Carli Lloyd was estranged from her family for 12 years. A lost year reunited them.
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Carli Lloyd will arrive at her fourth Olympics playing at a level that disguises her age, which, as of Friday, is 39 - the oldest for a U.S. women's soccer Olympian ever.
In all likelihood, this will be the last major tournament in a career decorated by gold medals, World Cup titles and international awards.
As her extraordinary tour winds down, though, Lloyd has acquired something that has been absent since she first rocketed to stardom: a relationship with her family.
For 12 years, she rarely communicated with them, the fallout from a rift for which she takes some responsibility. While teammates embraced their parents field-side, Lloyd celebrated her historic hat trick against Japan in the 2015 World Cup final with players and staff.
Her parents were not invited to her wedding; she didn't attend her sister's. She was not immediately told of her father's heart surgery.
Last year, she began to realize what had been lost. The coronavirus pandemic had postponed the Olympics and a knee injury shelved her National Women's Soccer League campaign, offering time for introspection and reflection.
Step by step, the family began to reconcile, and with her parents, sister and brother now back in her life, Lloyd said, "I feel whole again."
Ironically, the first big competition she would have welcomed her family to attend, the Summer Games in Tokyo, is off-limits because of the ban on foreign visitors and spectators.
So Lloyd's parents and siblings will have to watch her on TV in the early hours, extending distant support that Lloyd said she will carry with her into the U.S. team's group opener Wednesday against Sweden.
"I am just as motivated, just as hungry, but I am happier," she said. "I feel a whole weight has been lifted off my shoulders, one I didn't realize I was carrying for so long."
Lloyd discussed her newfound relationship with her family in an interview with The Washington Post. Her family members could not be reached for comment.
Despite the long estrangement, she said, "We were meant to be in each other's lives."
"My parents always thought when I was done playing we could start to have a relationship," Lloyd said. "It just so happened that 2020 happened, and here we are, and they are able to be part of this journey with me."
Lloyd first revealed her family divide in a 2016 autobiography.
She credited her parents for providing the foundation to become a world-class player, but at the same time, they were "too devoted," she wrote. "I started to feel smothered. . . . We had a lot of blowups."
Lloyd said she was not able to make independent decisions, such as choosing an agent. The fissure widened in 2007, and she cleared her belongings out of her parents' home. Her younger siblings, Ashley and Stephen, were caught in the maelstrom.
In subsequent years, communication was sporadic.
Lloyd poured everything into soccer.
"There is no real secret to why I'm still here," she said in a recent interview with The Post. "I have literally dedicated my whole life to [soccer] for 16 years. Some may call it crazy, but I have obsessed over tiny details."
She leaned on her longtime boyfriend, Brian Hollins, who is now her husband. She turned to her trainer, James Galanis, for vocational wisdom.
"I have a different perspective on it now," she said. "Without [my family] and their support, I wouldn't be here. I am incredibly thankful for that. Every family has rifts and head-butting. I did feel terrible about it."
The healing was facilitated by her sister, with whom she had reconnected after the book was published, according to Lloyd. The full family began to meet and talk.
"I just got to a point where you go for so long with not talking, and you are like, 'Why are we doing this?' " she told NBC's "Today" show.
To help repair the relationship, she broke her 17-year tie with Galanis, whom her family had blamed for creating a wedge, Lloyd said.
Lloyd said restoring family bonds has had a positive impact on her career.
"I am in a really good place from a mental and physical standpoint and just really enjoying the process a bit more," she said. "I've heard about tons of people who have gone through different things, and their common theme or regret is not really enjoying the moment. I don't know if I fully enjoyed every single moment I was part of, but I know I'm fully enjoying the moment right now."
At the start of her career, Lloyd's goal was to play in three World Cup-Olympic cycles, ending at age 34 with the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. After the 2012 Olympics in London, though, she looked further down the road.
"This fourth phase for me was something I really wanted to push for," said Lloyd, who is third in U.S. career appearances (306), fourth in goals (126) and fifth in assists (64).
Her starring role at the 2015 World Cup extinguished any doubt about pushing on. The next cycle did not go as planned, though, and her place in the team slipped. In 2019, Lloyd appeared in 23 of 24 matches and started nine but just one at the World Cup in France.
She said she felt then-coach Jill Ellis had lumped her with Abby Wambach and Christie Pearce Rampone, who both retired from the national team soon after the 2015 tournament.
"I saw the writing on the wall," Lloyd said of the buildup to 2019. "For whatever reason, it was always going to be my age. Whether that was used as a covert way of saying, 'I don't want you to start,' whatever. That was my issue of really not feeling I had a fair shot, no matter what I did in training and games."
Soon after that World Cup, Ellis stepped down and Vlatko Andonovski took charge. With Alex Morgan on maternity leave, Lloyd became the primary candidate to start at striker in the Olympics. The pandemic, though, placed everything on hold.
When the team gathered early this year, Andonovski wasn't sure what to expect, especially amid the pandemic.
"Nothing changed with Carli," he said. "In some ways, she came out more driven and more dedicated."
Lloyd said she benefited from the delay, which allowed her to recover from knee surgery.
"I've never been this fit, fast, explosive," she said.
Time off also allowed her to become a better student of the game, studying opponents and Andonovski's tactics.
This year, she has appeared in all 12 matches, starting seven, and leads the team in assists (six) while contributing three goals, including a diving header in the last tuneup July 5 against Mexico.
"You never see her tank get empty; you never see it get near empty," 22-year-old defender Tierna Davidson said. "I think 2020 was especially great for her to be able to take some time for her body and to get everything as right and as perfect as possible. It seems to have added more years to her career."
With the next World Cup two years off, this Olympics would appear to be the appropriate off-ramp. Lloyd said she would give it greater thought in the coming months. The last year, she said, gave her a glimpse of what her life would look like after retirement.
"For the first time in my career, I lived my life. I enjoyed it. It's not going to be a physical thing where my body is breaking down and I have to retire," she said. "But there also comes that life decision of wanting to step away, to start a family, to be with friends and family."
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