<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Meagan's Substack]]></title><description><![CDATA[My personal Substack]]></description><link>https://meaganduhamel.substack.com</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uHsx!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F23d83cda-6bce-42f8-96a2-27051a065818_144x144.png</url><title>Meagan&apos;s Substack</title><link>https://meaganduhamel.substack.com</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:05:41 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[Meagan]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[meaganduhamel@substack.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[meaganduhamel@substack.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[Meagan]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[Meagan]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[meaganduhamel@substack.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[meaganduhamel@substack.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[Meagan]]></googleplay:author><itunes:block><![CDATA[Yes]]></itunes:block><item><title><![CDATA[The date I tried to forget]]></title><description><![CDATA[For a long time, June 5 represented a promise.]]></description><link>https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/p/the-date-i-tried-to-forget</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/p/the-date-i-tried-to-forget</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Meagan]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:43:04 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uHsx!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F23d83cda-6bce-42f8-96a2-27051a065818_144x144.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For a long time, June 5 represented a promise.</p><p>Then it represented a betrayal.</p><p>For so many years, I wanted nothing to do with it.</p><p>But time has a funny way of changing things.</p><p>The last eleven years have not unfolded the way I imagined they would when I walked down the aisle. There has been heartbreak, disappointment, loss, and more uncertainty than I ever thought I could carry.</p><p>There have been moments when I felt like my life had been rewritten by the choices of other people.</p><p>And in many ways, it truly was.</p><p>But what I've learned is that while other people can influence your story, they don't get to own it.</p><p>Today, when I think about June 5, I don't think about a marriage.</p><p>I think about survival.</p><p>I think about resilience.</p><p>I think about rebuilding a life from pieces I never expected to be holding.</p><p>Most of all, I think about becoming a woman whose story is not dependent on someone else's choices.</p><p>A woman who kept going.</p><p>A woman who kept growing.</p><p>A woman who is still writing her own ending.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[You Can't Take Everything With You]]></title><description><![CDATA[Lately, I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about how we talk about change.]]></description><link>https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/p/you-cant-take-everything-with-you</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/p/you-cant-take-everything-with-you</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Meagan]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2026 15:08:17 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uHsx!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F23d83cda-6bce-42f8-96a2-27051a065818_144x144.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Lately, I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about how we talk about change.</p><p>Most of the time, we talk about it like it&#8217;s a choice.</p><p>You decide to take a new job. Move to a new city. End a relationship. Start something you&#8217;ve always wanted to do.</p><p>There&#8217;s intention behind it.</p><p>But sometimes life changes without asking for your permission.</p><p>One day you&#8217;re moving along on a path that feels familiar and predictable, and the next you&#8217;re looking around wondering how everything became so unrecognizable.</p><p>I think that&#8217;s where I&#8217;ve been for a while.</p><p>Not completely lost. Just somewhere in between.</p><p>Trying to make sense of what stays, what goes, and who I am when some of the things I thought were permanent aren&#8217;t there anymore.</p><p>What I&#8217;ve realized is that some endings aren&#8217;t really about losing one thing.</p><p>Sometimes they unravel everything around it.</p><p>A relationship changes, and suddenly you&#8217;re questioning things you never thought twice about before.</p><p>The way you make decisions.</p><p>The way you approach your work.</p><p>The way you parent.</p><p>The routines you&#8217;ve built.</p><p>The future you assumed was already mapped out.</p><p>I&#8217;ve spent so much of my life building alongside someone else that it&#8217;s sometimes hard to tell where certain ideas begin and end.</p><p>Not because that&#8217;s a bad thing.</p><p>It&#8217;s actually one of the beautiful things about sharing a life with someone.</p><p>You influence each other.</p><p>You grow together.</p><p>You build a world together.</p><p>But when that world changes, you&#8217;re left with a question that can feel equal parts overwhelming and exciting:</p><p>What parts of this are truly mine?</p><p>What do I believe?</p><p>What matters to me?</p><p>What kind of life do I want to build from here?</p><p>I&#8217;ve been surprised by how often those questions show up.</p><p>In coaching.</p><p>In parenting.</p><p>In friendships.