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Shes hoping to represent Greece again this summer in Tokyo, this time in the marathon.
Joshua Blanchard / Stringer
She died by suicide when Pappas was just four years old.
This pushed her to continually hit the gas hard.
It was only when she started feeling depression symptoms herself that she began to truly understand her mothers experience.
But mental health issues in sport are not rare.
How did the idea for the book come to be?
And so I sought mentorship and imitated women and people I admired all around me.
The title came from a poem I wrote on social media.
Now I pause much sooner than I did before.
The major difference was how challenging it was to get help.
In the way of psychiatric care, I only foundtelemedicine.
And even back in Eugene, I had to basically ask for favors to get into those appointments.
Even being an Olympian with seemingly endless other resources, it felt impossible.
I can only imagine how challenging getting this help can be for the rest of the population.
What were some of the biggest misconceptions about depression and suicide that youve learned now?
It made me feel like I could heal.
And even if you’re depressed, it doesn’t mean that you wont improve and get better.
Beyond athletics, we should ideally be moving in the direction of normalizing getting mental health help.
What does it mean to you to be able to form these kinds of kinships?
I think its really powerful when we find people with similar experiences to ours.
How have your experiences changed how you view your mom?
I wish she could know that help is out there.
How do you navigate that?
you could probably relate to that more than anybody.
I want to do my moms story justice, both to her and to myself.
It changed it quite a bit.
My Greek teammates were my pod and we only saw each other to be safe.
I had also recently run a PR of 2:34 at the Houston Marathon in January 2020.
What are you most looking forward to when this is all over?
Im also looking forward to seeing what Im capable of physically once races come back.
The conversation above has been edited and condensed for clarity.
