Episode 1: Why Championing Women Matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVpC_2X57J8&t=3741s

Show Notes 

Why Championing Women Matters in Sports and Life 

Featuring Tahnai Annis  

In this inaugural episode of Anything Could Happen: Conversations on Courage, Faith, and Transformation, Diana Shinde sits down with former professional footballer and Philippines Women’s National Team captain Tahnai Annis for a wide-ranging conversation about leadership, women’s sports, belonging, authenticity, identity, and what it means to lift other women as we rise.

Tahnai shares how she first became captain of the Philippines National Team and later experienced a very different kind of leadership selection, when each player had to stand in front of the team, name their choice for captain, and explain why. Hearing her teammates describe her as grounded, team-centered, and someone who would look after others helped her understand the kind of leader she had become.

In This Episode 

Diana and Tahnai explore:

⚽ How leadership develops, even when you do not initially see yourself as a leader

⚽ Why great teams do not require everyone to be best friends

⚽ The importance of respect, belonging, and psychological safety in team culture

⚽ How coaches can address bullying, exclusion, favoritism, and unhealthy competition

⚽ Why athletes perform better when they feel welcomed and included

⚽ The difference between healthy and unhealthy competitiveness

⚽ How older teammates and mentors can shape younger athletes

⚽ Why women’s sports should not simply copy systems originally created for men

⚽ The importance of female coaches, managers, leadership, and representation

⚽ Women supporting women across soccer, basketball, rugby, tennis, and beyond

⚽ The cultural messages that shape women’s ideas about work, family, success, and purpose

⚽ Authenticity, self-trust, and finding your way back to yourself

⚽ LGBTQ+ visibility and why representation matters

⚽ Retirement from professional sport and rebuilding identity

⚽ Body image, aging, change, and redefining well-being

⚽ Why lifting another woman does not diminish your own success

Leadership, Belonging, and Team Culture 

One of Tahnai’s central leadership principles is simple: You do not have to be best friends with everyone on your team, but you do have to respect one another. At the highest levels of sport, athletes may come together from different teams, backgrounds, countries, and experiences with very little time to build cohesion. Tahnai explains that helping new players feel comfortable and included was essential because athletes who feel outside the group are unlikely to perform at their highest level. At the youth and club levels, she believes culture has to begin with the coach.

What does the team value? Winning? Growth? Development? Performance? Fun?

Whatever those values are, coaches have to communicate them clearly and then hold both themselves and their players accountable to them. Respect matters more than popularity.

Championing Women in Sports 

Tahnai also discusses one of the central questions of the episode:

What happens when women’s sports are built inside systems originally designed by and for men? 

Although women’s soccer continues to grow, leadership and organizational structures remain heavily influenced by male models.

Tahnai argues that women’s teams deserve systems built around women’s bodies, experiences, needs, and perspectives rather than simply being added onto an existing men’s framework. She also sees tremendous potential in women athletes supporting one another across different sports rather than allowing women’s leagues and athletes to be constantly pitted against each other. When female athletes collaborate and advocate for one another, everyone has the opportunity to rise.

Books and Ideas Mentioned 

Untamed — Glennon Doyle 

Diana and Tahnai discuss one of the book’s most memorable metaphors: the wild cheetah who has been trained and contained. For Tahnai, the cheetah represents the parts of ourselves we learn to suppress in order to survive, fit in, remain agreeable, or meet other people’s expectations. Coming back to yourself means learning to distinguish between your own voice and all the messages you have absorbed from the world around you.

Tahnai describes authenticity not as becoming someone new, but as returning to who you were before you learned to hide parts of yourself.

Daring Greatly — Brené Brown 

One of Tahnai’s finger tattoos reads Dare Greatly, inspired by Brené Brown.

For Tahnai, daring greatly means stepping into the arena with your whole self, accepting vulnerability, experiencing the full range of emotions, and continuing to show up even when there is risk.

The Feminine Mystique — Betty Friedan 

Tahnai shares that she has been reading The Feminine Mystique and has been struck by how some of the social pressures described in the book still echo today.

The conversation turns toward autonomy, motherhood, career, family, cultural expectations, and the subtle ways women can absorb messages about what a “good” or successful life is supposed to look like.

Tahnai’s Tattoos 

Tahnai also explains the stories behind three finger tattoos:

Laban — a Filipino word connected to fighting, perseverance, and the Philippine team’s rallying cry.

