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A comment on Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle. Parent comment

Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by dpau on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @08:04AM (#19681766)
I don't think this story is about a "free spirit". Twigg was a determined athlete who doggedly pursued her passion while she could and became the best in her field. But her success in sports didn't translate over to another career.

According to the article, Twigg has only been homeless for five years, and she is currently 56 years old. Twigg wasn't really a "free spirit"- She held down jobs, had kids, and made a normal life for herself up until her 50's.

So I feel that this story is instead about an older tech worker who has aged out of the workforce. As a 40-something developer who has already experienced age discrimination as well as the realization that many of my skills are becoming outdated, I feel for her. Without a nest-egg, many of us may very well be in her situation in our 50's.

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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by dondawest on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @09:05AM (#19682151)
Less of a “free spirit” than a “treatment resistant homeless person.” Social workers know the type. She goes to pains to point out that she’s homeless by choice.
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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by dpau on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @09:16AM (#19682229)
If she's resistant, it seems to be out of a sense of empathy for other people in her situation, rather than mental illness or some other issue:

>“I felt at one time that I couldn’t accept housing because there were all these other people who need it”

>“The point is not so much that I need help, it’s that there are a bunch of people who need help — 12,000 in this area, half a million in the country,” Twigg said. “Help should be provided for everybody, not just a few.”

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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by ohyes on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @09:55AM (#19682559)
Classifying empathy as a mental illness captures much of what’s wrong with society. Similarly, being unable or unwilling to toil away at a low paying it desk job may actually show some amount of sanity that the rest of us lack.
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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by dondawest on Sunday April 21, 2019 @04:52PM (#19714502)
Who the hell classified empathy as a mental illness?
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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by dondawest on Sunday April 21, 2019 @04:51PM (#19714500)
I didn’t say she was mentally ill. I said she is treatment resistant and homeless by choice. Talk to a social worker, her type is a lot more common than you think.
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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by JustSomeNobody on Friday April 19, 2019 @11:00AM (#19700145)
It's because her brain won't let her. She suffered from trauma as a child. I bet if you did a brain scan on her, she'd have an overdeveloped amygdala. She's in constant fight, flight or freeze mode. There are examples in the actual article demonstrating this.
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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by dondawest on Sunday April 21, 2019 @04:53PM (#19714508)
A lot of people have overdeveloped amygdalas and dont choose to be homeless tho, for example me.
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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by lacker on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @01:49PM (#19684795)
According to the article, Twigg has only been homeless for five years

No, the article is a bit confusing on this point. Read through the whole thing, though: Twigg was homeless as a kid, before she was ever a top tier cyclist. Her mother kicked her out of the house, for some reason the article doesn't explain. This most recent stretch of homelessness has only been five years though.

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Re:Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless i... by dustinblake on Saturday April 20, 2019 @06:02AM (#19705670)
Why are we assuming that it was Twigg’s actions that caused her mother to kick her out? It’s just as likely (if not more) that her mother was crazy and/or abusive, and at the very least it was not a traditional family experience—they were living in a basement, not a house!
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