A blog by Pepetoe.

If you’ve seen my TikTok recently, you’ll know I’ve somehow become that girl aggressively smacking hockey balls at a garden wall like it personally wronged me. My form is questionable, my neighbours are probably plotting an intervention, and someone in the comments said I “look too old to play sports,” which is objectively hilarious because I’m 22! But behind the viral chaos is something real: hockey didn’t just give me a hobby; it gave me a lifeline. And then, for nearly five years, my eating disorder took it away.

Growing up, hockey was the place where everything made sense. It was my escape, the one corner of my life where my brain finally stopped screaming. I could run, hit, laugh, mess up, start again… and it all felt good, simple, grounding. Until it didn’t. Until my eating disorder turned the pitch into another place where I felt like a failure. I didn’t feel strong enough, fast enough, good enough (I mean, alongside the pandemic meaning matches were all cancelled anyways). Eventually, after COVID, I stopped going, stopped playing, stopped calling myself a hockey player at all. It was like losing a part of who I was, like someone had quietly switched off a light in me.

Recovery doesn’t return things to you in a single moment. It’s slow and messy and weird. It’s learning how to be a person again. But it has this gentle timing to it. It gives you things back when you’re finally capable of holding them without breaking. For me, one of those things was hockey. It didn’t start on a pitch. It started in my garden, gripping my stick for the first time in years, half-convinced I’d accidentally launch a ball over the fence and towards my neighbour’s dog. But instead, something softer happened. I felt a spark – tiny but unmistakable. I remembered that I loved this.

And no, I’m not playing in the England team. But I’ve found something better: a team I adore. A team that makes me laugh until my stomach hurts, that doesn’t care if I hit a ball cleanly or trip over my own feet. And yes, it’s a men’s team, but why the heck not! The guys remind me every single week why I fell in love with hockey in the first place. Not for the level, the wins, or the pressure, or the status, but for the joy. The belonging. The simple act of turning up as you are. Where people don’t know my story, nor what I’m going through. Just simply being me, and loving the sport each and every weekend I turn up and play.

And honestly? Right now, I need that more than ever. With breakups and life being life, having hockey back has saved me in ways I can never put into proper words. There’s something about showing up to training when your heart feels heavy, something about laughing with people who don’t even realise they’re healing you, something about hitting a ball so hard it feels like you’re releasing every emotion your chest can’t hold anymore. Having this sport back in my life has held me together in moments when I genuinely thought I was falling apart.

So yes, most evenings you’ll still find me in my garden, hitting balls at a wall like it’s a form of budget therapy, like I used to do when I was 15. TikTok has plenty to say about it (apparently my stick is too small, my technique is chaotic, and hitting on concrete is a hate crime). But here’s the truth: I have never loved this version of myself more. This messy, imperfect, deeply human girl who refuses to let shame or heartbreak or past trauma decide what she’s allowed to enjoy. Every hit, even the ones that end up bruising my shins (!), is proof I reclaimed something my eating disorder tried to take permanently.

Hockey saved me once without me even realising. But choosing to come back to it now, in a season of my life where everything feels heavy and uncertain, that’s how I saved myself all over again. Hockey didn’t fix everything. It didn’t magically heal the heartbreak or stop the chaos. But it gave me a space to breathe, to laugh, to feel strong, to feel me again. And for that, I will always be grateful.