Dare Greatly — inspired by Brené Brown and the courage to step into the arena fully. 

And one tattoo with a much more humorous backstory: an Icelandic word meaning “shut up,” which also works perfectly with the classic soccer “shush” celebration.

Representation and Athlete Ally 

Tahnai shares why being visible as a member of the LGBTQ+ community matters to her.

For a long time, she did not feel able to live exactly as she wanted to.

Seeing other women and LGBTQ+ people represented in sport, media, and everyday life helped give her courage.

Now she wants to offer that same visibility to younger athletes and anyone who may need to see someone living authentically in order to imagine that possibility for themselves. 

Sometimes one person simply being visible can help another person feel less alone.

Life After Professional Soccer 

One of the most vulnerable parts of the conversation centers on retirement.

Tahnai chose to retire from professional soccer and intentionally gave herself time to process, grieve, and transition rather than immediately filling the space with another pursuit.

Emotionally and spiritually, she has found a great deal of peace.

But one part of retirement surprised her: how dramatically her body changed once she stopped living, eating, sleeping, moving, and training as an elite athlete. 

For most of her life, she had only known one model of well-being: training as an elite athlete.

Retirement forced her to ask a completely new question:

What does well-being look like now? 

That question opens a larger conversation about aging, body image, self-acceptance, changing identities, and learning how to love ourselves while still allowing ourselves to grow.

Tahnai’s Closing Thought 

Tahnai ends the episode with a message of hope:

There is more light in the world than darkness.

Sometimes we have to move through darkness to reach it, but every day offers another beginning.

And if women want to continue creating greater opportunities, rights, representation, and possibilities for other women, we have to resist the belief that lifting ourselves up requires pulling someone else down.

Women need one another.

Championing another woman does not make your light smaller.

About Tahnai Annis 

Tahnai Annis is a former professional footballer and former captain of the Philippines Women’s National Team. She helped lead the Filipinas during one of the most historic eras in the program’s history, including their first AFF Women’s Championship title and their first FIFA Women’s World Cup appearance. 

Today, Tahnai continues to mentor and coach young athletes, helping them develop both on and off the pitch.

Connect With Tahnai 

Instagram: @tahn08

About Anything Could Happen

Anything Could Happen: Conversations on Courage, Faith, and Transformation explores the experiences, ideas, decisions, and turning points that shape our lives.

Through conversations with coaches, athletes, leaders, thinkers, and everyday people doing extraordinary things, Diana Shinde explores what happens when we become curious enough, brave enough, and open enough to change.

Question for You

Who is a woman who has championed you? 

Who encouraged you, mentored you, believed in you, opened a door for you, or helped you become more fully yourself?

Tell us in the comments, and if this episode makes you think of someone, send it to her.

Episode 1: Transcript

Why Championing Women Matters in Sports and Life

With Tahnai Annis

DIANA: All right, welcome to the Anything Could Happen podcast.

I am here today with Tahnai Annis.

Tahnai was a professional women’s football player who captained the Philippines Women’s National Team to their first AFF Championship title and also their first appearance in the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

She has since continued to work with young athletes, helping mentor them and achieve their goals, which is how I met her, through our daughter, Shahina.

So, Tahnai, thank you for being here.

TAHNAI: Thanks for having me.

DIANA: The theme of this episode is championing women in sports and life, and I wanted to begin by exploring leadership.

How did you become a captain? How did you become a leader?

TAHNAI: I think I first became captain of the Philippines National Team back in 2018, which was my first campaign with the Philippines National Team, at my first Asian Cup. 

At that time, our coach chose who would be captain.

For many years with the national team, there was a lot of turnover in coaching staff and support staff. Almost every one or two campaigns, there would be a whole new staff. There wasn’t a lot of continuity, so each time there was a new coach, there were potentially new leaders or new captains appointed. I was chosen by the coach at that time.

But then, when our coaching staff of Alen Stajcic and Naz came through, who were the staff who prepared us for the World Cup and coached us in 2021 for the Asian Cup where we qualified, his way of choosing a captain was that each player would vote.

DIANA: Oh, that’s cool.

TAHNAI: What was even more different was that everyone was in the room; it was on the spot, and no one knew what was happening.

He said, “The way we’re going to choose is everyone gets a vote. It’s not going to be on paper. I’m going to call on you, and you’ll stand up and tell me who your vote is and why.”

In a room with all of your teammates, that’s very nerve-racking!

DIANA: Yeah!