</p><p>Even in the smallest decisions that never used to require much thought.</p><p>And if I&#8217;m being honest, there are parts of my old life I still miss.</p><p>People I still care about.</p><p>Versions of myself I still have a lot of love for.</p><p>I think that&#8217;s what makes moving forward so complicated.</p><p>It&#8217;s not always about leaving behind things you hated.</p><p>Sometimes it&#8217;s about letting go of things that mattered deeply.</p><p>Things that helped shape you.</p><p>Things that, in some ways, always will.</p><p>Maybe that&#8217;s why grief and growth seem to travel together.</p><p>One creates space for the other.</p><p>I don&#8217;t know exactly what comes next.</p><p>But I know I can&#8217;t stay standing in the doorway forever.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Somewhere in between]]></title><description><![CDATA[For a long time, my life moved in a straight line&#8212;one goal to the next, always knowing what I was working toward.]]></description><link>https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/p/somewhere-in-between</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/p/somewhere-in-between</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Meagan]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 14:42:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uHsx!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F23d83cda-6bce-42f8-96a2-27051a065818_144x144.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For a long time, my life moved in a straight line&#8212;one goal to the next, always knowing what I was working toward.</p><p>High-performance sport doesn&#8217;t leave much room for uncertainty. You train through things. You adapt. You keep moving. And for most of my life, that mindset worked for me.</p><p>Lately, though, life has felt very different.</p><p>Some of that has been public. Some of it hasn&#8217;t. And while I&#8217;m not interested in turning this space into a running commentary on every difficult thing that&#8217;s happened, I also don&#8217;t want to pretend I&#8217;ve moved through the last while untouched.</p><p>There&#8217;s also been a lot of conversation and speculation around some recent events in my life, much of it coming from people who don&#8217;t actually know me personally or the full story. I&#8217;ve seen a lot of incorrect information floating around, and maybe at some point I&#8217;ll speak more openly about that. But for now, I&#8217;m more interested in creating space for honest reflection than reacting to every opinion or assumption.</p><p>There&#8217;s been a strange mix of grief, clarity, frustration, relief, and honestly&#8230; a lot of reflection.</p><p>Especially around the culture I spent most of my life in.</p><p>I&#8217;ve spent years in environments where everything is measured, pushed, expected. A lot of that shaped me in ways I&#8217;m genuinely proud of. It gave me discipline, resilience, purpose, unforgettable experiences, and relationships that changed my life.</p><p>But some parts of that culture, I see differently now.</p><p>Especially the things I used to accept without question&#8212;or maybe chose not to question at all.</p><p>Skating can be an incredible world, but it can also normalize things that probably shouldn&#8217;t feel normal. Constant pressure. Fear of disappointing people. Staying quiet to keep the peace. Learning very early that being &#8220;easy to work with&#8221; is often valued more than being honest.</p><p>And when you do speak up, even carefully, you start to understand how quickly perceptions can shift. How uncomfortable people become when someone says something out loud that others would rather leave unsaid.</p><p>I&#8217;ve learned that speaking honestly doesn&#8217;t always go the way you hope it will. Sometimes it changes things for the better. Sometimes it costs you more than you expected. And sometimes the hardest part is realizing how many people stay silent simply because they&#8217;ve seen what happens when someone doesn&#8217;t. I&#8217;ve been applauded by many in the high performance skating World who want me to continue using my voice, as they sit silently in fear of speaking up. </p><p>I think I spent a lot of years convincing myself that was just part of high performance. Maybe some of it is. But some of it, I&#8217;m not willing to look at the same way anymore.</p><p>For a long time, I believed that if you worked hard, stayed professional, and did the right thing, things would eventually make sense.</p><p>Now I&#8217;m not so sure life works that cleanly.</p><p>At the same time, life at home has shifted my perspective in ways I didn&#8217;t expect. My days aren&#8217;t just about performance anymore. They&#8217;re school drop-offs, small moments, supporting my kids, trying to be more present, and figuring out who I am outside of constantly chasing the next result.</p><p>I&#8217;m still coaching. Still close to skating. Still passionate about so much of it.</p><p>But I&#8217;m also stepping back in certain ways and asking myself harder questions about what feels right, what doesn&#8217;t, and what I want moving forward.</p><p>This space isn&#8217;t about having polished answers or trying to control a narrative.</p><p>It&#8217;s just somewhere to write honestly about sport, identity, motherhood, change, and the complicated in-between spaces that come with all of it.</p><p>Nothing heavy. Just honest.</p><p>That feels like enough for now</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://meaganduhamel.substack.com/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><h2></h2>]]></content:encoded></item></channel></rss>