I’ve always tried to go in my own direction and extract fun from situations that might otherwise incite anxiety. I learned this from my mother, a painfully shy woman who’d been dubbed “the bashful blond” in school, and who also had a flair for (quietly) hosting unique gatherings. Despite a childhood filled with tragedy and an adulthood with constant disappointment and health complications, she was a practical joker who never missed April Fools Day. In what I suppose was an inheritance of her ability to hold opposite feelings at the same time, I was a reluctant figure skater who was constantly injured and hated to train, but I reveled in the spotlight, leaned into unique choreography, and designed one-of-a-kind costumes.

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So when I started writing a memoir, Motion Dazzle , in January of 2021, sifting through the most devastating thing that had happened to me—my mother’s dementia and her eventual death on my son’s first birthday, the day I was hosting a zebra-themed party…