Nathan is 24 and plays for Fremantle.

At the end of April he opened Instagram and nearly didn’t post what he’d written. He said what changed his mind was the league talking about mental health lately, and it starting to feel like the right moment.

We’re so happy he did.

He wrote that he had struggled with anxiety for four years. That he had fallen into deep depressive states, and that there had been times he came very close to taking his own life.

He wrote about a constant need to feel like he belongs.

He carried this for four years with a welfare team, club psychologists and a professional support structure around him, and he still nearly said nothing.

He trained with the same group of guys every week. A whole state watches him play on the weekends, and thousands of people know his name

Belonging is not something you can see from the outside. It is a feeling, and it does not care how many people are in the group chat.

After he posted, his teammates filled the comments. Nearly fourteen thousand people liked it. Nobody dragged him. Fremantle backed him publicly the same day.

The thing he was most afraid of, being judged for sharing his experience, is not what happened.

He has since backed a call for the AFL to run a mental health round, and said it would be a good way to educate young men in particular, because it is not something they talk about.

So Nathan, thank you.

For posting the thing you nearly did not post.

For saying out loud that you can be right in the middle of a group and still not feel part of it, because there are a lot of boys who feel exactly that and have no words for it yet.

And for showing every teen boy watching that opening up did not cost you a single person.

You’re the kind of role model boys need to see more of!

and in your own words…

You are loved.

You are seen.

You are heard!

💚