Ladies First: Molly Bartrip Inside WSL

ENG 10mnts
WSL.Molly.Bartrip.ENG.twb22.mp4
524.2 Mo
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Bartrip is now 25, but aged 14 was diagnosed with anorexia when struggling to deal with an injury which had kept her away from playing, before later suffering from depression at the end of her teenage years. The defender, who rejoined her childhood club last summer from Reading, talked about the strength she has shown to fight off both illnesses to spend almost seven years at the top of the women's game already, and return to Spurs - and even wear the captain's armband this season - 14 years after she first left. "I've come full circle," said Bartrip, speaking to Sky Sports as part of UEFA's #WePlayStrong campaign. "The environment is just what I need. Everybody's just so caring, generous, and it's just a family feel. "I think that's coming out in our performances at the moment we've had so far a successful season and long may it continue, but I'm just really lucky and thankful that that Spurs came in to make me their player."

Bartrip is no stranger to wearing the captain's armband for Spurs, having captained their girls' U10s in her youth before moving onto Arsenal, where she was called up to the England youth set-up - where things began to get difficult. It was with the international team that she got injured and was forced to sit on the sidelines while she recovered, something which she found difficult to cope with. "I think when you're so young, you don't even know how to express yourself," she said. "I knew something wasn't right. But I've never really accepted that in my own head. My mum definitely knew, she knows me very well. And she was the one that sent me to the doctor's literally by holding my head. They told me that I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. I hadn't really ever heard of it. "The way I've described it to people is as if there was somebody on my shoulder. And I called her Anna, because my counsellor at the time told me to write to her, it made me realise that it was somebody - it wasn't me, somebody else was doing it to me and controlling me. "That kind of illness, it controls you so intensely that you don't really know yourself. And that's how I felt at the time, I didn't know who I was, I didn't know what was going on. I just felt like this thing on my shoulder was literally telling me the calories in things, the fat content to make sure that I didn't eat enough. It was like this voice just in my ear 24/7. And it was really draining."

Things came to a head when Bartrip was hospitalised, and was about to be tube fed when she began to turn things round. But even though her mental health improved from that point, issues would return when she was 21 in the form of a serious bout of anxiety and depression. 

"I started to not feel myself when I was 21," she said. "I was like 'Again? Seriously?' It took some time to accept what was going on, I didn't move from my room for months. "Depression was very different to anorexia. But I felt so alone, even though I had my family and support network, I didn't feel like anyone truly cared. That battle was the hardest one, I honestly had thoughts of dying, and that's when I knew something was seriously not right. "I didn't see an out, that football would be my saving grace. I just thought I was going to take each day and hopefully at some point, I'd feel better. But if I didn't, I'd probably not be here. And that was fine, in my head. I didn't know how that was going to affect other people; even to this day, I don't think I know the extent that I could have maybe hurt people."

Having come out of the other side of the mental darkness, Bartrip's message is to take the initiative with people you may be worried about, and go beyond a casual message or social media DM to check in. "For people listening, it is quite normal," she said. "And I know that you will probably think you're very abnormal, but actually a lot of people do have those feelings. It's nothing to be necessarily ashamed of. It's just, you're struggling and it's fine because we all do. It's not necessarily just like going, 'are you okay?' because I think it's a lot deeper than that. "You just tell people 'Yes'. And I think also, it's another thing going through texting, instead of going face to face, I think you can normally tell people's reactions when it's face to face, texting is deceiving. You know, people can lie through text. And I think that's another thing I realised - that it's better just to ask people actually how they are instead of maybe waiting a week and then texting them because you're a bit shy to ask. Just ask somebody." The environment Bartrip mentions at Spurs means that she is excused from being weighed as she still has a tough relationship with scales - but wants mental illness to be given more equal weighting with physical ailments across the wider sport.

"Spurs are amazing with it," she said. "They know I'm not comfortable with being weighed, it's not even a question. They just say, 'leave Molly'. "I think to make sure that we have a good support network, but also a healthy environment within your club football is a massive thing. At Spurs I'm a wellbeing leader. "That doesn't necessarily mean I have a role, that just means that I'm there. If people want to talk they can, and the girls know my story, they know what I've been through. So they know if they needed to, they can talk to me. "Mental health is something that needs to be addressed - it's the same as a physical injury. And I think that's what we need to do to make sure we get the link because actually, it's okay to be mentally injured, because it's not necessarily your fault if you're physically injured. So why is it your fault if you're mentally injured? It's not. "And so if we can make sure that people look at it the same, instead of complete opposites of the spectrum, it will just make the environment and football and sport in general a lot healthier."