Former NFL quarterback Russell Wilson spent the 2012 pre-draft process fighting the same fight he’s been in ever since: against the idea that he was too small, too light, too easy to dismiss. He later said he tried to game the combine with multiple socks under his feet and gelled-up hair, and then heard somebody whisper, “he’ll never make it.”

That’s where his NFL story started, but the most important part is what he did with it after the draft noise faded. He once said, “Resilience is not just bouncing back, but bouncing forward.” This mantra has shaped his football career, as well as the life he has built outside it. So when he sat with Dr. Brendan G. Carr, CEO of the Mount Sinai Health System, he linked his own resilience to the sick children he’s met in hospital rooms, and to a generation he thinks is carrying too much.

“I think this generation of kids and this generation of people are just going through a tough time, especially mentally, emotionally, and then medically too as well,” Russ told Dr. Carr. “And so, how do we improve that together? I think much is given, much is required. God’s gave me a gift to play football and throw a ball around and get to do that to inspire people, inspire the kids, boys and girls and families, and Ciara through dance and what she does.

“And so, I think what’s really important is just how do you push things forward and how do we bring people together? And I think a big part of it is joy. I go back to the concept of joy. And as you know, I’ve seen probably 3000-plus kids in hospital rooms. And I would say the one common denominator that I see, or anything else, is the kids that overcome a lot of times. And overcoming doesn’t mean that they’re completely cured of cancer; they survive forever. But just means that they overcome the next challenge and they overcome the next day. Those kids are the ones that they’re surrounded by joy.

“Either they have the joy, or their family does, or their friends, or their loved ones who are in there. And honestly, it’s the nurses and the doctors when they walk in the rooms. And I think that’s a big piece to it.”

This is where his Why Not You Foundation fits in. Wilson and his wife, Ciara, say the foundation is built around education, children’s health, and fighting poverty, and its work at Mount Sinai gives that mission a very real address.

Last year, the foundation announced a $3 million donation to Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital to help create therapeutic play and creative arts spaces for pediatric patients. Wilson also visits the hospital every Tuesday, which tells you this is not a one-off camera moment. What’s more, this routine goes back further than the Mount Sinai Check. When Russ and Ciara made that $3M donation, he also spoke to ABC’s Will Reeve about why he keeps showing up.

“You know, my dad was unfortunately always in the hospital; he had diabetes,” Wilson told Reeve on Good Morning America. “So, for me, I felt like, how I could make a difference somewhere.”

Russ’ latest words about kids “overcoming the next challenge” land differently when you’ve watched a similar fight unfold up close. They brought me back to my own father, and to a time when he was battling Stage-3 cancer, and yet lit up every room he ever walked into.

This is the same thing Russell Wilson is trying to capture in those hospital spaces. Even with all the advanced medicine in the world, some of the strongest healing comes from the joy you surround your loved ones with.