TAHNAI: You have to decide in the moment and give reasons why you’re choosing that person, while all of the people you’re choosing or not choosing are sitting amongst you.

It was a really eye-opening experience, but it was also really helpful and pretty empowering to have your name chosen by your peers and then hear them explain why you’re their choice. In the end, it builds you up.

All of these people have some level of trust in you to be a leader on the team, to put the team first, and things like that. 

It was a very uncomfortable, awkward setting, but also really empowering to hear your peers speak about you in that way.

I thought that was a really cool way to have your captains chosen. 

DIANA: How did they speak about you? What were they looking for, and what did they say?

TAHNAI: They would kind of piggyback off one another. Once someone said something, they’d say, “Yeah, me too. I feel that way too.”

At the time, a lot of us hadn’t been playing together. We were all learning each other. Some of us had been playing on the team for a bit and knew one another, but there were also big groups of new players. We’d only been training together for a few weeks before this happened.

A lot of it was that I had so much experience because I was one of the older players on the team and had been on the team. By that time, I felt pretty grounded in who I was and the kind of player and person I wanted to be in a team environment.

I think my teammates could sense that I would put the team first and do whatever was needed and necessary to keep our team together and keep us moving forward through experiences that none of us had been a part of before. 

I had way more self-confidence by then to take on that role for everyone.

I felt good about it. I think my teammates could sense that and also felt like I was a bit of an Ate, which is kind of like an older sister or an aunt, someone who’s going to look out for them. I think they felt that.

DIANA: That’s lovely. You once shared a story with me, and you can correct me if I get any of the details wrong, but I believe you had a co-captain named Hali.

You touched on how, when you have a national team, you’re bringing together people who have never necessarily met or known each other for very long. How do you create cohesion? How do you make sure everyone feels included?

You related to me that you and Hali made it a point to say, “This is the team the coach has selected. We are one unit, and we’re going to make sure everyone is treated equally and fairly and respected because we don’t win unless we’re together.”

You had this kind of ethos that you were able to generate. I’m not surprised they would pick you.

And then you were able to deliver on that, which is beautiful.

TAHNAI: Yeah. Once our journey had begun after qualifiers, as I said, there was an influx of new players coming in and out.

We would have different players at each camp for each campaign. We just didn’t have time to start from scratch every camp, every tournament.

Whoever was new, whoever came in, it was about getting them involved and getting them to feel comfortable so they could perform at their best.

Ultimately, that’s what you need in a team environment where the stakes are high, the pressure is high, and the expectations are high.

You want everyone to feel comfortable, first, being themselves, and then to feel like they can bring their best selves day in and day out. If people don’t feel welcome or they feel outside of the group, you’re probably not going to get the best results out of them. They’re not going to perform at their highest level.

We wanted to make sure, initially and right away, that everyone at least felt that sense, or knew that was the goal.

DIANA: That’s fantastic. At the club level and high school level, that’s not necessarily the experience of many young women. Maybe that’s because of a lack of maturity. Maybe people, and even coaches sometimes, don’t know how to unite girls in a way that they can do that.

If you found yourself coaching a high school or club team, how would you bring them together and help them get over the petty things that sometimes come up, divide people, or make a team dysfunctional?

TAHNAI: I think it’s honestly tougher at the more grassroots, club, and social levels because people are playing for many different reasons.

Once you get to the higher levels, you already know where everyone’s priorities are. People might waver a little or have slightly different motivations, but at least with the main, big goal, everyone’s on the same page.

When it trickles down to where there’s a wider range of people coming into a club, and you don’t know what their backgrounds are in so many different things, there are people from all different walks of life. It becomes a little more difficult to get everyone on the same page.

I think there’s also a level of accepting that some of that will happen. You may not be able to nip all of it in the bud. But there are things you can instill early and instill consistently.

That starts with the culture of the club and how the coach wants to create their environment.

What are the things the coach and club value? Is it winning? Is it performance? Is it growth mindset? Is it player development? Are we here first and foremost to have fun? Or are we here to succeed?

Putting those things out there right at the beginning, so you know where you are, is going to be really helpful. Then you have to make sure you’re keeping your players and yourself accountable to those values. If you don’t want bullying or ostracizing players for XYZ reasons, that shouldn’t affect how things are on the field, at training, or at practice.

You don’t have to be best friends with every single person on your team. That’s not realistic. It’s probably not going to happen.

