Gold medalist Alysa Liu of Team United States poses for a photo during the medal ceremony for Women’s Free Skating at the Milan-Cortina Games. Alysa LIUAsatur Yesayants – YantsImages
I was in the depths of a caregiving slump when figure skating champion Alysa Liu helped me figure my way out.
Alysa Liu made headlines and heads spin with her halo hair and her brilliant free skating at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. On the heels of her astonishing comeback, a reporter asked her, “What would you say to your younger self?” Alysa, all of 20, emphatically replied, “Nothing! She’s got it. She’ll figure it out. And I don’t wanna mess that up.”
On Easter Sunday, 2025, my partner Ed was hospitalized. After a series of agonizingly long days featuring a battery of tests and eventually a biopsy, we learned that Ed had rare but treatable stage 4 appendix cancer. Now, a year later, Ed is cancer free. “That’s what I’m fucking talking about!” to borrow a quote from Alysa as she exited the Olympic ice. Looking back, there was a pivotal moment when my caregiving journey took a turn—nay, a Biellmann spin—for the better.
Cancer treatment—rounds and rounds of chemotherapy and “the mother of all surgeries,” caused me much suffering. Ed, too, obviously, but I was the primary caregiver, and as many people observed, “in some ways you have it worse.” Appendix cancer has a 75% chance of recurrence within 2 to 5 years. Ed will have regular CT scans to monitor it. With the first scan looming, I can already feel myself backsliding toward the anxiety abyss. We had tons of support—I had tons of support. Still, as the treatment progressed I was increasingly depleted emotionally and energetically, especially in the days following the surgery. This essay is about the ways Alysa Liu’s figure skating journey helped me figure my way out.
Me circa 1973.
I have done a lot of walking over the past year: to calm down, to keep Ed conditioned, to help Ed rehabilitate. When I’m out walking alone I talk to myself, and sometimes I text myself. The contact photo—and the confidant I imagine on the receiving end of my texts—is me as a little girl. In the photo little me is wearing a handmade Easter bonnet: an upside down paper plate with two glued-on bunny ears. Though she never replies, she is always listening. I turn to her when I’m feeling lost:
Text to Me, from the depths of care partner despair:
I lead with my emotions. How the hell am I supposed to keep this up?
I’m so. Done.
I never asked for this: journey. Responsibility. Vulnerability.
Maybe I just can’t. Don’t
have it. Enough…whatever it is. Whatever you say,
I’m not. Not strong enough, spiritual enough, evolved enough to keep this up.
Four years ago, after the Beijing Winter Olympics, at the age of 16, Alysa Liu retired: “Skating was not worth it.” She was burnt out, a child prodigy whose entire life had revolved around the rink. She learned to drive, goofed off with her siblings, finished high school (a proud graduate of Oakland School of the Arts), started college (UCLA), and took a vacation. It was on a skiing trip where she felt the adrenaline rush familiar to skating. “I missed the glide. You can’t get that anywhere…When I went skiing, I felt it. I glided for the first time since I quit, and I was like whoa.”
On February 19th, 2026, a few weeks after Ed’s 10-hour operation I had no more fucks to give. (The surgery involved slicing him open from sternum to pubic bone, removing organs, and bathing his abdomen in hot chemotherapy for 90 minutes). Then, turning the TV on to watch the Olympics, I saw Alysa Liu skate out onto the ice. From the moment she assumed her starting position, I was mesmerized. She seemed so relaxed out there, like she had no more fucks to give, but in the sense of healthy boundaries. “Someone left the cake out in the rain,” Donna Summer sang and Alysa glided. She glided with every ounce of pleasure that she had saved up from those years of not gliding. “And I don’t think I can take it, cuz it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again, oh no!” Triple axel double toe loop combination—nailed it!
There was magic in the air. I know how rare that is, what we were witnessing. My entire history of dancing on stage and in school boils down to three magical moments, twice during performances, once during class. One day in college, a ballet teacher sub got me to have a more enthusiastic, springy plié prep that led to my one and only triple pirouette. That and the two performance memories total less than 5 minutes—when everything coalesced into an unforgettable, inexplicable sense of discovery, a portal of whoa, this is everything I’ve ever wanted and worked so hard for. And then it’s over, leaving its footprint in your consciousness for all time.
Alysa perfectly executed seven jumps and three spins, all the while seeming to forget about the stakes—the judges, the scoring, the other competitors—just dancing sublimely, loosely, as free as the ponytail she whipped around, the intricately choreographed steps she whipped out on ice skates, for fuck’s sake. She was feeling it. I was feeling it in the depths of my solar plexus.
Ed and I do yoga together. We took a class the day after we met 26 years ago, and the practice continues. “Hug the midline” is one of our yoga mantras. Another is “stay with it.” Hugging the midline is what I felt watching Alysa free skate. Gathering energy from all directions, spectators, spirits, from every atom in the universe, hugging all of that into her center axis, and then ricocheting it back out into space, into my living room, into my sushumna, the Sanskrit word for the channel through which prana, or life force, flows and energy rises. I saw radical self-possession. Sparks flying from the supercharged core of her being. My innermost self realigned, reignited and flared out like the rays of gold fringe on her dress.
“I didn’t want it to end,” Alysa beamed fresh off the podium. Nor did we! How can I get some of that? How did she figure it out? I got obsessed.
Her Olympic win was one of the most improbable comebacks in the history of figure skating. As I understood it, her retirement was not a departure from, but an integral part of “staying with it.” She came out of retirement committed to protecting her mental health, life-work balance, skating on her own joyous terms. “I think mistakes are beautiful, too,” she says, “because it’s about the journey.” She won a gold medal because she stopped chasing it. I saw no struggle. No split-second second guessing. No trace of self-loathing or self-aggrandizing. She was exactly where she wanted to be, having fun and liking herself.
Alysa helped me see that my aspirations to be the best—the most patient, doting, empathetic care partner ever—led to care partner failures. (On multiple occasions, in response to my unaffectionate “tough love,” Ed called me “Nurse Row-tched,” a reference to the antagonist Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”). Furthermore, my negative self-talk blocked a critical resource: my subtle body. In other words, my qi.
Alysa reminded me that I know how to cultivate prana. To engage in healing self-care. Plus, I had a wellspring of positive energy flowing into me. A village of healthcare providers, family, friends, colleagues, emotional support pets all hugging in towards us was powerful and beautiful.
Alysa didn’t take the burden or challenge out of care work, but she inspired me to “retire,” to let go of trying to be perfect and focus on being present. I skated through these last weeks with more grace and fluidity. I let others lift me up, and made time to goof off.
We recently toasted the end of Ed’s cancer treatment journey. I surprised myself by saying “I’m going to miss last year.” Alysa didn’t want her performance to end. I didn’t want this care journey to stop.
And it doesn’t have to. Even without cancer in the mix, I’m determined to glide forward with the lessons gained during a very rough patch.
Text to: Me
What would you say to your future self?
Nothing. She’ll figure it out.
