For 2016 Olympian and gymnastics extraordinaire Laurie Hernandez, self-care is simply second nature. Whether it’s a night with her favorite book, a foolproof skincare routine, or a coffee, she knows how important it is to take care of yourself — especially when life is crazy. (Seriously, does it get crazier than competing in the Olympics at 16 years old?!)
And now that she's entered adulthood, Laurie has a whole new idea of self-care. "I don't think I fully comprehended the concept of self care [during the Olympics]," she admits. "Now it's more so just making sure that I'm setting time aside for myself...Just making sure that you're doing things that are fueling you, whether that's enhancing rest or allowing your brain to kind of drift off into a different place knowing that you're going to come back into the present." As a daydreamer myself, I second this!
We'll See Laurie Hernandez At The 2024 Olympics — Just In An Unexpected Way!
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Laurie Hernandez — who's currently partnering with beauty brand OLAY for their Cleansing Melts— will serve as an NBC correspondent for women's gymnastics at the 2024 Paris Olympics, which kick off July 26. "Going to Paris this summer is going to be a lot of fun," she says. "I've never been to Paris, so I'm really excited to go and check out that, and just to eat the food and witness everything there."
Naturally, I have to ask if she has any fun stories from the 2016 Olympics — my favorite year! "There were a lot of wonderful moments between friends I think a lot of us just cherish and we'll chat about every so often when they come up," she reveals. "But for the most part, it was a really, really serious environment. So being able to find ways that we could just relax around each other — that was hard but important."
While finding ways to have fun was a vital part of competing in Rio, Laurie also says it's a lesson she'd tell her 5-year-old self. "Gymnastics is a sport where you have to mature pretty early on," she says. "And I think I gripped that pretty tightly as a kid, and that was also reinforced by everyone around me. So I would just go back and tell her to keep being a kid and keep enjoying the little things people get so excited about, specifically the Summer Olympics and specifically gymnastics."
Laurie Hernandez On Growing Up
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While Laurie jokes she's grown in height since both those kindergarten days and Rio, she's proud of her emotional growth, too. "Being 23 versus 16 feels like two completely different lifetimes," she admits. "And I think also doing one sport and training for one thing from like five years old up until 2021 is such a very specific lifestyle, versus not doing sports at all and being a student and working and just being in young twenties and figuring out how life works in that way, separate from sport."
"Being in college has caused a lot of growth," Laurie, who's an acting major, continues. "It's taught me how to make new friends that aren't sport-related, which wasn't something that I was used to, and also being able to trust that people will just see me for whoever is showing up that day. And I'm not just an athlete anymore when I'm in class, I'm a student like everyone else."
She also admits her parents have played a huge role in helping her stay grounded. "There's a lot of joy in the way that [my parents] just exist and in the way that they've raised me and my siblings," she continues. "I know that that's not a common experience, and I think that colors everything that I'm doing."
"I also do therapy once a week," she adds. "Therapy is great...It feels like holding me accountable but in a way that's really quite validating. So, just checking in with yourself and making sure that you're giving yourself what you need and if you're lacking something, being able to communicate that and not pretend like you don't need it, that's an important thing."
Laurie Hernandez Looks Toward The Future
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When she's not doing aerials, winning gold medals, or running lines for class, Laurie's probably reading. The Dancing With The Starsalum just finished The Shadow of Kyoshi, and has been very vocal about her love for Fourth Wing— she posts hilarious character videos and even hosted a conversation with author Rebecca Yarros! Laurie's a writer herself, and penned I Got This: To Gold and Beyond in 2017 and young reader's version She's Got This the following year. Up next, she'd love to write a novel.
"I always get random scenes and I'm constantly trying to figure out how I can piece them together," she says. "I think a big dream would just be to release like a [duology] or a trilogy of a fantasy fiction story...All of my main characters have some kind of good versus evil type thing. I'm like, 'Ok, very Star Wars!'...But yeah, I think that would rock."
"I'm getting ready to take a class in the fall [semester] that's on like, fiction, fantasy novels and how to world build and do character work and dialogue and whatnot," she says. "I love writing, so being able to gear more towards novels, I've done a bit of screenwriting and whatnot for school, but being able to shift into the novel world, that's something that I'm really interested in."
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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Lead image via Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images