There may be a few teams where that’s the case, but 95 percent of the time, that’s not going to be the case. 

There has to be a level of respect for one another. Sometimes that gets clouded. We think we all have to be best friends to play well. That definitely helps, but it’s not a requirement.

Respecting one another and treating each other the way you would want to be treated is.

You wouldn’t want to feel ostracized from your teammates. You wouldn’t want to get made fun of because you missed a few passes or made a few mistakes that led to the other team scoring goals, and then feel like your teammates were blaming you for the loss. 

That’s why it’s a team sport. Everyone is responsible.

At different times, people are going to make mistakes.

Recognizing that has to start with the coach, especially at the youth levels. If you don’t want that to be the culture of your team, if you don’t want those things that divide teams happening, then you have to enforce that. 

You have to show your players what that looks like and then address it when things happen in a way that causes players to feel ostracized. 

I think that’s how you’ll keep more girls in the game, because I know that’s a big part of female sport: the social aspect of it, feeling and being part of a group. If you don’t feel that belonging, if you don’t feel part of the group, then there’s way less incentive to keep participating.

DIANA: I really like what you said: you don’t have to be best friends, but you have to learn to respect each other.

Even though we think that’s automatic, because when kids are little, most parents are doing the thing of saying, “Please and thank you. Be kind,” that doesn’t necessarily translate into real life as they get older.

How do you cultivate that sense of respect? How do you stop practices that are detrimental so they feel welcome and are willing to keep showing up? 

Soccer is so interesting to me because even the professionals are going to make mistakes, but you’ve got to keep playing. Not holding that against someone, giving them the ball again while you keep going, is one of the most fascinating things to me about the sport.

You don’t shun the person or stop just because they missed the pass or it didn’t go where it was supposed to. You just keep at it. 

Who are some of your favorite captains, people who captained you and mentored you?

TAHNAI: I haven’t thought about that in a while. Probably back in college, because that was the first experience where everyone on your team wasn’t the same age.

There’s an older-younger, seniority aspect to it that you’re not used to growing up in youth clubs because you’re all basically the same age. It feels like everyone’s on a pretty level playing field and you’ve all had similar experiences.

When I first got to college my freshman year, I looked up a lot to the seniors on the team. I felt like they took me under their wing. And the nice thing was it wasn’t just one of the seniors. It was a collective.

It was my first time being away from home for that amount of time, and I was really far from home. It’s not like I could just go home on the weekends. You’re being thrown into a totally new environment with totally new people you’ve never been around before. You automatically look to them for direction and guidance.

Even my first summer going down to Florida, there were girls who had just graduated college who were still around the team and spent a lot of time with us. 

I remember getting along really well with them and trying to soak up as much knowledge as I could and get a lay of the land from them. What do I expect? What is the expectation? How do things work? What’s going to help me assimilate as quickly as possible into this new environment and this totally new dynamic of seniors, juniors, sophomores, freshmen, all of that?

I looked up to them a lot and felt pretty well looked after.

DIANA: That’s nice.

TAHNAI: It was the first time feeling that way.

You’re coming into a whole new environment, and there are people who’ve been there for a while. They know what it’s like and can share their experience with you. Or they could shun you if they felt like it.

When you’re a senior, you don’t want to be shown up by a freshman, right? That’s a thing. I don’t think those messages are coming from a place of knowing.

DIANA: They’re totally unconscious. They’re like voices in your head that you might think are your voice. I once read a wonderful book in a capstone sociology course about children of divorce. It talked about how, as children, we unconsciously take on a blueprint because whatever our home life is gets imprinted on our consciousness.

I recently read a quote about parenting. A woman said something like, “I didn’t want my daughter to look for a provider.”

I thought, “Wow.”

Because when you talk about unconscious paradigms, if you’ve seen something modeled or lived that way, then even if you intend to work and the other person is cool with you working, you may still have this blueprint saying, “Okay, I can work, but I also need a provider because I’m going to function in this way. That’s the way a woman is supposed to be.”

TAHNAI: Right.

DIANA: I’ve seen so many soccer interviews where they’re interviewing a female coach and they always bring up her family: “How is she caring for her family?”

But they never ask the men that. I have never seen a male coach asked, “How are you taking care of your children?”

TAHNAI: Yeah, because you don’t need to. The woman’s doing that.

DIANA: Exactly.

I like the idea of changing that conversation and allowing for the fact that maybe not all women want or need to do that. You’re still a super-successful woman without that. And if you want that, superb.

