The Joy of Alysa Liu

"My family is out there. My friends are out there. I had to put on a show for them. And when I see other people smiling, because I see them in the audience, I have to smile too, you know?" — Alysa Liu, 2026  Olympic Gold Medalist, Women's Singles Figure Skating

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God bless Alysa Liu for boosting the entire country with a shot of her infectious joy. Watching her gold ponytail spin—one more layer of brilliance—above her shiny, tasseled skate dress, taking in her wide smile as she bedazzled the Olympic audience, I hid tears from my husband. As an athlete who coaches athletes just a few years younger than Liu, I recognize that pure happiness that comes from doing what you love without expectation or attachment to outcome—such a rare and precious commodity.

Every Olympics fan now knows Liu took two years off from skating before rekindling her love affair with the sport. She is an artist, and her routines constitute incomparable art - shared with millions. On the Olympic ice during Thursday's free skate, she never stopped smiling—even during warmup, those tense fifteen minutes where competitive skaters swirl around each other trying to avoid collisions and falls. Her routine personified a freedom, a joy, that drew the audience to its feet in explosive appreciation at the end of her four-minute dance with destiny.

Liu called herself "over the moon, the luckiest girl ever" in her post-competition interview. She shared gratitude with the Japanese skaters who took second and third place, holding seventeen-year-old bronze medalist Ami Nakai after the young skater realized her medal position and burst into tears. Their heart-shaped arms framing beaming faces blessed me in the aftermath—another image to carry forward.

Sisters on podiums resonated this week as the high school girls I help coach won their sixth consecutive State title in swimming. Two sets of twin sisters stood on the podium together, embracing for the cameras and sharing bright smiles with teammates and families. Despite nerves, every girl handled business while also offering big hugs, waves, and dance moves to athletes on deck and spectators in the stands. Our head coach notes that the girls swim faster when they're having fun—and I agree wholeheartedly. Our practices get interrupted by dance moves, sing-alongs, coordinated clapping, the freeze challenge —anything we can do to weave competition with companionship.

You can see a mix of emotions on any athlete's face at the end of a race or performance: relief at completing the journey, knowing hard work paid off; sheer exhaustion; disappointment at results that fell short of expectations; frustration at complications; shock and awe at outcomes exceeding wildest dreams. All valid. Every athlete's journey winds over different terrain, carries different motivation, seeks different fulfillment. How lovely this week to witness two stories that ended in joy—proof that sometimes the rainbow's end delivers exactly what it promised.

Love as Resistance

"I know it's tough to 'not hate' these days . . . we get contaminados (contaminated). The hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So please, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love. We love our people, we love our family, and that's the way to do it. With love. Don't forget that, please." — Bad Bunny, 2026 Grammys (2/1/26)

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Was it surprising that Bad Bunny—recording artist, cultural icon, Super Bowl halftime performer—gave an acceptance speech worthy of Dr. Martin Luther King upon winning his Grammy for Best Música Urbana Album? When his words about love recalled Dr. King's assertion that "love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend," I wiped away my tears. In a vacuum of moral leadership on the political front, artists and ordinary citizens step into the void to build scaffolding from hope.

Minneapolis and its people were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last week for their coordinated work protecting and providing for their neighbors—a response so inspiring that the world took notice. Cities across the globe rallied in support last weekend, citizens standing for each other and against cruelty and lawlessness. Dr. King's words echo again: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

Church leaders, professors, lawyers, and judges provide light when shadow threatens to swallow everything. The judge who ordered the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father from an ICE detention center in Texas listed two Bible verses at the bottom of his written decision. One was John 11:35, the shortest verse in Scripture: "Jesus wept." I'm reminded of another: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:5)

The contamination Bad Bunny describes is real—hate multiplying itself, spreading like contagion until we can barely recognize our own faces. But love remains more powerful, more contagious, more capable of transformation. Minneapolis proves this. Bad Bunny reminds us. And we must remember it, especially now, especially when hate seems easier than the hard work of loving our way forward.

**Post script: Bad Bunny doubled down on his positive messaging during his 13-minute Super Bowl halftime show. On the enormous scoreboard over the field his message said: "The only thing more powerful than hate is love." On the football he carried and showed to the cameras at the end of his show - the most-watched in history - "Together we are America."  

Joy is Now

"Joy in the present makes joy in the future seem plausible." — Jenka Gurfinkel

"The whole world is a very narrow bridge. And the most important thing is not to be afraid." — Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

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The drive to Leadville unfolded quick and snowless, remarkable for its lack of traffic and the troubling absence of the white stuff we desperately need. The peaks stood tall and nearly naked while cold wind whipped dry old flakes across the road in ghostly patterns. We left the world behind as we climbed into the small mountain town perched at 10,200 feet where my friend has recently acquired a home.

We spent the weekend setting up furniture and dashing into Leadville's lovely, artistic novelty shops at close intervals to warm ourselves in the single-digit temperatures. After weeks of heartbreaking headlines, I found myself startled by art that lifted me up—including a simple print declaring "Joy is now" that I encountered on Friday and returned to on Saturday afternoon following a bracing seven-mile walk. Delighted to discover a keychain bearing the same words, I replaced my old "Number one mom" token with this new talisman, not yet understanding why these three words felt so necessary.

The understanding arrived this morning when I read Gurfinkel's observation that joy in the present makes future joy seem plausible. Of course. Joy hides, harder to locate in these difficult days, yet I've found it flickering in the radiant faces of my athletes who shattered lifetime bests, in my daughter's return from Guatemala with stories and lovely photos, in mountain walks where breath comes sharp and clean, in hours spent with friends who understand without explanation. These fleeting moments become the lights we follow through darkness.

