I’ve been obsessed with Everest for about 15 years but never did I imagine I would ever stand at the top of the world. I just never believed I had the strength, the courage, the body, the money to do it. But something happens when you bury a dream. It either dies from lack of light, or it feeds off the soil and grows roots, awaiting the day to break through the ground to expose its intentions.
There is nothing inherently special about climbing Everest. Thousands of people have done it. In fact, hundreds of people will begin making their way to Basecamp in a few weeks for their own summit attempt. Half will make it to the top and live to tell about it.
What I am more curious about is not how they got there - hard work, intense training, lots of money can get you to the top with relative ease (from an alpine climbing standpoint).
What I want to know is WHY they got there - more specifically, why they decided they could do something impossible when millions of others sit back and let life happen. What makes them think they can do it? What makes them think they are deserving? What makes them stick with the dream when every day presents opportunities to take the easy path - one not littered with hundreds of frozen bodies.
I guess I am more curious to know if I have what it takes to make it to the top. I wonder what I am capable of. What would I do when faced with the most impossible of situations. How would I fare with the extreme loneliness of training for an event like this?
Would I give up at first failure?
Would I give in and ask for help?
Would I allow myself to truly be seen - all of me, raw and unfiltered?
Would I be able to give up everything - and I do mean everything - to go for my dreams?
I don’t want to be the center of this documentary, but I have a story to tell. A story that I think millions of women - fat women, middle-aged women, single women, women who know they are meant for a life that is more than what they have created - need to hear.
I want to show them what is possible when you go all in on your dreams. Your audacious, impossible, terrifying, expensive, time-consuming, all-encompassing dream.
I want to learn about me. Who am I at my core? What am I made of? What choices do I make when things get tough and why?
Specifically, I want to know how to stop procrastinating and self-sabotaging. I want to learn how to create more flow and alignment in my life. I want a new relationship with money and my desires. I want to find pleasure and joy in the pain that is life. I want to redefine friendships and community. I want to unlearn lazy habits and bad routines. I want to find a sense of inner peace and resilience. But most importantly, I want to know that I can trust myself and that I am the only one coming to save me.
Why now?
I am approaching 50 so I guess now is as good a time as any to have a mid-life crisis. I feel like if I don’t do something major, something to help me rise above the severe depression and anxiety I’ve been experiencing over the past 5 years, that I will be dead before my next milestone birthday. I just can’t handle knowing there is more to life than this and yet feeling so stuck and alone and powerless to do something about it.
So I am doing something about it. This unwavering dream. This call to climb Chomolungma, the Goddess of Inexhaustible Giving, the Goddess Mother of the World.
What scares me most isn’t the training or the dangers on the mountain (yet, that will come), it’s that I can’t do this alone and will have to ask for help. I will have to ask people, friends and strangers, to give me money and/or support for little to nothing in return. I will have to receive support even if/when I don’t think I deserve it because I haven’t “earned” it.
I will have my failures on display for all to see. My bad moods and temper tantrums. My fat belly and wide legs and wrinkly skin. I will open myself up for judgment and scrutiny - from myself and others. It is hard to sympathize with a fat 50-year-old woman who thinks she has what it takes to be an extreme athlete. How do I let go of that pain of not being liked and accepted? It must come from within. From accepting and loving and even liking myself, all parts of myself, first.
I don’t know how 99% of this is going to play out. I have no idea where to find the money to make this a reality. I have no idea how to make a documentary film or how to climb any mountain, much less the tallest one on the planet.
But what I do know is that I have to try. I have to give it all I have because I don’t want to wake up on my 50th birthday and wish I had done something different, something more. I don’t want to regret giving up too soon or not asking for more help or not sacrificing more than I did because my ego was bruised or I was too scared to take action.
I often think, why the rush? She’ll be there when you are ready to climb her. But she won’t, really. Traffic and waste on the mountain are destroying her, and the increasingly rapid impact climate change is having on the weather will only make climbing Everest more extreme, more dangerous.
My hope for this film, for this journey, is to prove to myself what I am capable of when I commit 100% to my dreams and enlist a community to support me in reaching it. My goal is that by documenting it all, I inspire other women - women of all sizes, ages, and abilities - to pursue their own dreams and support each other in achieving that goal.
We are not in this life alone. While climbing is a solo sport, life is not. And for any dream to see the light of day, we have to forget the numbers telling us it is impossible, and trust the unwavering power of our dreams.
This is my journey to the top of the world.
This is my life.