But we need to bring equity to it because if you’re carrying the greater responsibility, that’s not a small thing to carry.

So, you told me about a book I love called Untamed. There’s a quote by Glennon Doyle that we both like: “You are a goddamn cheetah.”

What I like about that quote, and the metaphor she uses about a cheetah in the zoo versus a cheetah in the wild, is how, as women, we become domesticated.

That domestication doesn’t just limit us. It can take away the wild aspects of ourselves, the parts that are bold, fearless, sexy, whatever that is for a person, the juicy parts that make us who we are.

We make ourselves civil and calm and tame so people can manage us.

Could you share what that quote has meant to you and what it’s done for you?

TAHNAI: It was a great way to depict a feeling, seeing yourself in that cheetah and knowing what they’re capable of.

You can put the cheetah in the zoo, but it’s always going to have that inner wildness she speaks about. If you can see the parallel and see yourself in that cheetah in the zoo, the story she tells around it is articulated so viscerally that you can feel yourself in that cheetah.

At some point, you stopped hearing your own thoughts about yourself and started picking up all the messages around you. That was a survival tactic.

We’re all operating on self-preservation. How do I survive?

You can only be kept safe from the outside world for so long, and then you have to take responsibility for asking: What is me, and what is everything else? What is the outside telling me about who I am?

At some point, when you start to go inward and reflect and introspect, you remember feeling a certain way.

Maybe, based on how you were brought up, your family unit, your culture, and things like that, you felt like something was wrong with you. You weren’t fitting in for wanting something different or simply feeling, “I’m this way, but that doesn’t show favorably to the outside.”

Especially as women, we’re even quicker to take in the information around us.

How do you adapt? How do you adjust to survive in the world outside of you that’s, at every turn, policing your movements, your feelings, your body, all of those things?

You learn to survive.

I think you either let go of the parts of you that felt alive or felt good or simply felt different. Then you get all these messages and guidelines about what’s acceptable outside of yourself and what isn’t.

So you start to hide those things about yourself. You leave them behind or push them down.

At some point, if you start going inward and listening to the feelings inside yourself that maybe weren’t loud enough before, or that you didn’t recognize or even acknowledge, once you start acknowledging those things, you can’t unhear them. You can’t look away from them.

It builds and builds until you look at it, acknowledge it, and start unpacking what all of it is.

I think it’s coming back to yourself. I don’t think you’re really changing. At your core, it’s realizing that nothing was wrong with you to begin with.

All the things that made you unique and different aren’t really up to anyone else to decide whether they’re okay for you, right for you, or best for you.

It’s discovering who you are again and letting those parts of yourself be seen. Letting them run wild.

At some point, you realize, “This whole fitting-in thing doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel authentic.”

If what you’re searching for is authenticity, freedom, and aliveness again, you have to peel back all these layers, wounds, and experiences that pushed you away from yourself or told you it wasn’t all right.

It really is an unraveling.

But it’s also coming back to yourself and then having the courage to be that person, regardless of the pushback you’re getting or the people who decide to stay or go based on the version of yourself that feels most like you.

Not the version of yourself that’s the most palatable, the most agreeable, or the smallest version of yourself so you don’t make waves, upset anyone, or disappoint anyone.

DIANA: I can definitely relate to that.

I love running, so the cheetah running is such a beautiful image. There’s something about letting yourself loose and running. When you run full out, there’s a release, and afterward there’s this wonderful calming effect.

I definitely resonate with that.

And being a woman in my 40s, you get a different perspective. When I was young, I was in a family environment where, although I was always the black sheep, I was allowed to be the black sheep.

Does that make sense?

They loved me, but they couldn’t understand me. What that did for me was allow me to be myself, even if I was misunderstood.

Then I entered into a joint family where there were certain members who needed others in the family to behave and be a certain way. In that case, I had to become very religious, more religious than was perhaps natural to me, to try to get along with this person in particular.

When you change and learn to make yourself small for others, there are certain skills you develop.

You call them survival skills, but there are skills you learn that can be very helpful.

I don’t think they would be helpful long term if a person could never break out of that, because they are so minimizing.

I used to say one of our daughters, when we lived in that environment, was like a squashed cabbage.

That environment was just…

When we got out of that environment, it was unreal to see her open up. And it wasn’t just her. It was the whole family. Everybody opened up.

The power of that was immense.

