Lessons from the WNBA about training for life with ANCA vasculitis

I have been watching the WNBA this season with the kind of attention I used to save for things I was pretty sure would change me. And it has.

There is something remarkable about watching athletes who are becoming. Not finished, not polished into a final form, but visibly, beautifully in the process of growing into themselves. Paige Bueckers, the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft, is one of those people. She is extraordinary. And watching her navigate her first WNBA season — the adjustment, the losses, the press, the weight of a franchise hoping she carries them somewhere new — has been its own kind of education.

After a hard stretch that included a painful loss in the town where she built her name, Bueckers talked to reporters about how she found her way through it. She said she went home to where she first fell in love with the game. She walked the same streets, visited the same parks. As she told reporters: “Life is bigger than basketball. So to go kind of heal my inner child, go back home to where I fell in love with the game … it was really refreshing.”

She trained for years to be able to say something like that and mean it. The physical part of elite sports is the part we see. The mental and emotional part, the capacity to lose badly and come back open instead of closed, that is trained, too. Repetition. Failure. Practice. Growth.

We don’t get that with ANCA vasculitis.

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There is no preseason. No training camp for living with the disease. Most of us got a diagnosis that arrived without warning and overturned everything. We did not ease in. We were dropped in.

And the body, which I once thought of as something that could push through with enough stamina, does not work that way anymore. Stamina is something I used to adhere to. Now it mostly means consequence. Push past what my body is telling me, and I pay for it in days, not hours. The body has become the guide. Not willpower, determination, or effort. The body. My body.

Here is what I have come to understand, though: While we cannot train our bodies for this disease the way an athlete trains for competition, we can train something else. We can train our minds and emotions. That is not a small thing. And ironically, it is about acceptance.

There is solid research behind this. A 2024 meta-analysis published in PLOS ONE reviewed 21 randomized controlled trials and found that people with chronic pain who practiced psychological acceptance — specifically, learning to stop fighting the reality of their condition — showed meaningful reductions in depression, functional impairment, and pain interference. Not because the disease got easier, but because their relationship to it changed. That relationship is trainable. It takes practice, and it is hard, but it’s also real.

I think of this as learning to negotiate with an unwelcome, permanent new lifemate. ANCA vasculitis did not ask my permission to move in. It is not leaving. What I can work on slowly, imperfectly, with setbacks, is how I relate to its presence. That negotiation gets easier with practice. Not easy, mind you. Easier. There is a meaningful difference.

Part of that practice is letting grief be what it is. There is real loss here. Loss of the version of ourselves we expected to keep being. Loss of stamina, of spontaneity, of the kind of certainty about tomorrow that we didn’t even know we had until it was gone. In a column I wrote earlier this year, I explained that acceptance doesn’t mean approving of what happened. It means choosing a different relationship with the reality we are actually living. When we stop spending all our energy fighting the fact that the disease exists, we free some of that energy up for living.

Another column I return to is about holding on loosely — what happens when we grip too tightly, trying to control every turn of this disease, every flare, every disappointment. The emotional cost of that grip is enormous. Loosening it is a practice. Like anything worth building, it takes repetition.

Paige Bueckers went home and walked in the park where she first fell in love with the game. She reconnected with something that existed before the pressure, stakes, and loss. She reminded herself of who she is beneath all of it.

We can do a version of that, too. We didn’t train for this disease. But we can train ourselves to carry it with honesty about what is hard, with genuine grief for what is gone, and with something that, over time, starts to look like grace.

Note: ANCA Vasculitis News is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The opinions expressed in this column are not those of ANCA Vasculitis News or its parent company, Bionews, and are intended to spark discussion about issues pertaining to ANCA vasculitis.