“Old Rule: Lead with dominance. Create Followers.

New Rule: Lead with humanity. Cultivate Leaders.”

— Abby Wambach, US Women’s National Soccer Team 2001-2015, author of “Wolfpack”

Let’s talk about karma. Not the sage-scented yoga-retreat kind, I mean the industrial-grade karma that shows up uninvited, knives out, late for dinner.

On a personal level, karma is reaping what you sow. Collective karma is the idea that teams, nations and empires don’t get to outrun the consequences of past actions.

My first realized experience of collective karma was during college soccer. I played under a coach with the tactical knowledge of a toaster. Our “coach” delivered halftime revelations like “To win, we need to score more than them!” and “Soccer is a lot of running!”

More destructive than her subterranean Soccer IQ, the “coach” played favorites. Normally, the starting lineup was an alchemy of talent and chemistry. Players respected the process, even if they sometimes didn’t agree. I was on and off this elusive starting list for reasons unknown. With no transparent decision making, anger seeped in because anger is armor.

We started crosstalking. Core values were thrown to the winds, and negativity surrounded us like a sour secret. We looked around, and not in, for leadership.

We became a poor version of ourselves. Mocking the “coach” when benched, mute when we played. We lost our way. Our record tanked. Season over: initiate shame spiral.

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True love

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During our off-season, I leveled up. I loved soccer enough to slog through my reactive poor decisions until they became my teachers. Staying with the truth and discomfort was painful, but simultaneously uplifting. I could do better. We could do better.

By the next August, our team was ready to take responsibility for our own season. We couldn’t change the coach — but we could coach ourselves. We owned our mess. It wasn’t a presto-chango click of the cleats, but we unified like heartwood. We compromised. We motivated, coached and guided ourselves.

But, this isn’t all about soccer. It’s about karma.

Karma is returned individually and collectively on its own timeline. Regardless of your political leaning, it’s impossible to deny our country is on the struggle bus.

The other day, I overheard two people complaining. “How did America get into this mess?” “No clue,” said the man.

I stood there, stock still. Really? No clue, not even the falsified treaties in the library?

I wondered if they really had no clue. Did our education system fail to teach uncomfortable truths? Have they never seen Crash Course in US History? Or do they think karma’s for monks and the colonists’ “finders, keepers” rule was legit?

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Truth bomb

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I love this country enough to confront its history. When I first read about national karma, I realized it wasn’t an attack on America — it was a critique of its actions. And the first of those was against Native Americans.

Native Americans were treated to a master class in land appropriation, cultural erasure and broken promises. Armed with muskets and Manifest Destiny, the colonists offered Native Americans “civilization” in exchange for resources and sovereignty? Wait, weren’t they free before the colonists arrived?

The Dawes Act of 1887 codified land theft, slicing tribal territories like frat-party pizza — all under the pretense of helping Native Americans become farmers. As if they hadn’t been farming for thousands of years already.

Families were displaced and sacred lands desecrated. Catholic-run Residential Schools in North America ripped Indigenous children from their homes, stuffing them into institutions pimping a curriculum of cultural annihilation for the compliant, and mass graves for the resistant.

If you examine our collective karma against Native Americans, enslaved people, marginalized immigrants, communities of color, LGBTQ — you see the implemented architecture of division is still firmly intact.

Our history is jagged — but it’s not just a record of harm. It’s also a ledger of redemption attempts, of incredible human stabs at justice. We passed the 13th Amendment in 1865 to abolish slavery. In 1920, women finally clawed their way to the vote. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t fix racism, but it called it out. In 2015, we made marriage equality the law of the land. Yvon Chouinard gave Patagonia, his 3 billion dollar company, to a non-profit, saying “Earth is now our only shareholder.” This is our history too.

Karma is patient. It returns tidings good and bad in due course.

Our team couldn’t heal until we got real about our role in the toxic culture. We weren’t just victims of poor leadership — we contributed to the dysfunction by choosing comfort over courage. What was true for us is true for America. Healing starts with owning the story, even the parts we’d rather skip.

But America’s story isn’t finished. This country is full of people who display quiet daily patriotism: service members protecting everyone’s freedom, teachers who stay late, firefighters who run toward danger. We fall and rise together. We’re all on Team America.

You can’t win on the field or in history with unqualified players. Diverse faces on crumbling walls can’t fix a failing foundation. Change doesn’t come from rebranding. It comes from reckoning.

We need to reckon with the past. Acknowledge it. Do better. That’s how teams win. That’s how nations recover. That’s how you plant karma that nourishes a country.

America can heal — but only if we stop pretending we’re already whole.