What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“She’s not happy, he thought. That’s not a happy kid.”

While Madison seems like she had the world at her feet, her family and friends notice her declining mental health. Her father Jim notices her unhappiness as he drives her back to Penn after the Christmas holidays. They discuss transferring and her finding a new therapist. Jim is worried but thinks that they have plenty of time to get Madison back on track emotionally. Madison committed suicide days later.

“Madison and her friends were the first generation of ‘digital natives’—kids who’d never known anything but connectivity. That connection, at its most basic level, meant that instead of calling your parents once a week from the dorm hallway, you could call and text them all day long, even seeking their approval for your most mundane choices, like what to eat at the dining hall. Constant communication may seem reassuring, the closing of physical distance, but it quickly becomes inhibiting. Digital life, and social media at its most complex, is an interweaving of public and private personas, a blending and splintering of identities unlike anything other generations have experienced.”

Fagan repeatedly emphasizes how social media has changed young people’s experience. This passage serves as a reminder of how much things have changed between Madison’s parents’ generation and the present. Fagan describes how despite connecting people, social media and text messaging isolate young people. Fagan argues that social media fosters a reliance on outside validation.

“Only excellence helped chip away at self-doubt. And so she excelled.”

“Destructive perfectionism” is a key concept for Fagan. She charts how Madison’s need to be excellent eroded her confidence. Fagan describes a young woman who was so fixated on the next victory that she was unable to see what everyone else could: that she was excellent.

“Maddy needed to see if she could really get into the Ivy League, which was a dream of hers. Or rather, a dream she felt she was supposed to have. Maddy wasn’t sure she could tell the difference anymore.”

Madison was devastated when the soccer coach from Penn stopped recruiting her following a poor performance during a match. When she began to excel at running, she saw a second chance at an Ivy League education. In this quote, Fagan shows that the status of an Ivy League education was more important to Madison than anything else. While Madison’s friends and family felt that playing soccer for Lehigh University would be a great fit for her, Madison was seduced by the prestige of Penn, even though she didn’t love track. The tension between what we actually want and what we think we want runs throughout the book. Fagan suggests that young people are under so much pressure that they are unable to develop a clear sense of what would make them happy.

“Penn seemed to offer everything Madison desired: great school, Division I sports, cool city, brand-name recognition. The catch was that to get all that, she had to give up soccer, her first love, the sport that, because of its improvisational nature, forced her out of her own head, forced her to embrace the beauty of the unknown.”

Madison was excellent at running, but she loved soccer. Madison’s friends and family describe her as someone who could get stuck in her own head. She thrived in team dynamics, and soccer provided an outlet for her. Ultimately, Madison choses Penn over soccer. Unlike soccer, running did not provide an outlet for her often fragile mental health.

“‘It started to feel like she didn’t see herself as a champion anymore,’ Stacy said. ‘And she wasn’t okay with being good—ever.’”

Madison’s mother describes Madison’s “destructive perfectionism” and competitive nature. At Penn, Madison is surrounded by other students and athletes who are also used to excelling. She begins to question her abilities and talents.

“She was too busy fighting for more, for the next victory, in whatever shape it might come—as small as counting the exact number of steps in a flight of stairs, as big as getting into the Ivy League. For a moment, sometimes longer, these victories slowed the treadmill on which her mind churned, the one that made her feel she could never keep up.”

Fagan uses a number of incidents to illustrate Madison’s tendency toward perfectionism: timing her walk to school, getting into an Ivy League school, punishing herself for a bad shot in soccer. Madison’s self-esteem was so fragile that she became “addicted to progress” as a way of bolstering her fragile sense of self (73).

“Getting Maddy out of her own head was difficult. She was shy; everyone knew that. But there was a depth to her shyness and the wall she built around herself. She had trouble making eye contact with the parents of her friends. They noticed this when she got into their cars after a practice or a game. The other kids would yank open the door, calling everyone Mr. and Mrs.—all kinetic energy. But Maddy would often keep her answers monosyllabic. During car rides, she almost always spent the time studying, disconnected from the group. Her friends rarely did homework in the car, but whenever seating became crowded, Madison usually pulled out her books.”

This vignette conveys important information about Madison. Early in the book, Madison’s successes and popularity are emphasized. These surface impressions do not give us a strong sense of who Madison is. This description of Madison nuances her character. We get a sense of a young woman who is beautiful, smart, and funny but who also has fragile self-esteem and occasionally struggles to connect with people around her. Fagan slowly introduces observations like this to reveal that Madison’s alienation and sadness didn’t come out of nowhere.

“In the spring of 2016, I spent a week at the University of Oregon talking to student-athletes. One evening, I spoke about mental health with the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and the first question directed at me was, ‘How can we think differently as athletes, because from the first day we step on campus, we’re taught that champions never quit and perseverance is what makes greatness? I’m worried a teammate might be really hurting and all I see is weakness.’”

