Samplers connect us directly to their makers. Emma’s work has survived for over 140 years, a personal record of learning and belief. Plan your visit to see more stories like this at Hollytrees Museum: colchester.cimuseums.org.uk/visit/hollyt...

Just bought this record and can’t stop listening to it. Thank you for posting.

Curious how others (parents, former athletes, coaches) are holding these tensions. What would it mean to build youth sports around bodily confidence, collective exhilaration, and spaces where young girls can be aggressive and ambitious without apology? In contrast to performance metrics, elitism…

From a care perspective, the question isn’t just how to make kids more “resilient,” but how to redesign systems so harm isn’t built in. Like what is the point? Having experienced this as a youth athlete, the culture just extracts (money, time, mental health, physical well being).

I keep thinking about kids in the middle of this, forming identities in environments where enjoyment is replaced by performance and surveillance.

Parents and coaches are often blamed individually, but the article makes clear how judgment, fear of falling behind, and cultural expectations narrow what feels like a “choice.”

What used to be excess behavior (overtraining, win-at-all-costs culture) is increasingly normalized, even rewarded, in profit-driven youth sports ecosystems.

The costs show up in children’s bodies and minds: overuse injuries, chronic pain, anxiety, panic, burnout often treated as side effects rather than predictable outcomes. I had a convo with a youth sports teammate who has chronic shoulder issues as a 40yr old from pitching in little league/HS.

What stands out is how pressure is now incentivized. Coaches, parents, and kids are responding to systems organized around specialization, visibility, and imagined futures that is an illusion of security as a way to protect oneself and family from pervasive precarity.