Reggie Walker

Reggie Walker is a dad to three, a husband, and an ex-NFL player living in the Kansas City area. Reggie is a sexual assault survivor and survivor advocate who believes his own healing journey began when he lost what he calls the first love of his life- football. As an NFL player for 7 years, and a captain of the Arizona Cardinals, football had been, among many things, his coping mechanism for sexual assault. Facing the reality of his experience with sexual assault many years after the fact led to a lack of self confidence and self control, but his belief remains that sitting with feelings related to trauma or of pain is necessary, and relying on your own resilience can get you through it.

“My healing journey didn’t really start until I lost the first love of my life, which was football. Football was a coping mechanism for me, my teacher, and so many things to me. When it got taken away it forced me to sit with myself, and sitting myself was something I never fully gave myself the time to do.” 

“You’re going to need your trusted friend, your best friend, probably the biggest thing that is going to help you out is going to be resilience, but I say its a friend because you really need to form that relationship with it because sitting with yourself is a brutal process and resilience is your one and only friend at times to get through that.” 

“You need to be very comfortable with being uncomfortable for a while. But you can get through it. I did it.”