Annora & the summer showers

Breaking new ground

Annora recalls a memory of wandering through New London, Connecticut as a 10 year old. She would walk alone from school to the college campus where her mother worked. She explored bookstores and spent quarters on 3D doritos. These walks would create pathways for the years ahead. She was a child that loved school. Loved talking. Loved meeting new people. She rattles off the names of her childhood friends with ease. These friendships are etched in her head.

“I grew up really fortunate, really lucky. Very supportive family with two very smart parents. They worked as hard as they could to give us the opportunity for education. They wanted to send all of their kids to college, [it] was their biggest goal in life. I took that to heart. The message I got was that the most important thing to do is be smart in life. I had two great siblings. Still very close to both. I consider my sister my best friend in my life.”

I ask Annora about her most treasured memory and she remembers a moment with her sister growing up.

“It was raining outside. It was a summer shower so it was hot out but it was raining. One of my favorite things is a sun shower. My sister got us to put on these long t-shirts. We're in underwear and a long t-shirt, she's maybe in middle school and I'm little. We get outside, we're barefoot and getting soaked, jumping in puddles, just doing our own weird rain dance. Then we jump in the pool. We swim in the pool while it's pouring and I don't know what it is about that memory. I remember that being so fun.”

“Being the youngest was how I became confident in myself because I was determined to be different from an early stage. There was strength in trying something different because then I wasn't compared to them. I saw my sister trying to be like my brother or competing against my brother in some way, shape, or form. They ended up going to the same college. They ended up having similar friends. I felt that there was a lot of strength going in a different way.”

“I am a stereotypical privileged white girl in the sense that I had such a good upbringing. I felt supported in every decision. My sister and brother protected me. My siblings raised me a good portion because my parents were very much in their careers, which I loved. I thought that was cool. One of the things guiding me as a young person was I want to be like my parents. They were career driven.”

“And [they] trusted us which made it more fun being siblings. Covering for my brother's parties or my sister sneaking out of the house, and me throwing keys out our window so she could get back in. I was bad but only to keep my siblings safe and then they would pick me up when I was drunk and shouldn't have been drunk.”

“I'm comfortable messing up because I wasn't the picture perfect kid. Both my siblings were way more talented than me naturally. They were so good at everything that I was like fuck I gotta work on some shit to even get attention. Growing up and looking back at our childhood, they obviously had a lot more struggles that I didn't know about. But from my perspective they were gorgeous, perfect people. I was so lucky they were nice to me.”

“I grew up in a time where you had a lot of alone time. I walked to friends’ houses by myself. It was easy to lie and say I was staying at Rachel's house and we were sleeping over at Max's instead. Or sleeping on the beach, going to baseball games, hanging out with friends, just walking around town. Not a lot of parents around. I don't know if that exists anymore.”

Give and take

What is it like to live across the country from your family?

“Hard. I get jealous about how much my siblings get together. I miss my nephews and my niece growing up. Not being around them, especially with my mom having cancer is hard. She’s doing great but you don’t know how well, so it’s hard.”

“Being away has taught me more about myself and about my strengths and weaknesses. It’s good for me to have been away because when I look at friends and family who didn't leave I see that we're different in a way. It’s a good difference. There are certain friends of mine where of course you stayed home, you love it here. Your family is everything to you. New London is a beautiful, cute, adorable town where you can raise an awesome family and have it all. You can have good schools and education. You can go to New York City still. You can have real life experiences and also have the safety of a small town.”

“But I go home and I get anxious. I feel like I was destined to leave in a weird way. I don't know what that is. I think some of us have a need to explore or see something different or try something different. If I look back at all my choices, I always was trying to do something different.”

“I didn't think I would fall in love so quickly with LA. Exactly a week of living here, I called my mom and was like, ‘Mom I think I found home.’ Which probably was the worst thing I could ever say to my mom. I love the weather, I love that sunshine is out almost all the time and I think I need that. I need the ability to go outside every single day. There is a lust for health and fitness which feels good. There's other people motivating me to be my best self out here. You can really be anyone here. I'm still weird. I love home but I feel more comfortable out here. There's a give and a take. I miss my family every day.”

Finding your person

Annora met her husband, Michael, in between her junior and senior year of college doing a summer production of Hamlet. His home was in Chicago and hers was in New York. A summer fling turned into a long distance booty call and would gradually grow deeper. She followed her heart to Chicago to be with Michael just before her 23rd birthday. They’ll have been together for 12 years now.

“I think meeting Michael changed a lot for me because I didn't think I would meet anyone that I would spend my life with. I thought I would be with friends for a long time and be very happy that way.”

What has being in a relationship for 12 years taught you?

“It’s taught me that love is an action. Loving someone takes growth in yourself and patience for that other person. It's hard to grow together at the same pace. You have to be ready for when someone starts to outgrow you. It’s taught me that working on a relationship is the greatest gift. Michael and I joke about this all the time. If it doesn't work out, you'll still be my one true love. I think you can fall in love with other people. I don't think there's one person for everyone. I've witnessed older adults fall in love and get married at 80 or reconnect with a high school friend in their 60s and fall madly in love.”