There are things a person can adopt or take on, and you may keep the core essence of them if they’re beautiful, but you don’t have to keep all of it, especially if it’s a framework or structure that, as you said, is unnatural to you and more inhibiting than freeing.

That essential part of you, that wild part of you, will want to resurface. It will want to come out.

I think it’s beautiful when it does.

TAHNAI: Yeah. You pick up a lot of skills along the way.

There’s a skill in being able to go into different rooms and relate to all different kinds of people, to give different people what they’re looking for or support people in different ways based on who you’re interacting with, what culture you’re stepping into, or what family dynamic you’re stepping into.

Those are definitely skills, and they’re valuable skills. But like you said, in some containers, they can also hinder you.

Once you have a really good grasp on those skills, knowing when to engage or not engage is a whole other skill layered on top.

You can say, “Okay, I know I have these skills. Now I’m not just using them willy-nilly.”

Maybe before it was an unconscious skill set. You knew, “This is just what works. I know how to do that.”

Now you can discern which situations get that skill set.

Or you can say, “If I engage with this, maybe I’m letting something continue that doesn’t feel good anymore, or I’m perpetuating something harmful.”

Before, you would do it unknowingly because that’s how you were able to stay in the situation and feel safe.

Now you can say, “If I do XYZ, I’m perpetuating that harm.”

Then you have the ability to say, “I can engage here, with this person, doing this. But in this other room, in this environment, I won’t engage with it.”

That becomes what’s more helpful.

You have the skill of discernment.

“This is where I’m using this for good, and this is where I’m not going to engage, and that is also good.”

Instead of it being unconscious autopilot playing in the background.

DIANA: I love that.

As a mom especially, my 30s were probably the hardest years of my life. Then I started realizing exactly what you said about perpetuating things.

I thought, “Oh my God. I don’t want to impart these qualities to my girls. I don’t want them to accept these things. I want them to have a different standard.”

It changed how I parented. It changed the people I wanted my girls to interact with and the people I wanted them to meet because I wanted them to see something totally different.

It was lovely, but it was also a really interesting growth curve.

Great book.

Okay, can you tell us about your tattoos that I love? She has three tattoos on her fingers, and she got them at different times. One says Dare Greatly. One says Laban, which means fight. And one says “shut up” in Icelandic, but I can’t pronounce that, so you hit us with that!

TAHNAI: This one does say “shut up” in Icelandic.

I didn’t get it to say “shut up” to people! That was the humorous side behind it.

I got it because the Icelandic alphabet has a few characters that the English alphabet doesn’t. It has the “th” sound, and it was one of the words in the Icelandic language that had that character in there.

So that’s why I got it.

It also made sense to put it on my finger as a “shush.” It’s like a soccer celebration.

I didn’t use it in that way, but it was a fun inside joke to have with my teammates.

Then Laban, I got with a few of my Philippine teammates. It’s also our fight cry in the huddle. It’s Laban together.

And Dare Greatly is for Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly. It was the first one of hers I read, and it was really impactful to me.

I got that as a reminder to dare greatly, to step into the ring and bring your full self regardless of who you’re up against or whatever is keeping you from being your full self or the best version of yourself.

It’s showing up anyway and having that full range of feelings and emotions and not shying away from any of it.

DIANA: Beautiful.

I think she calls it wholeheartedness, right? You’re completely open and out there.

I love the ring metaphor because you go out there and you will fall down, but you get up. Only you know what it’s like to be in the ring.

Now, when you talk about bringing your whole self, this is another side of you that’s important, I think, not only for soccer but for women today and everybody, especially if you’re in the LGBTQ community.

You’re an Athlete Ally.

Can you share about bringing that aspect of yourself to the game and then to life?

TAHNAI: I thought it was important for me to be a visible representation for the LGBTQ community and, as a female athlete as well, to put myself out there in a way where I could be seen by younger athletes, younger women, and younger people.

To show that living your truth and being authentic out in the world may not be accepted by all, but it’s more about loving yourself and not being bullied into not living out that truth.

It was really difficult for me. I did not live the way I wanted to for a really long time.

Once I started seeing more women and more people like me in media, in sport, and in my everyday life, it helped give me the courage to do so.

It was another way for me to pay it forward and be that person for someone else.

Even if it’s just one person, to give them courage or make them feel seen or safe enough to live their truth, no matter what that is.

It doesn’t have to be because you’re part of the LGBTQ community.

It’s about being who you are and knowing that people are going to love and care for you.

