On the famous photo of her kissing Sarah Huffman after the 2015 World Cup win I think it actually speaks more volumes for people to just be who they are rather than having to explain who they are.

I think that nowadays coming out and being like, 'Oh yeah I'm coming out of this closet,' I think that's so 2010. I'm not the person that's gonna stand on top of a mountain and be like, 'I'm gay, hear me roar!' Because I actually don't believe that my sexuality matters to myself, it doesn't change my life in any way, if that makes sense. 'Little did we know that it would go viral,' Wambach says of the now-iconic image of her kissing Sarah Huffman at the 2015 World Cup. Being the youngest of seven, it's hard when you're young and you really just want that love and affection from your parents, and they did the best that they could. Especially because when I was younger, I was doing it in a lot of ways because I wanted the attention of my mom and dad. I don't know if I found soccer or if soccer found me.

I think that was a really hard balance for me. I always wanted to be more validated as a human being, as a person, than I was as a player. When you're younger and traveling and visiting new countries and cities, that stuff is exciting, it's flashy, it's shiny, but I always had this separation between who I was as a person and who I was as a player.

When I was younger, the validation definitely was what drove me into the sport, and as I grew older, to be able to play professionally and to have the lifestyle that I had for so long, I was able to fall in love with parts of the game. On her motivations for playing soccer as a kid Your purchase helps support NPR programming. In it, she writes about growing up as the youngest of seven children, her romantic relationships and her struggles with alcohol and prescription drugs.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title Forward Author Abby Wambach Though Wambach acknowledges that her 'soccer player' identity will always be part of her life, her new memoir, Forward, paints a broader portrait. 'That's what last few months have really been about for me, is emerging into the person who I really am.' 'I knew at some point that that identity would come to an end, and if I stripped that identity away, what then? Who am I then?' Wambach tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. And yet, she says she never wanted to be known 'just as a soccer player.'

She won two Olympic gold medals and was named the 2012 FIFA World Player of the Year before retiring from the sport in 2015. Over the course of her career, soccer star Abby Wambach scored 184 goals - more than any other man or woman in the history of international soccer. team's victory against Japan in the FIFA Women's World Cup on July 5, 2015.

Forward by abby wambach