NORFOLK, Va. – The tattoos on her arms are silent expressions of the immense grief that Jordan McLaughlin carries in her heart, and it is a painful burden for a 22-year-old college senior to bear.
4EVA$OLID is on the underside of her right forearm. It memorializes two friends gunned down in front of their home in her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina during a robbery. She was a senior in high school. They were a year older, and they were all very close.
"I saw them after the shooting, their bodies on the ground," she said.
The tattoo stands for "Forever Solid," a clothing line her friends had started.
She's since lost six other friends, to car accidents, shootings and suicide.
Suicide took the life of a dear friend more than a year ago, a young woman who was gentle and shy. She is represented by a butterfly holding a knife, with the words "anti-social butterfly" underneath.
Her right forearm bears a tattoo that says, "everything happens for a reason."
Tears stream down McLaughlin's cheeks as the Old Dominion women's basketball point guard describes her friends, one by one, and how their young lives were cut so short.
So much death at such a young age has taken its toll on McLaughlin, as it would on anyone. She loves her parents, who are both in her life, but her family moved around so much that she lacked stability, a sense of home, when growing in Charlotte.
When she transferred to ODU from junior college in the summer of 2022, she was an angry young lady. And who could blame her?
Her outbursts were legendary among teammates and coaches alike. They threatened her career, and perhaps her well-being given that basketball is the glue that has kept things together for her.
"I didn't know how to handle everything that had happened to me," McLaughlin said. "Sometimes I could not control my emotions."
Now a senior, McLaughlin has gotten her emotions under control. She plays more minutes (29.2 per game) than any of her teammates and at 9.9 points per game, is second in scoring. She leads the team with 58 assists and adds 3.6 rebounds per game.
Jordan McLaughlin, center, with teammates Mimi McCollister and En'Dya Buford.
She not only directs ODU's offense, she is among the Monarchs' hardest-working defensive players.
McLaughlin and the Monarchs host Troy Wednesday night at 6:30 in one of several key games for ODU in the next few weeks. Troy (12-9 overall, 9-2 Sun Belt), which has won three of the last eight Sun Belt titles, is third in the Sun Belt standings, behind No. 1 Marshall and No. 2 James Madison.
ODU (15-6, 7-4) is tied with Louisiana-Monroe and Georgia State for fourth. The Monarchs host Marshall (Saturday, Feb. 17) and James Madison (Friday, March 1) at Chartway Arena.
McLaughlin has embraced counseling and has worked through anger-management classes to try to heal from her trauma.
But as is so often the case with a young person struggling with so much pain, it took a breakdown, a time when she hit a low point, to allow her to begin to truly climb out of her canyon of grief.
She broke down after a 66-61 home loss to Louisiana in early January in the ODU locker room.
"She said she didn't know God," head coach DeLisha Milton-Jones said. "She said her life has been so tough. She's had so many bad things happen to her. How could God love her?
"She said she didn't know who God is, and when she prayed, didn't know how to listen for messages from God.
"All of her teammates gathered around her and prayed."
Life hasn't been perfect since. She's still facing challenges. But things are much better, thanks to help from her teammates and in large part because of her close relationship with Milton-Jones.
McLaughlin was all set to commit to Troy two years ago when she got a phone call from Milton-Jones.
"I was hellbent on going to Troy," McLaughlin said. "They had won so many championships.
"But she (Milton-Jones) made me promise to not commit on my visit to Troy, to come here first.
"So, I came here and fell in love with everything. I didn't feel like I was a visitor. I felt like I was already a member of the team.
"The coaches told me they weren't just interested in me as a player, that they were more interested in developing me as a person."
This tattoo is in honor of two friends shot in front of their house in Charlotte.
A promise, she said, that they have kept.
"I've grown tremendously," she said. "I used to feel like I was being attacked when it was actually my past traumas coming back."
In both her senior year of high school and two years of junior college, she kept things bottled up inside her, and the pain and frustration would boil over.
"I didn't cry," McLaughlin said. "I used to think it was a sign of weakness. But now it's like I can show how I feel, and I feel the love back."
Being able to express her emotions "has actually been very freeing," she said.
Milton-Jones has walked a tightrope between being supportive and providing discipline.
"I function through love, grace and compassion," Milton-Jones said. "But at the same time I do draw a line.
"At a certain point I let her know you've got to embrace your (grief), you have to deal with it, and figure it out. You can't walk around angry and call yourself a good human being. You can't always be reacting to everything.