“I believe in all of that, but we were so lucky to find each other. Regardless of what the rest of our lives look like I will forever remember that love. The way you know it’s that powerful is the thought of losing it is devastating. Falling in love is one of the coolest things that you can do in life.”

Push and pull

“The hardest thing that I've done so far in life has been the last two years of watching my husband go through depression. And now my sister's dealing with it too. It was back to back. It’s hard to watch someone you love feel so sad. You can't do anything about it. Regardless of how much I help them. Nothing changes until they make the choice to change themselves.”

“[I thought] I could fix it with positivity. If I could create space financially then we didn't necessarily need him to work. I'm gonna just work really hard and I'm strong enough to mask it. To keep us up. That's what I thought I could do, and I could not. That was hard for me to deal with. A lot of my struggle was that I wanted certain things that now I couldn't have because my partner was struggling.”

“The thought of having a kid. Not a smart idea. Not having a good enough income to support a kid. And then feeling that resentment of the minute we have an opportunity to start a family, everything fucks up. We're not communicating well anymore. We were like, this doesn't happen to us. What happened? Then recognizing it had nothing to do with me. This was our first real challenge as a couple. How do we love each other during this when we're both struggling? Where expectations are not working out. Where we are growing, but it's a painful growth. And we feel like we're almost going in a different direction.”

“There was a selfishness in the sense that I had such a desire to be a mom that I was putting pressure on my partner in ways that weren’t helping. It changed when I had a moment with Michael and said, I will give up the opportunity to be a mom to continue to have our relationship. I know how hard it is to get what we have. I think when I made the realization that if I just get this, how lucky am I?”

“Do I want a kid? Of course. But we are not in a position to have that right now. It was this moment of recognizing where my wants and needs and desires were not helping the situation even though they are still true. The hardest thing to do with someone who's dealing with mental health is you can support but you really can't help. I can only hug and give suggestions and be supportive. Those are things I can do. Those are in my power. You have to hope that person wants to get better.”

Finding your passion

Swimming competitively was a part of Annora’s life since she was 8 years old and would carry through to college. She balanced her love of swimming with her love of performing arts. Right after graduation she found work at a production company on Broadway. She then moved to Chicago to be with Michael and chose to embrace fitness again. Annora bounced between the fitness industry and academia throughout her 20’s. She got her masters in gerontology and discovered an affection for working with older adults. She’s been in fitness ever since and is now looking at the years ahead.

“I had a realization in New York when I was working for 101 Productions. I wasn't helping people at that job and that bothered me in a way that I was shocked at. It was the thing I loved, it was Broadway plays. I could have become a company manager and traveled around watching shows and really gotten involved. I had the right job to continue to build that world. In retrospect, I was living a dream. I was making zero money but living a dream of New York. I had this realization that I felt disconnected to my body because I wasn't swimming anymore. I think that was a big thing that changed. Not being on a team.”

“I had made this conscious decision that I was meant to help people. Then I got really fit myself and was like, I think that's my calling. I found confidence in working on my body and I wanted to give that to other people. That was my mission for a long time. But the last few years after the pandemic my main mission is to figure out what I want to do. And not be selfish but bring things back around to, wait a minute, what did you want to do? How do you want to spend your days?”

“It's the mask thing. You have to put your mask on first before you put on someone else's on the plane. I put so much effort into helping other people that I had realized I was draining myself of that energy. That’s where I'm at right now. Right now it's trying to keep my own dreams alive. I'm in this period of realizing I really want to be a mom and not knowing if that's going to happen anytime soon.”

“If I get the chance to be a mom, that would be the biggest mission of my life. To raise a human that cares about other people. That was a big mission of mine. I cared about other people. I cared that they felt good. If people feel good things are gonna be better. Right now, a lot of things are shitty because a lot of people feel really shitty. It takes people who care about others to make that change. It's okay to care and want things to be better.”

What gives you hope?

“The way that our species survives is by collaborating. We are a species who learned how to support each other, that was our winning trait. Even with everything going on in our country and other countries I still feel as though we have a shot. If we continue to collaborate, if we continue to listen. So many people are suffering from mental health. You hear stories about what people go through in their childhood and there’s still so many success stories out there.”

“Yes we are in a unique situation right now because of where technology is. Of course it's terrifying but people felt the same way 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 100 years ago. There's always been these forces that seem as though the whole world's gonna blow up. And it could still happen. But what gives me hope is the fact that as humans we are meant to collaborate and to find love and to find friendship and to support one another.”

“What I think happened especially since the pandemic is we all burrowed away. We got lonely. We're all really lonely. I think that at least if some of us can get through these battles, we have a shot. We have a shot as a species to make things better. We are social creatures and sometimes the best cure for all of our loneliness is each other. Sitting in a park with a friend and having a conversation.”

Annora Olavson • April 28, 2024