On Sunday, Daniel and I attended a gathering to hear Phil Weiser, who's running for the Democratic nomination for Colorado governor. Weiser proved outstanding—an accomplished and thoughtful speaker who addressed the events unfolding in Minneapolis and across the country by encouraging us toward bravery rather than despair. "In my faith tradition," he said, invoking Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, "we learn that the whole world is a very narrow bridge. The bridge might be scary to cross, but we must move forward. The most dangerous time comes when we lose equilibrium because we're overcome by our own fear."

The words settled into me like medicine. Life is always a narrow bridge—sometimes we traverse it with ease because we're not looking down, not paralyzed by the distance between ourselves and the rocks below. Other times we freeze mid-crossing, stilled by our downward gaze, unable to take the next step. Overcoming that fear, raising our eyes to the horizon and the possible future waiting there, becomes necessary for any forward movement at all.

The people of Minneapolis inspire me to imagine that future—one where we care for our neighbors as fiercely as we protect our own families, where peaceful protest remains sacred and safe, where we weave bright tapestries together from threads of mutual commitment and shared vision. Joy is now, yes—in the mountain air and the athlete's triumph, in the keychain that reminds me to look up rather than down. And joy now makes the bridge crossable, makes the other side seem possible, gives us the equilibrium we need to keep moving forward despite our fear. The bridge may be narrow, but we don't have to cross it alone.

Reprisal: Hold on to What You Believe

 "Hold on to what you believe, in the night, when the darkness has robbed you of all your sight."                 - Mumford & Sons, "Hold on to What You Believe"

From March, 2013:

In the dark nights when I was most ill, I believed in two things: first, that the life force threading through all the universe flows for good, and second, that the love of family and friends would hold me when I fell.  Many times friends had sight when I had none, when my recovery seemed hopeless. Now I believe something else: that I will be totally well.  Beliefs are urgent when the darkness falls, but must be cultivated in the light. Thankfully I can almost shut the door on the past, and move on to live in the bright spaces.

January, 2026:

Hold on to what you believe in the dark night of our country's soul. Cultivate those beliefs now—in community, in shared resistance, in small acts of grace and large acts of courage. Some days, others will have to hold the vision for us when we cannot see the way forward. We take turns carrying the light, trusting that dawn will come even when we can't imagine its arrival. We have survived dark nights before. We will survive this one, too—not unchanged, but perhaps stronger for having learned what we're willing to fight for.

Grounding in Difficult Times

The first ten days of 2026 delivered little snow and many painful, disturbing headlines. I want to write about all of it, and also about nothing at all. My brain spins with news of invasions and climate catastrophes, the death of innocents—then leaps away from every touchpoint like a finger retracting from a hot stove. The body knows when to pull back, when exposure threatens to burn us beyond our capacity to heal.

My New Year's goal to meditate—or at least breathe in a focused way for five minutes—lasted two and a half days before collapsing under the weight of reality. I've downsized the ambition: now I aim to remember to take a deep breath every once in a while, to focus for one minute on where my feet are and how I can stay rooted to that particular spot on earth. I will return to the expanded goal because meditation has steadied me through previous dark times, and this practice of returning—of beginning again without self-judgment—may be the most important lesson of all.

I find myself asking when we collectively lost access to our prefrontal cortex, that crucial portion of the brain that manages emotions, attention, self-control, and decision-making? When did our society surrender the duties of self-restraint, respect for others, and the assumption of positive intent? The questions themselves feel inadequate, searching for a single moment of fracture when the truth is more complex—a slow erosion rather than a sudden collapse, countless small abandonments that accumulated until we woke to find ourselves here.

As a white person born in this country, I've been shielded from rage and reactivity for much of my life. As a woman, I've endured being bullied or ignored, minimized and scrutinized by society, yet I've been fortunate to escape far worse. This awareness sits heavy—how I've mostly evaded the crushing weight of sustained trauma, the exhaustion of existing as someone else's target, the shock of becoming a repository for misplaced rage. Many people in our country have endured these conditions for what must feel like never-ending lifetimes, and also lives cut tragically short. Their resilience in the face of such sustained assault offers its own form of testimony, its own quiet instruction in how to persist.

I struggle under the onslaught of bad news, the struggle compounded by guilt and uncertainty about how to create meaningful change. Yet I keep returning to what I can touch and tend: my family and friends, those connections that anchor me when the world spins too fast. We've planned a visit to New York to see William. We celebrated our youngest's acceptance to CSU for fall 2026—his face splitting into that particular grin that erases years and lights the future. We carved out a day of rest watching sports, letting ourselves look away from the headlines without drowning in shame for the looking away. These moments don't solve anything, but they sustain us for the work ahead.

Writing about difficult times can deliver me from the mental treadmill, that "monkey mind" that ambushes me for thirty minutes each evening when my head meets the pillow. Focusing on gratitude and moments of genuine connection also helps, as do plans for future reunions—the simple act of believing in a future where we can gather. I'm learning that tending to my own people, ensuring they're seen and loved and supported, is not selfishness but preparation. We cannot pour from empty vessels, cannot offer strength we haven't cultivated in ourselves.

If you're feeling this weight, you're not alone—though I know that knowledge doesn't always lighten the load. We're all searching for our own forms of grounding, our own ways to remain present and useful in times that demand more than we have to give. The work is to keep showing up, to practice those deep breaths, to notice where our feet are planted, to tend our connections with care. Some days, that's enough. Some days, it has to be.