Mm.

And so for me, it really was about digging into the why, and it came because it wasn't a choice of my own.

It actually was a halt in my life in motion, in my life of constant moving forward and never being able to be present, and that came when I re- I seriously injured my knee hiking, and I had hiked literally, you know, over 20,000 kilometers at that point since I quit sport.

I was on the move, hiking all of the trails of North America, and I literally ran myself into the ground, not taking care of myself, not stretching, not doing all the things I did as an athlete that kept me, for the most part, injury-free.

And I just knew no way to stop myself because I had to move forward.

And when I injured my knee and had two major knee surgeries in 2021, it was also the beginning of menopause.

And so that combination of so much inside of me that I had pushed down my whole life and covered up and, and really exhausted myself not to feel was just pushing its way up.

Mm.

... leading your, your teammates in, but you're leading the country into that, into that stadium.

It was, um, my first race of the games in 2010.

[laughs] That's how I saw it, and there was, you know, preparation, there was execution, and then recovery.

Um, that, and that was the opening ceremony.

But what it was is, um, something so far beyond competing and representing.

I will never forget being handed our flag and looking back and seeing the sea of red behind me.

But what I will r- also never forget is walking into BC Place Stadium and, uh, on a very summer day in the Winter Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver, and hearing the beat of the drums, of dancers, um, of youth from all across Inuit Nunangat, Turtle Island, the Metis Nation homelands.

Yeah