It may not be who you thought it would be. People close to you may not be accepting, kind, or loving to you, but there will be others.

There are others.

You have allies. You have people in your corner.

It’s another way to be in community with one another and to feel support and have support.

I wanted to be a signifier of that, a symbol of that. To be that person for someone because someone else was that person for me.

It changes you. It gives you that courage to be yourself.

DIANA: I absolutely love that.

I recently went to Miami and visited some of my friends there who are part of the LGBTQ community.

Their lifestyle is different from mine. Mine is very traditional, homey, nuclear-family, heterosexual, all of that.

I was seeing that, and then we also went to the mosque because two of us are Muslim.

I came away from that visit feeling like I want to be everyone’s ally, especially any group that isn’t given proper representation or is threatened in any way.

To me, it’s crazy that we don’t want to give other people the same rights we enjoy.

Let someone live their full, complete, best life.

Why wouldn’t you want that?

If they’re happy, isn’t seeing someone smile something that makes you happy?

TAHNAI: Yeah.

DIANA: Now you went into retirement, and life changes again.

Retirement is a whole new beast because you have a career and you have an identity.

Even though I’m not retiring from a professional career like soccer, I’m kind of retiring from motherhood in a certain capacity because my kids are about to leave the nest.

It’s a dramatic shift because so much of who you are and who you’ve been is tied to this part of your life that’s no longer going to be the same, or at least not in the same capacity.

How has that been for you? How have you navigated it?

TAHNAI: It’s been a long journey, for sure. It’s going on a year and a half, even more than that.

I knew I was ready to retire, as much as you don’t want to be. I was ready, and I stepped away by my own choice.

I think that was really helpful in closing a chapter and then beginning anew.

I also made sure I took the time to process what that meant for me and grieve, in whatever way that looked like.

Because it is starting over.

It’s basically like I’ve lived a whole life as this, not person, because I’m still that person, but being known as the soccer player.

Even though I’ll probably always be known as that, to not live that out anymore was really tough.

I thought it was so important to take whatever time I needed to work through that and step away from a lot of things.

What I could have done was roll right into the next whatever, get tied up and invested in that, and not really check in with myself about what it meant to not be playing soccer anymore.

I was very intentional about it.

Because of that, I feel a pretty strong sense of peace around it, around the sport, everything it provided me, all of the experiences, all the different relationships I had with coaches, support staff, teammates, and what that looked like personally as well.

I feel really good about how I took that transition.

I took the time I needed. I didn’t do anything because I felt pressured to move on quicker or jump into something else so I wouldn’t have to feel whatever I felt about it.

The hardest part has definitely been the change in my physical appearance.

My body had only looked one way for basically my whole life.

I thought that’s just how my body looked and was probably always going to look pretty similar to that.

That was something I couldn’t conceptualize.

I could prepare myself for not having the sport. I was ready for that. My body hurt.

I was over all the emotional and mental turmoil of all the different organizations you’re part of and dealing with so many different personalities and factors outside of the game.

I’d been part of that for so long that, at some point, you just know too much to stay in it anymore and feel good about it.

I reached that point.

So I felt good about my decision.

But I didn’t know how to prepare for the way my body would change when I stopped moving, eating, training, living, and sleeping as an elite athlete.

They don’t teach you about that. I didn’t have resources to guide me through what that would look like.

I knew intellectually that my body would change. Things would change. I would move differently. I would feel different. I understood that.

But the actual way it changed so quickly? I wasn’t ready for how quickly it changed or how intensely.

I’ve obviously known other people who retired or stopped playing, and I’m like, “Oh, they still look like professional athletes. They still have their athletic build.”

I know that’s not the same for everyone, but I saw enough of that that I thought, “Obviously it’ll change somewhat, and it won’t be the same way it was.”

But it kind of hit me like bricks.

That was probably the hardest part, and it still is the most difficult part of the transition.

I’m still grappling with that and figuring out what the best structure is and how to manage my body now in the way I want it to look, perform, and feel.

It’s a pretty big paradigm shift.

What do you do now? What does well-being look like now?

Because I only knew one way.

And that was training.

Then you lose all of those restrictions.

I gave myself this experience. I was like, “You know what? I don’t want to say no to all this stuff I’ve been saying no to my whole life.”

Or always having to say, “No, sorry, I can’t do that.”

I said, “For this whole year, I’m just going to say yes to whatever.”

And you know what?

