4/1/2023 0 Comments Raw storyo![]() The new experience has had its ups and downs as he’s learned how to process his struggles, but even through the messy periods, Hamler said he’s learned the power that comes with opening up. Hamler said he checked himself into therapy earlier this year. Hamler made his camp debut on Monday after returning from injury. Garett Bolles, left, and KJ Hamler embrace at a recent Broncos training camp practice. Just being out on the field has been a big help.” I’m just learning each day, day in and day out. To see me dig out of it and start becoming vulnerable with people I trust and start opening up more, we’re just so used to bottling stuff up and taking it to the chin a lot. I had to think of all the people I’d let down - my mom, my dad, my family. “I think that’s the reason I’m still here,” Hamler said. In the darkest moments, Hamler kept searching for that glow. As he began setting out to turn the words on a piece of paper into reality, Gooding was always a guiding light. Gooding knew that her grandson had written down a goal of playing in the NFL when he was 4 years old. What started to pull Hamler, inch by inch, out of what he called a “depressed state,” was a vision of what his grandmother would want for him. It still kind of haunts me to this day, even though I’m better, but when you lose the woman that raised you, it’s a different feeling.” “I was holding a lot of regret on myself because of that. “It’s a lot of regret in my heart from that,” he said. But on the Monday before he got the call that Gooding had passed, Hamler said he and Gooding didn’t have their normal Monday chat on the phone. When Hamler wasn’t at home, he would talk to Gooding on the phone every Monday, as much a part of his weekly routine as film study or early morning lifts. Gooding was, Hamler said, “the love of my life.” Then, he’d take her to get her hair done or grab a bite to eat or just sit and share stories. Every time he came home from college at Penn State, his first stop would be her house. Gooding had been more like a mom to Hamler than a grandmother for most of his life. ![]() Then came the call on a Saturday in the middle of January, three months after Hamler’s surgeries. Even though he was grateful for his fellow wide receivers who called to check on him while he was at home, Hamler said it “started to feel like you’re not on the team anymore.” Hamler felt like he was wrapped in a cocoon, he said, curled up alone with the pain. Not being in the locker room or around teammates on the road last season as he rehabbed only intensified the isolation he felt. ![]() He delved further Monday, saying the stretch was “the lowest point of my life, hands down.” Hamler first shared insight into the “dark place” he was in last season during an interview with The Athletic back in April, explaining that the passing of his grandmother, Ethel Gooding, coupled with rehab from knee and hip surgeries and other “personal battles” he was facing piled up in a way that left Hamler feeling overwhelmed. There was one point I just didn’t want to be on Earth no more. “At one point I didn’t want to be here,” Hamler said Monday, detailing the low point of a stretch last fall where he lost football due to significant injury, grieved through the passing of his grandmother and battled depression. "Football brought me back to life, and I'm grateful." - thank you for sharing your story, thank you for being so vulnerable, thank you for being an inspiration to so many. In doing so, he demonstrated the power he can have as an advocate for mental health. In a raw and candid 13-minute session with reporters, Hamler laid bare all he endured during the past year, a dark period that left him questioning his very existence. But even if the 2020 second-round pick debuts in Seattle and then goes on to put up the kind of numbers the coaching staff believes he can, there may not be anything Hamler does that is more impactful than what he did after removing his pads and stepping onto a podium early Monday afternoon. ![]() Hamler hopes to use that top-flight speed often alongside Russell Wilson, and Monday’s activation from the PUP list was another encouraging step in the wide receiver’s quest to return to the field in Week 1, nearly one year after a devastating injury ended his second season after only three games. “Even with a knee brace, I’ll never say I’m not.” ![]()
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