For much of her life, her journey had a defined direction. With dreams of becoming a figure skating champion ever dancing in her head, Kaetlyn Osmond knew precisely what she needed to do to achieve the goals she had set for herself.
In the final two seasons of her career, that singleminded laser focus paid off with a silver medal at the 2017 World Championships, and Olympic bronze and a World title in 2018 — the first global crown for a Canadian woman in more than four decades. And then suddenly, everything changed when Osmond closed the door on it all in 2019, calling it a career at age 23.
The purpose that had been the guiding force in her life was gone and with it, much of the identity she had cultivated as a competitive skater.
Following those glorious Worlds in Italy in 2018, she wanted nothing to do with any of it. The single-minded fire that had pushed her toward the Olympics in PyeongChang and Worlds in Milan had burned out completely.
“There was a part of me that didn’t exist anymore,” said Osmond, reflecting on that time. “And when I retired from skating, I didn’t have that purpose of going to the rink every day; I didn’t have the motivation to go to the gym every day. I very much did not want to do any of it. I just needed a break from it all.
“I was injured, but mostly just physically and mentally exhausted. “So the idea of going to a rink, going to the gym … it almost felt like my body hurt the second I thought about it. It was like ‘Nope, you are not going to do this.’
“The people I used to see, either at competitions or in everyday training … I disconnected myself from everybody. My whole existence of who I
