From Mountains to Motherhood, a new journey

The Beginning to the Mountains

If you’ve been around for a while, you know I thrive on a good challenge. But this shift from mountains to motherhood is unmatched. As a kid, that meant pushing myself in sports and excelling in the classroom despite a learning disability. Growing up just outside of New York City, I didn’t have many opportunities to “opt outside,” but my mom knew the benefits of fresh air and would kick us out of the house to play before dinner.

One of my first real outdoor experiences came in elementary school when I attended a week-long wilderness camp each summer. We slept in tents, cooked breakfast over a fire, climbed mountains, and spent our days exploring. It was my favorite week of the year. It was the place where I felt free to be myself and truly connected with nature.

As I got older and went off to college, I knew I wanted a career that allowed me to be outside. But I often felt like an outsider in the outdoor world. So many of my peers grew up hiking, camping, skiing, and adventuring, while I felt like I was constantly playing catch-up. Despite majoring in recreation, I struggled with impostor syndrome. I loved the outdoors, but didn’t always feel like I belonged there.

After graduation, I decided it was time to prove myself wrong. Adults can do whatever they want, right? No more waiting for permission—I was ready to take on the mountains.

Photos from camp over the years!

Stepping Outside

During college, I worked two summers as a ropes course specialist at a day camp near NYC, spending my days up in the trees, helping campers build confidence through rope courses. As I neared graduation, I took a job as an adventure instructor at a YMCA, leading rock climbing, challenge course, and archery classes. I loved every second of it.

Living just north of Boston meant I was only a few hours from the White Mountains in New Hampshire, so that summer (2016), I picked a random mountain—Mount Lafayette—and hiked it. I was still recovering from Anaplasmosis (a tick-borne illness that took me out for a while), but I was determined. And despite the challenge, I fell in love with hiking.

That’s when I learned about the New Hampshire 48—a challenge to summit all 48 mountains over 4,000 feet in New Hampshire. I had a new goal. Over the next few years, I hiked every single one, officially finishing in October 2020. You can read my full reflection here!

The Mountains That Shaped Me

The mountains challenged me in ways I never imagined. Some hikes tested my endurance while others humbled me—like the three failed attempts it took before I finally summiting Mount Washington. But each hike shaped me, pushing me to believe in myself.

There’s nothing quite like standing on a summit, looking out at the mountain you’ve finished. It’s a reminder of how far you’ve come, both physically and mentally. After completing the NH48, I set my sights on new goals—finishing the Belknap 12 (smaller mountains in southern NH that helped train my puppy, Haley, for bigger adventures) and working toward the New England 67, which includes peaks in Maine and Vermont. As of today, I’ve completed 61 of them—including a winter summit of Katahdin.

Katahdin is a story for another day but I’ll leave it at it was a trip that changed my perspective on everything and challenged me in so many ways. I cried a lot on that mountain. Physically, I walked away with three completely torn ligaments in my ankle, which I hiked on for miles before being rescued by park rangers on snowmobiles after a very long attempt to hike 16 miles out (I made it 12 not including the finished summit and down hike the day before). Mentally, I was already carrying a heavy load, and that climb pushed me to my absolute limits. But in the end, I did it. Because when you have no choice but to keep going, you find a way.

And little did I know, that experience would prepare me for an even bigger challenge—motherhood.

Crossing from Mountains to Motherhood

Looking back, I didn’t realize how much the mountains were preparing me for motherhood. The grit, the growth—the journey from mountains to motherhood was already beginning. These mountains pushed me to my limits and then some, and I came back stronger every time. Then I got pregnant. I had always dreamed of being pregnant and still doing everything I loved like hiking, camping, and snowboarding. When I was in college, weight lifting, I was asked to write 2 lifelong fitness goals.One was to be the mom running with the stroller. I didn’t do nearly as much as I wanted. My first two trimesters were pretty miserable. I actually stopped wearing my smart watch because it kept telling me to get up and move, and that was too much.

During my third trimester, I really started getting more comfortable. That’s when I began returning to the mountains, finishing my Belknap 12 and even hiking another 4000-footer. But I let people’s fears get the best of me and limited myself to fit inside their boxes. When winter came around, I stopped trying to get outside as often because “I was too pregnant,” and I didn’t want to put myself into labor or something.

I then had an incredible birth (you can read about it here, in my story about mom guilt). And I started going for walks after a few days, but again, people told me I was crazy and putting myself and my baby at risk. Countless people told me that babies can’t be outside, and the risk of adventuring with them is too great. But what if the risk of not adventuring with them is also too great? What if they are designed to be outside? But what if I do it wrong? The cost is greater. When you only have yourself relying on you, the risk is manageable, but when a baby is involved, that cost is so great, especially while they’re little, and I was exclusively breastfeeding.

I say all this, yet 14 months in, not much has changed. This new world is so foreign to me, and I don’t know how to navigate it, but I’m doing my best every day. It is so hard to go from your fittest, top-performing body, to an inspirational pregnant lady to so lost you don’t know how to find your way again. But I’m ready to get lost and find myself again. It was hard the first time around, finding my space outside, and I can do it again.

As moms, it is so so easy to completely lose every part of yourself to motherhood, but you can’t. YOU ARE IMPORTANT TOO! Their childhood is your motherhood, and that matters. We recently took my daughter on a cross-country road trip from Massachusetts to Nevada over 2 weeks. We stopped in Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, and Capitol Reef. My daughter may not remember a single thing from that trip, but it was the most alive I have felt since becoming a mom almost two years ago, when I got pregnant.

Now I’m back, and while I still feel a little lost, maybe I haven’t lost it all—maybe I just need to figure it out differently. So here we go… It’s time to find myself again. This new journey from mountains to motherhood is just getting started.