Meryl Davis.
“A little bit daunting” is howMeryl Davis, an Olympic gold medal ice dancer,Dancing with the Starschamp and self-described perfectionist, describes her latest project.
“With the quiet that came with the pandemic, I really realized how much I enjoy writing and what a passion it is for me,” she tells PEOPLE.
“As I sat down to write I didn’t necessarily know it was going to take this direction,” she says.
“That was kind of the silver lining of being at home throughout so much of 2020,” she says, “The things that I had put off … in sitting there, I said, ‘Okay why not now? Why not just sort of dive in?’ "
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“I was just thinking about the importance of having an open, honest, trusting relationship with your kids,” Davis says, “and telling them and teaching them that you’re there for them no matter what.”
“But I will say,” she adds, “I think that in considering what I wanted to do and considering what matters to me and what sort of lights me up, there are parallels between what I love about skating and writing — and that is trying to find something that people can connect with.”
“Moon walks are a tradition in my family that started when I was young, when my brother and I were young my parents would take us up to northern Michigan,” Davis says. “And away from the city lights, you could see the magic of the night sky.”
“Standing in awe as a family, it allowed us to connect in a different way,” she says.
Davis personally picked Kozhevnikova to illustrate the book: “She has a very whimsical style and there was something about the personality of the characters coming through in her pieces that I really loved.”
She’s noodling over ideas for other books, likely for middle-grade and older children, and is quick to note she feels she’s still “very much in a learning stage.”
Meryl Davis.Michael Loccisano/Getty
As for whether she and husbandFedor Andreevare looking tostart their own family: Yes, but not right away. “It’s on the horizon, but not in the very near future,” Davis says.
And while she still skates professionally (though shestepped back from Olympic competitionafter 2014), Davis says her writing work is a pleasure all its own.
“Now it’s so clear to me,” she says, adding, “You don’t have to be one thing. And I think it maybe took me longer than it should have to realize that. I don’t have to be just a writer or a skater. I can embrace life and challenges and try new things.”
With writing, she says, “I recognized that same feeling I had as a kid skating: I would do this for the sheer joy of it, regardless sort of what comes.”
source: people.com
