August 6, 2023. Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, Melbourne, Australia. Megan Rapinoe approaches a soccer goal, empty green field stretching around her on all sides, alone in a stadium full of thousands. She’s 20 years into her international career, appearing in her fourth World Cup, and about to take one of the most important penalty kicks of her life. She’s done this a million times before. She knows what to do. She takes a deep breath and kicks the ball.

She whiffs.

She laughs. 

A few minutes later, the United States loses the game and exits the tournament.

Don’t worry—I come not to bury Megan Rapinoe, but to praise her. 

Rapinoe was born in Northern California in 1985, the youngest of six and soccer mad from the start. Her college years were spent playing for the University of Portland with her twin sister Rachael, their team going undefeated in the 2005 season and winning the NCAA championship. After graduating, Rapinoe bounced between several teams and countries, but in 2012 she found herself in Seattle, and soon Seattle found themselves in her. Rapinoe, who plays her last regular season game this Friday, would spend a decade as an OL Reign superstar and fan favorite.

How could we not love this truly Seattle hero, this outspoken purple-haired lesbian known as much for her left-wing activism as for her soccer play? Who has won both the Golden Boot and the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Rapinoe led the charge toward 2022’s landmark equal pay agreement for the U.S. Men’s and Women’s soccer teams and is outspoken in her support of transgender athletes. I’m not sure she could’ve emerged anywhere except in the Pacific Northwest. Like Earth being uniquely suited to develop life, Seattle, soccer-obsessed and socially liberal, was uniquely suited to support Megan Rapinoe. She needed us. And, it turns out, I needed her.

I’ve never been a person who’s afraid of much, both naturally and as a point of stubborn pride. I was always the kid who wanted to ride the biggest horse at Girl Scout camp or rappel off the tallest cliff. Roller coasters? Yes please. Spiders? No problem. I actively enjoy public speaking. But I’ve spent much of my life scared, bone-shaking terrified, of making mistakes in public.

This masochistic perfectionism has held me back from everything from softball games with my friends to learning to ride an electric scooter to applying for jobs. I’m inexplicably mortified at the thought of not being instantly perfect at a new skill.

But early that Sunday morning in August, bleary eyed and anxiously clutching my beverage along with everyone else in the packed, shoulder-to-boob Rough & Tumble Pub, I watched Megan Rapinoe screw up. And a thought, just a whisper of one, danced and twirled its way into the back of my brain: if the name on the back of my jersey could screw up and live to tell the tale, maybe I could too?

I mean, sure, Megan Rapinoe has ungodly levels of success with which to balance out one ill-timed whiff. An Olympic gold; two World Cup championships. Trophies galore. Even her lifetime penalty kick record is 18-1, and that’s without mentioning her political icon status or her reign as one-half of Seattle’s preeminent sports power couple. But everyone makes mistakes, and Rapinoe is among the first to admit she’s not immune. 

“Life will throw you some curveballs,” Rapinoe advised her past self in a Bleacher Report article titled “Dear Megan.” “Failure will happen, and how you handle it will help shape you into the person you are going to become.” Rapinoe’s talent for honest, good-natured self-assessment was on display in her post–World Cup interviews, where she described the surprise and irony of failing at the one skill she’s been most reliable at. But she also brings this candor to her personal life, talking openly in interviews about the dissolution of her engagement to Seattle musician Sera Cahoone and her embrace of couples counseling with current partner Sue Bird.

Rapinoe’s political work has also had some bumps and barriers. Her first forays into activism were heartfelt but headstrong, and she’s been criticized for the amount of space she, as a white woman, sometimes takes up on Black issues. “I’m trying to become a little more thoughtful as I get older,” she admitted during a recent press conference. “When to use my voice and when not to.” 

There’s no magic wand in this story—putting yourself out there and being vulnerable isn’t a skill one learns all at once. But I’m practicing. I played kickball with a big group of friends; last month at PAX, I slid up to an expo hall display and tried a video game miles and miles outside my comfort zone. As my pixelated spaceship spun wildly out of control on the screen in front of me and I got shot down for approximately the 14th time, I found myself laughing. “I’m SO bad at this,” I admitted. “But I’m having a great time.”

And then the other day, I applied for that big job. And then another one. I decided to stop being so terrified of failing that I deny myself the opportunity in the first place. Maybe I’ll blow a job interview! Maybe I won’t. Either way, I finally realize I can’t get better without first being worse.

“People make mistakes,” Rapinoe advised young Megan, and also adult me. “It's not the end of the world.”