Before the billboards and Chanel No. 5, before magazine covers and Hollywood, my world was shaped by the echo of splashing water and the relentless rhythm of synchronized swimming. From the outside, my childhood looked charmed—talent, competitions, achievement—but it wasn’t as it seemed.
I wasn’t always tall, despite what people now assume. My height arrived late, so for years I felt small and out of place. While other kids built days around school and friends, mine revolved around 6 a.m. practices at the Etobicoke Olympium. I’d head to school still smelling of chlorine, sit through a half-day of classes, then return to the pool for evening sessions. Some nights I trained for hours as a soloist before going home to homework and enormous meals.
Athletic success surrounded me, yet I often felt alone. My teammates were older; their conversations seemed far away, and my talent—which should have connected us—sometimes set me apart. The pool became both sanctuary and solitude, as I pushed through exhaustion, team dynamics, and an aching need for connection. The pool was my best friend.
Back then, food was just fuel. Only later came the pressures to shrink—to fit into costumes, into expectations, into someone else’s version of perfect. But in those early years, my world was the water, the meals between practices, and the quiet evenings spent studying.
What prepared me for life beyond the pool wasn’t strength or medals, but learning to navigate the spaces in between: between me and my teammates, between childhood and adulthood, between who I was and who I was expected to become. And perhaps most of all, learning that being really good often comes with its own kind of loneliness.
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