Leaving that was always difficult.”īeth Mead is congratulated by Jen Beattie after scoring for Arsenal. I was very much a home girl with a great family around me. “They made me the player and person I am today,” she says of those early insecurities. Mead suffered anxiety as a young girl and her book captures how she sometimes claimed to be ill, or even developed psychosomatic symptoms, as she tried to avoid leaving home or going on England youth training camps.
She understands how it affects the family as well as the person involved. All the Arsenal girls and the staff have been incredible to me but Jen’s experienced cancer. The admirable way in which Jen Beattie, her Arsenal teammate, has kept playing football while recovering from breast cancer has been a source of comfort and hope for Mead. It’s taking its toll on her a little bit but she’s doing OK.” There’s obviously a lot of repercussions about management of chemo. Mead’s voice remains steady when I ask how her mum is coping with her treatment. We were thinking of everything that went before that moment and for us to share that together in front of a packed-out Wembley was incredible.”Ġ2:16 'I was struggling … it's OK not to be OK': Beth Mead opens up in new book – video We had so many happy tears but lots of emotion came out about the struggles I’ve had throughout. But for me to get to them straight after the final was special because all I wanted was to share that moment with them. I try to find where my parents are during the warm-up to every game. Obviously this summer was incredible, to share that moment with her when we won the Euros. She has spent all year “trying to put a smile on my mum’s face.
Mead explains that the brave and stoical way in which her mother has confronted the disease inspires her.
My tears mingled with the bathwater until I couldn’t tell which was which.” I put the phone down reeling with shock, unable to register everything Mum had just said to me. Even the memory of how she found out that her mum was ill – Mead answered the phone while having a bath – is bruising and still very painful. The situation is so raw that Mead asks not to talk about her mother in too much detail. She has just written a book, the most moving pages of which emerge in a chapter about her mum’s cancer. Actually, it’s been more of a love tour.” Mead smiles on a dark afternoon at Arsenal’s training ground as she says: “A lot of people have mentioned that the last year was a revenge tour for me. I wanted to find the enjoyment I had as a six-year-old girl when I started playing football.” But the perspective of what my mum is going through meant I needed to snap out of it, stop being a baby and enjoy my football again. “I would say me hating that situation I was in was my main motivator in pre-season. The 27-year-old replaces “anger” with an even starker word in “hate” as she conveys her hurt. Those football woes, and her worry and care for her mum, meant that Mead began last season in a frame of mind which, I suggest, seemed to fuse anger and love. The Arsenal striker won the Golden Boot and Player of the Tournament awards as she helped England become European champions in the summer, but also had to endure the pain of her mother’s cancer and the upsetting memory of how, last year, she had been excluded from the GB squad at the Olympics. “I t shows how much more powerful love can be than hate,” Beth Mead says as she reflects on a year of tumult and glory which has changed her life.
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