Fagan quotes a young athlete describing the lack of empathy that is encouraged in sports. This passage reveals that empathy is something we must work on and learn. Our culture fosters competitiveness and celebrates success, and Fagan uses this interaction to make a larger indictment of how many of us unconsciously perceive mental illness. While we may think we are compassionate and understanding to friends, family members, and teammates who are struggling, we often unconsciously signal that we do not think their struggle is valid. For instance, Fagan recalls branding teammates who transferred as “traitors’” (82). Fagan tells the athletes to focus on empathy, to educate themselves about mental health, and to recognize that struggling is not weakness.

“Picture every Hollywood sports movie, ever. One thing they all have in common: a montage of the lead character pushing through the pain, training to become the best. Our culture celebrates harder, faster, stronger. Vulnerability, it would seem, undermines that pursuit. And within sports culture, continuing to practice or play, no matter what your mind or body says, is romanticized: T-shirts are emblazoned with quotes, inspirational sayings are stenciled on the locker room wall, epic speeches are given. At Colorado, a saying above one doorway read ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body.’”

This is a key moment in Fagan’s personal backstory. She describes her own experiences playing Division I basketball and her own struggles to balance the demands of collegiate athletics with academics and her social life. Fagan felt that she was weak for finding the transition challenging, reflecting that everyone else seemed like they were succeeding while she was failing. Fagan cites statistics that show the large numbers of student-athletes who report feeling depressed or anxious, or who say they have considered or attempted suicide. This passage goes back to Fagan’s larger argument that we need to educate ourselves on mental health issues and that society—especially athletes—needs to practice more empathy.

“Learning the highs and lows of your mind is much harder.”

This quote is from Molly McNamara, who ran cross-country and track for Stanford. Molly wrote an article for the NCAA that described her struggles with perfection, injury, toughness, depression, and empathy. Fagan introduces Molly in her discussion of empathy in sports, introducing other voices who echo Fagan and Madison’s struggles. Molly writes that runners, like Madison, learned how to control their bodies but often struggled with their minds. Molly concludes that athletes need more mental health support.

“Where she may have exerted the most control was in her social accounts—her favorite being Instagram. Unforeseen variables consistently affected her daily game plan, her life at Penn, but she had end-to-end control over the images that told the story of her life. Even if Madison was not having the college experience everyone told her she should be having, she could certainly make it seem like she was.”

Madison feels like her life is spiraling out of control. In response, she tries to control things around her. This response is reflected in her desire to schedule happiness, but also in her careful control of her image. In this quote, Fagan describes how Madison was concerned about how other people saw her, which blocked people from really understanding how she felt.

“EVERYTHING we do is seen as instrumental towards marketing ourselves for the college admission boards, or for the job market, or to help us rush a fraternity or sorority, or to help us win friends, or to help us be a more attractive potential partner. You see the capitalist worldview has infiltrated our psychology, and our sense of self-worth. And it is toxic. It results in fear of being ourselves and following what we really want to do. It results in micro-managing every aspect of our lives to best effect so that it looks good for Facebook or LinkedIn or Tinder. It results in constant comparisons with our peers (which causes depression) and catastrophizing of any potential dent to our marketability (which results in anxiety). Essentially, it results in a dehumanized mindset.”

In this passage, Fagan quotes “DrHibiscus,” a student at the University of Maryland who suffers from anxiety and depression. His statement responds to the charge that his generation is weak. Instead, he argues that the pressures of competitive admissions, declining job prospects, and social media train students to be hyper-competitive and hard on themselves.

“Ivy League schools compile all the top students in one place and then all of a sudden you look left and right and you’re like, ‘Everyone is my clone.’ I literally got here and I was like, ‘I’m not unique, I am not special, I am just like everyone else.’ The culture here, the first week of school, the library is packed, everyone is studying. That was my identity in high school—she’s a hard worker. And I came here and it’s like, ‘Who am I?’ And it manifested itself in anxiety and sadness. I didn’t feel comfortable with who I was anymore.”

One of the shortcomings of the book is that we don’t have access to Madison’s point of view. To address this, Fagan includes reflections from other young people struggling with mental illness. This passage by Devanshi Mehta, a member of the Penn chapter of Active Minds, articulates the pressures young people face at Ivy League institutions. This quote is representative of how Fagan suggests that Madison felt at Penn.

“Exactly when do our young people have time to develop their own sense of self? When are they able to be alone, to understand how they think, what they really want—without the pretense of how it might look on a college application? And we’re not just talking high school students; this practice of hovering often begins before they’ve learned how to write.”

In her discussion of Active Minds, Fagan includes the voices of Penn students who struggle with mental health issues. Fagan reflects on the culture of parenting that predominates, thus situating the identity crises faced by many students within a larger social context. The perfectionism that drives students does not come out of nowhere, Fagan suggests. Rather, the social pressures are placed on young people by overactive parents who seek to protect their kids from the reality of the world.

