When my parents were getting divorced, I just said to myself, 'Go to sleep, and tomorrow you can go skiing.' I cried myself to sleep, and in the morning I was up on the mountain, and I was good.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was 23, I went to Alaska by myself into the glaciers of the coast range and climbed a mountain by myself. It was incredibly reckless, incredibly stupid. But I was lucky. And I survived, and I came back to tell my story.
When my mum first told me she got sick, I didn't cry. I probably cried over my mum's illness twice.
I heard endless conversations between my parents when I was going to sleep about how we would survive, how we would continue. All of them were about trying to make me better.
My parents strapped a pair of plastic skis on my boots when I was two years old and sent me down our driveway in Vail. Of course, they were holding on to me the whole time, but that was my first experience 'skiing.'
Once you just tell yourself, 'OK, I'm going to have a breakdown right now, and I'm going to cry for an hour, put my phone away. I'm going to go swimming, and then I'm gonna make my family dinner and lay on the couch and watch 'Ru Paul's Drag Race,' once you accept that it's not the day and you can just have a breakdown, you're over it.
I went to performing arts camp, secretly taking classes - I got the lead in the musical, and my dad was like, 'Wait, I thought you were going here for music and knitting'.
I always channeled what I felt emotionally into skiing - my insecurities, my anger, my disappointment. Skiing was always my outlet, and it worked.
When I told my parents, 'I'm going to be an actor,' they screamed and wept and freaked out.
I was in the bath at the time, and my dad came running in and said, 'Guess who they want to play Harry Potter!?' and I started to cry. It was probably the best moment of my life.
And, as an adult, I tried skiing, and I ended up in tears.