Finding our footing again

What an Olympic moment revealed about regulation, connection, and being human

I didn’t expect these 2026 Winter Olympics to make me this emotional.

Of course there’s the brilliance, the talent, the dedication, the moments that make you hold your breath. But what caught me off guard was how deeply I felt everything underneath it all.

Watching these athletes perform at the highest level – and sometimes painfully fail – stirred up a surprising mix of fan girl and mama bear in me. I felt especially gutted for the physics-defying figure skater Ilia Malinin, and, for days, I too frequently went down familiar ADHD rabbit holes looking for clues that he would be OK. I wanted to know that people were taking care of him. That he was taking care of himself.

The first sign of hope had come quickly, watching him in the immediate aftermath as he moved from visible anguish to a flash of frustration to offering genuine warmth and congratulations to the skater who won the gold many assumed would be his. In the media scrum, the cameras stayed close. The questions came fast. And somehow, with no time to process all that had happened, he seemed to trust his instincts and met the moment with an openness that felt simultaneously raw and composed.

It was the humanity, from Ilia and so many other athletes, that kept pulling me into these Games.

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Watching Ilia find his footing again helped me, too. That made sense to me because we humans settle through connection, through shared experience, through seeing ourselves reflected in others and being reminded that we’re not alone in what we feel.

Throughout the week that followed, I noticed, in myself and in so many others, a willingness to stay present with complexity instead of turning away from it. I saw kindness, compassion and support ripple across the Internet, giving us a meaningful respite from the usual flood of ugliness and vitriol.

But that doesn’t mean it was easy. Over the next few days, I found myself moving through waves of concern, protectiveness and relief. Sometimes I had to step away from the commentary and the online chatter and just come back to my own body.

And, yes, I realize my experience nothing compared to what Ilia was going through. But it was still something.

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So when an unexpected opportunity to play a recreational sport I hadn’t encountered in decades showed up, I hesitated. It felt risky to my off-kilter nervous system. I had all the excuses. It was late. I was tired. I didn't feel so great. It was far away. I didn't know anyone.

And I surprised myself by going anyway.

At a beginner-level practice for catchball (a volleyball-adjacent game where you catch and throw rather than bump and set), I ran around for two hours with a bunch of strangers, catching, throwing, laughing, sweating. To my great delight, the wicked, whipping serve I had in my youth was still (mostly) there.

When I got into my car afterward, I felt palpably different. Quieter. Steadier. Somewhere in those two hours, my brain quieted and my body remembered what aliveness feels like.

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As someone who works with people learning how to befriend their own nervous systems, I keep coming back to this thought: Regulation isn’t about never being shaken. It’s about what happens next.

A breath. A reset. A return to yourself.

Sometimes that happens on the world’s biggest stage.

Sometimes it happens on a court with strangers, running and sweating and laughing like you’re 12 years old again.

Either way, it’s the same story — people finding their way back to themselves in real time.