Lance Picioane

Lance Picioane is the Founder & CEO Love Me Love You foundation, a leading mental health and suicide prevention advocate, and a Former AFL player for Adelaide FC, Hawthorn FC, and North Melbourne FC. He is a husband and a father of two boys.

Where does my story begin and where does my story end… There is darkness and there is light in my story and a lot in between. Like everyone else, I have a story to tell and mine has a lot of unanswered questions as to the effects and consequences from my past.

I was recently asked to write my own birthday speech and my own eulogy, which is an extremely confronting and daunting task. “His desire to make the world a better place what people don’t really acknowledge, and this comes from him growing up with internal warfare, placing such trust in people has bitten him on the ass but like a dog with a bone he will not give up”

As part of my past as a professional sportsperson in a brutal contact sport, in a generation that was harder than it was smarter, I used to interpret head knocks and concussions as a badge of honor. I used to believe that if I didn’t receive some sort of head impact in a game then I didn’t play hard enough. This mentality was not only present in my professional career, but throughout my junior days as well. A little competition I had with myself was to see how hard I could go and come out unscathed… How wrong I was!

Only the bad ones I would report… bad ones where I would end up in the hands of paramedics or doctors and then fudge the protocols so that I could play the next week. My history with concussion has led to a range of brain functioning challenges, my mental health has been severely impacted, my self worth and identity had lost its path, my ability to concentrate and finish the simplest of tasks diminished, headaches/dizzy spells and vision noise were so common I didn’t know what normal was.

The challenge is: ‘Would I have changed how I played knowing what I know now?” The answer is no! What I would change is the protocols I should have followed, the recovery that I should have followed, the questions I should have asked.

I live with fear. Fear as to what damage I have done and around what repercussions I will have to face up to as we move forward. What has this done for me now? It has helped me understand the health management I need to have in play every day to make sure I am looking after my mental health. This includes taking a holistic approach to my health through the three domains of mental, physical and social wellbeing. Keeping myself more accountable to my outcomes of my mental and physical responses will hopefully keep me in a more positive position for the future.

What does the future look like? Nobody knows. Instead, the question should be, “what do I want the future to look like?” I would like to live in a world of greater understanding of the impacts our choices have on our future. Greater awareness and education on topics that I am extremely passionate about, including mental health, concussion, connectedness and community.

I am donating my brain to research when my time is up in the hope that it will give future generations a greater understanding of what we can do to decrease the negative health impacts of concussion and repeat head trauma from sport. I want to empower others through research and promote education from a young age to better facilitate a future where Australians can keep playing the sports that we love without sacrificing their long-term health. Sports participation is such a powerful vehicle for connection and community, but we need to provide is a safer sports environment for our youth so we can continue to do this!