Pele stands beside me, not behind me. I could never be serious about changing the world if I lacked the belief that my wife can be a community leader, a philanthropist, an activist, and a changemaker. I owe her so much because, to be truthful, it is only through her eyes that I have come to see the problems of the world. I would be blind to the people’s pain without her. Her empathy is like an electrical current that runs between us and flows from her mind to mine. I am at the point where I would die for what I believe in, and I can say honestly that I would never have come this far without meeting Pele and loving her to the point that I would lay down my life for her. From being a teenage mother, when we had nothing but uncertainty, to the present moment, when she is using the power of her voice and her convictions to affect people, I sometimes look at her and shake my head, amazed by the person she is still becoming. Her love has taught me to love.
For both of us, this journey would have been impossible without the ultimate changemakers in our own lives, our three daughters: Peyton, Blake, and Ollie. Having daughters has allowed me to be kind, to be unafraid, and to be emotional. They’ve cured me of thinking about myself first. It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’ve had people try to discredit me as a man by saying, “Well, you don’t have a son.” I laugh in their faces and say, “Who cares? My daughters will be better than any man I could ever create. They’re the future.” I look at my family completely differently from people who have an obsession with the gender of a child. I think, “I have three young, curious people in my life, and they can be whoever they want to be.”
If I had a son, he would carry the burden of having everyone in his life ask him if he was going to follow in my shoes and play in the NFL, and I have some big shoes to fill. For every Clay Matthews or Peyton Manning, I can point you to a mess of young people who tried to follow their fathers into this game, only to meet with disappointment and dashed dreams. It would be even harder for my son than, say, Mark Ingram, a running back for the Saints, whose dad played wide receiver back in the day. That’s because a son of mine would have to fight me to get onto the field. I felt like I had to play football. Any son of mine would not. He’d be pressured by friends and coaches to play, and he would hear from his mom and me that the safety of his brain and body was too important for all that.
But when it comes to our daughters, we don’t have the burden of football on their future or what other people say their ambitions should be. No one puts them in that box. They can be whoever and whatever they want. They can be astronauts or create a cartoon series, like their Uncle Tellus, about being an astronaut. It’s all there for them. I have one daughter who wants to cure malaria, another who wants to be a dentist, and another who wants to be a veterinarian. Some days they say they want to be singers or princesses or soccer players. I love the creativity of their minds and the fact that they truly feel they can be whoever they want to be. Pele and I wrote a children’s book about our kids called Three Little Monsters Have a Wild Day. They can wreak havoc when things aren’t sitting right, but they are also so cute that it’s tough to stay mad. My youngest daughter, she can be a monster for sure. Some days I’m like, “Yeah, you could’ve gotten three sacks today with that attitude!”
I know they’re going to be something greater than I am, because the things I have done are primarily around sports. I’m branching out, but the center of my life at this time has to be football. My daughters really have a chance to change lives. I’m excited about it. Every day I tell my wife, “Oh, I can’t wait! Seven more years and Peyton is going to college and she’s going to be this!” Whenever I go on trips, like to Haiti or Japan or South Dakota, my family goes with me. It’s not just about my growth. It’s about growing together as a family—not just living on screens but staring the reality of the world in the face, because if they don’t see the truth of what’s out there, the world will never change. That’s something I want for every child. When I look in my children’s eyes and they are seeing the possibility of being changemakers in this world, it feels like a miracle. When I go to a youth prison and look into the eyes of a child the same age as my oldest daughter, but the light—that spark—is out, it tears me up inside. I do what I can for my daughters, but the truth is that they do something even better for me.
I try to see the world through my daughters’ eyes, thinking about what they will have to experience on their journeys as Black women, and it keeps me up nights. The more I imagine what is headed their
