what it is... and start there.

Stay grounded,

Matt