When Abby Wambach announced in October that she would retire from the game just a few months after she had won the World Cup with the U.S. Women’s National Team, it wasn’t a huge surprise — but Wambach revealed in an interview with ESPN’s Julie Foudy that it was only after that announcement that Wambach was able to be at peace with her career and who she is as a person.

“I think that I’ve been in search of something, and I found more than just a soccer player. That’s always been my goal, is to not just be a soccer player, and so what’s been really interesting is that the minute I said I was retiring it was like my world opened up again and I was able to breathe. ‘Wow, I am not just a soccer player, and I have value and I am lovable.’ And all this stuff that came flooding back, confidence. And it was like, ‘whoa, where have you been?’”

Wambach will play her final game with the national team next Wednesday against China.