When Canada’s most decorated female skater, Kaetlyn Osmond, retired at the ripe old age of 23, she was startled to learn that stepping away from the on-ice judges, did nothing to alleviate the sense of being judged. Body Image issues- which had stayed somewhat in check during the years of intense training and competition- flared in her new ‘more relaxed’ schedule. And a lifetime of bouncing between the extremes of perfomance, crowd adulation, and a natural tendency toward introversion left her emotionally knotted.

But Osmond has not lost the athlete’s discipline, and she’s turned it to work on her emotional and psychological discomfort with determination. She says she lost her identity altogether when she stepped off the ice for the last time, but she has been methodically building it back up ever since.