"She always wants to be heard and that's a good thing. But at times, the anger inside of her boils over. She either shuts down or has some crazy outbursts and has to come back and apologize.
"I've told her she's too talented and too good of a person to go through life like that."
She calls her mother, Angelina McLaughlin, "the rock in my life."
"She comes to almost every home game," McLaughlin said. "My dad (Van McLaughlin) works a lot and isn't here as much, but he watches every game on TV. I get (text) messages after every game.
"My parents struggled at times but never let us know that. They sacrificed so much for us."
Milton-Jones prides herself on being a surrogate parent for her players, sharing their personal burdens and helping steer them in the right direction. But she says she spends twice as much time with McLaughlin than she does with anyone else.
"Her first year here, we would talk if not every day, every other day, for hours," Milton-Jones said. "She has been so diligent about the anger-management classes. Slowly, little by little, I started to see her respond better.
"She has depended on me. She's literally put her life in my hands. I couldn't be prouder of the person she has become.
"She still has her moments in practice. There are times when I'll show her grace and ignore it. Other times I will tell her, 'You can leave. You're done for the day.'
"Taking basketball away is from her is like taking one of her lungs. It is her lifeline."
McLaughlin said for the longest time, she wondered if all of the tragedy she experienced was her fault. "I used to think I was cursed or something, like I'm doing something that caused bad things to happen to me," she said.
"I have a much better relationship with God and I'm starting to trust situations. But at times I still struggle. It's hard to get closure from all that has happened to me.
"I will often pray at night and tell God that I'm thankful for the opportunities he has given me.
"I know it's not my time to go but for whatever reason, it was their time. I try to think that they're in a better place, that that's where they needed to be.
"And I have to be OK with that."
She experienced another sudden loss on Jan. 20, when a friend named Damon was killed in a car accident. She got the news a couple of hours before the Monarchs faced off in Harrisonburg against James Madison.
Damon was her confidant, the one person outside her ODU circle that she confided with. "I could tell him anything and not be judged," she said.
JMU won, 72-64, on a night when McLaughlin had her worst shooting performance of the season – she made just 2 of 15 shots.
"It was like I wasn't there," she said. "It was like I was moving in the mud. I was a step behind."
McLaughlin is rarely a step behind. If she has faults, her work ethic isn't one of them. She is supremely conditioned and if anything, works too hard.
"I had to ban her from the gym," Milton-Jones said. "I said, 'No Jordan, you don't know how to stop.' I had to ban her from running before our 8 a.m. practice. She just knows one speed and it's go as fast as she can.
"She loves this game. She watches games all the time. She studies our opponents like no other. She knows the adjustments I'm going to make before I do it.
"I tell her all the time, 'You're going to be a great coach one day.'"
McLaughlin said she's not sure where she would be if not for Milton-Jones and her teammates.
Jordan McLaughlin, left, with teammates Kaye Clark and Brenda Fontana.
"When I talk to her, sometimes I feel like she's a prophet from God," McLaughlin said. "I'm away from home and having to go through all this without family. She makes me feel like family and like it's OK that I can have a bad day.
"Sometimes when she knows I'm down, she will look at me and say, 'Put it all in my pocket.'
"I will wiggle everything out of my body kind of symbolically and stuff it in her pocket. I know it's not really happening, but it feels real for that moment.
"Coach is so kind to all of us. She gives us hugs after practice. She checks in on us. There's no one I'd rather play for."
Although at 5-foot-7, McLaughlin isn't built like a prototypical professional basketball player, Milton-Jones said she has pro potential.
"She has the talent to have a long career in Europe," she said. "And maybe after years of development in Europe, she could become a 30-year-old rookie in the WNBA.
"But she needs to continue to mature in order to get there."
She will graduate with a degree in leadership in the spring, and regardless of where her future takes her, will carry the lessons she learned at ODU the rest of her life.
Asked what advice she would give others, she said to always check on your best friends, the ones who are always there for you.
"Usually, your friends who are strong and who help you out a lot, they can be going through the worst kinds of things," she said.
"And I would tell people that it's OK to let go sometimes, to let all that's inside you out.
"The longer you hold it in, the worse it gets for you."
A lesson she learned the hard way.
Minium is ODU's Senior Executive Writer for Athletics. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
Minium: ODU Women's Basketball Guard Jordan McLaughlin is Dealing With Immense Grief