I’m dealing with the consequences of that!

I’ll get there.

But it was necessary.

It was also very, very difficult.

That’s probably still the most difficult thing, the physical aspect.

Emotionally, mentally, spiritually, I feel pretty grounded. I’ve released a lot of emotions and feelings around many different things.

But that’s the tough one.

DIANA: Definitely.

Our bodies aren’t something we can hang up. We wear lots of hats. You’re a player, and then you hang up your jersey.

But our bodies? We don’t get to hang those up until death, God forbid.

They’re with us until the end. They’re our temple.

The body is also fascinating because it has this capacity to change, and it changes in really interesting ways.

Yours changed through leaving professional athletic training.

As a woman and a mother, mine changed through childbirth. Your hips, your stomach, there are so many things.

TAHNAI: I feel like my body wants me to be pregnant, and I’m like, “No!”

DIANA: That’s true!

TAHNAI: I opted out! Why is my body changing like it’s preparing me for it? It’s not happening!

DIANA: Also, our bodies continue to change as we get older, so that’s another huge factor.

TAHNAI: I was holding it off for as long as I could! Then it was just like, “Yep. No more. Boom!”

It all came at once. It was like my body was holding off all of it with all the training and everything.

I didn’t stop playing until I was 35.

It was just waiting at the gate for me to stop!

DIANA: It was accelerated!

I can see that with hormones and things, because athletes can experience changes in menstruation and other things that affect how our bodies function.

What I love about the body is that it does continue to change with us.

Even though that can be frustrating, it can also be the secret.

It’s like, “How do I work with you? How do I get you to cooperate with me? And how do I love you as you are?”

TAHNAI: It takes a snap of a finger for my body to gain everything and then tenfold the time to make that much progress in the other direction.

DIANA: Right.

Because in some ways, when you’re an athlete, you’re performing at an extreme level compared with the rest of the population.

Naturally, you don’t necessarily want or need to go back to that level.

Then it’s, “What’s the level that’s compatible with the way I want to live?”

I like what you said about loving yourself.

I think all women, especially because body shaming is huge for women and we’re judged so much on our appearance, have to grapple with that.

I remember hearing Taylor Swift say that no matter what a woman’s body looks like, there’s something people will criticize.

If you’ve got the boobs, you don’t have the butt. If you have the butt, you don’t have whatever.

To me, at this stage of my life, approaching 50, a focus has become looking at the parts of myself I haven’t loved or have been hard on.

I had a client tell me that a relative of theirs got breast cancer, and this person had always criticized their breasts.

I thought, “Oh my God. Don’t do that.”

It was a note to myself.

You have to learn to love every aspect of yourself. I genuinely feel that.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t certain changes a person may want to make because of the way it makes them feel or the way they want to show up.

Those changes can be healthy and good as long as you’re loving yourself at every stage along the way.

TAHNAI: Yeah. It’s tough.

DIANA: It is seriously tough.

Okay, as a conclusion, I’d like you to leave everyone viewing and listening with a question or a thought.

TAHNAI: Oh boy. A question or a thought…

Probably because this has been at the forefront of my mind over the past few weeks, I would just say that there is way more light out there than there is darkness.

A lot of times, in order to get to the light, you’ve got to go through the dark.

And each day is new.

I think we have to continue to lift each other up, especially women lifting up other women.

Not to say to do that blindly, because I know we’re not all on the same team rooting for the same things.

But we’ve got to have each other if we’re going to continue to progress women’s sport, progress the rights and opportunities for women.

We’ve got to resist the urge to always be in competition with one another or feel like, in order to lift ourselves up, we have to bring someone else down.

That crab mentality.

I don’t think, in the end, that helps us move the needle forward.

Those would be my last few thoughts.

DIANA: Thank you. I love it. I think it’s beautiful.

If you want to connect with Tahnai, she’s available on Instagram at @tahn08.

I would recommend hiring her as a coach. She’s fantastic. It’s the best decision our family made.

I want to say this because it’s true and it’s beautiful.

When we met Tahnai, our daughter had gone through something difficult. When they started working together, she made Shahina smile.

I hadn’t seen her smile in a long time.

As a mother and a parent, that was a big deal to me.

She also went to some of her games and gave her invaluable advice that, to this day, we look back on and appreciate.

So thank you so much, Tahnai.

You are a wonderful, wonderful, extraordinary human being.

Have a great day.

TAHNAI: Thank you.