Each week, Samantha Lewis shares her insights on various topics, from exploring new health trends to reimagining personal growth.
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As Fremantle players prepared to run through their banner at the AFL Grand Final, we saw the words written across it.
The best things in life are earned.
I loved it.
So much of what really matters in life can’t be bought, borrowed or handed over.
Trust and respect are earned.
So is dependability, being the person others know they can count on.
The depth of a friendship is earned, one vulnerable conversation at a time.
The friendships I treasure most now are the result of years of slowly built trust, deep understanding, appreciation and mutually proven unconditional support.
When you have been burned by friendships or relationships that were rushed into, you get better at protecting yourself.
The street-facing side of your life might be open for anyone passing to see, while the walls around your deepest, truest self become higher and harder to climb.
The people who make it over those walls have earned their place there.
Success is earned too, however you choose to measure it.
You put in the work, you keep showing up when it’s hard, and slowly the good things start to build.
Which is why the end of that game hurt so much.
I was absolutely heartbroken for Freo.
I truly felt they deserved that win. They had earned it.
Then, in the last couple of minutes, it was snatched from them.
There is a particular ache in that moment, and it’s one plenty of us know well away from the footy.
You have done the work. You have given it everything for so long.
You can see exactly where you are trying to go, and you still find yourself asking how much more you need to do to get there.
Nobody ever said life was fair.
Bad things happen to good people all the time.
A friend reminded me of this recently as we walked together, her pushing a pram.
Inside was a beautiful, brand-new baby she is fostering, who came into her care only several days after being born.
“Bad things happen to good people for no reason, it’s out of our control,” she said as she nodded towards the pram.
She could not have been more right.
Here was this perfect, innocent little baby who had done nothing to deserve a hard start.
We can’t always choose the circumstances we arrive in.
What he does have is her, and he could not have landed with a better person to look after him.
Some of the most important work in this world happens quietly, with no crowd and no banner.
I hope with everything in me that his place with her becomes permanent.
Walking beside them, I thought about that banner again.
Some things are earned. Some things are simply given.
Some things are taken from us no matter how hard we have worked.
What we do next is the part that belongs to us.
For Fremantle, I hope that loss becomes fuel.
Heartbreak like that, used well, has a way of becoming the thing that gets you over the line.
I hope the Dockers carry the feeling of those last few minutes all the way through to next September and claim what was within reach for a moment this year.
Surely that win, when it comes, will taste all the sweeter for how close they came this time.
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