 “Mack: Why r u so miserable

Maddy: It’s everything especially track

Maddy: I hate it so much

Mack: Do u have fun at party’s

Maddy: Not really” 

This text exchange between Madison and her sister Mackenzie is an example of how Madison’s point of view is introduced through her text conversations. These messages illustrate Fagan’s larger argument about the limitations of instant connectivity and social media. This exchange reduces a complex conversation about Madison’s emotional and mental state into an abbreviated SMS language. This quote shows how the constant communication enabled by smartphones can be a hinderance to real communication. Madison repeatedly reaches out to her friends and family, but no one grasps the full severity of her depression. Fagan connects Madison’s loneliness to a larger culture of alienation.

“It’s easier to feel connected online than to truly connect in real life. So plugging in becomes addicting. We’d rather sign on and feel some superficial sense of connection than work and possibly fail at true connection offline. Being in the real world can be uncomfortable, especially after you spend so much time online.”

Fagan is very critical of social media and how it has transformed social interactions. In this quote, Fagan clearly articulates her argument that social media directly contributes to poor mental health.

“new mindset

new everything

i can do this

i will do this you

CHOOSE your fate

willing to give it another chance

DON’T LOOK BACK

LOOK FORWARD

SETBACKS ARE NEEDED TO GET STRONGER

transferring is not an option” 

Madison collected inspirational quotes and regularly wrote down motivational notes for herself. Fagan describes a culture of motivation slogans in sports. Madison wrote this note to herself two days before committing suicide. The “forced positivity” of the note reveals how Madison tried to shift her mindset (190).

“Dolan shared with Maddy how well she had done first semester, how impressed with her he had been. None of this was particularly relevant to Maddy, but it was to Stacy, who hoped her daughter could hear the praise and reassurance, the validation. Couldn’t she see? Her panic about first semester was a monster of her creation; she had given this monster life, and she could kill it, too.”

In the first several chapters, we repeatedly hear Madison say that she is failing out of Penn. Fagan waits until the end of the book to show us that this was only Madison’s perception. In her meeting with Coach Dolan when she tells him she wants to quit, Dolan begins the meeting by praising her accomplishments academically and athletically. Stacy understands the connection between how we perceive things and how this creates our reality. Stacy is hopeful that once Madison hears outside validation, she will shift her perspective. However, Madison’s anxiety is so severe that she isn’t comforted by this feedback.

“How did I end up being as overall unhappy as I have been for the past four months? Before coming to Penn I was confident, focused, motivated, silly and mainly just a happy girl. But over the past couple months I’ve felt lost. And this feeling has accumulated and built up into so much more, and that’s why I decided that something has to change. For as long as I can remember sports have defined me, but now I think it’s time for another path. Now I think it’s time to define myself. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to compete for Penn and be a part of Penn track, but right now, I’m really not ready to compete.”

Madison reads a letter aloud to her coach explaining why she is quitting the team. In the letter, we see Madison’s point of view. In a way, the letter is more revealing than her text messages. While the texts seem like they should be more personal, Fagan shows how the messages often hid the more complex emotions Madison was feeling. Madison rewrote the letter until it was perfect. While we can assume it leaves out some aspects of her inner thoughts, it is a revealing and heartbreaking record of her inner world. Madison openly states that she is ready to give up competing and she wants to find out who she will be outside of competition.

“[She would] no longer be the star athlete who could clear every hurdle, push through every obstacle. She would become Madison Holleran, student, normal in all the ways she had never been normal.”

As Madison prepares for her meeting with her coach, she understands that her identity will change when she quits. In text messages with friends, Madison expresses anxiety about becoming “normal,” but she decides to give up track, which is making her unhappy. She hopes that giving up the team will allow her to excel academically and stay at Penn.

“This was not a picture of the real world, but a picture of what Maddy wished the real world looked like.”

Filtering is a key motif in What Made Maddy Run. Fagan notices a tendency in Madison’s Instagram to heavily edit photos, increasing the saturation, heightening the contrast, and making the world seem more intense. Fagan uses filtering as a symbol for Madison’s desire to enhance the world and to reshape it in her image. Depression influences how people see the world. Madison’s desire to enhance photos points to her mental state.

“The thing for me about suicide is all about relatability: if we can relate to the people who have been through it, then maybe we’re going to care. But if we’re constantly jabbering in a distant way, as if these aren’t real people—your friends, your neighbors, your family members—how are we going to get anywhere?”

Fagan talks to Dese’Rae Stage, a suicide survivor and suicide awareness activist, about the ethics of writing about suicide. Fagan seeks guidance on how to write respectfully about Madison. Dese’Rae argues that it’s important not to sensationalize suicide in media coverage. In this passage, Fagan introduces the point of view of survivors to explicitly address the ethics of writing about Madison. In including a transcribed discussion, Fagan provides resources for readers to approach people struggling with suicidal ideation in an empathic and educated way. Fagan also demonstrates to the reader that she has approached this sensitive topic in an ethical way.