This is the companion post to Episode 3 of the podcast. If you haven't listened yet, head there first Em asks me if I felt pressure. And I answered, always. I think so much of my life has been working to avoid contributing to assumptions of people like me, a girl raised by a single mother, a low-income student, a child of addicts, a girl who wants to do things deemed only for the boys. The pressure of performing to achieve an outcome that is unexpected is so incredibly heavy.

This is the companion post to Episode 3 of the podcast. If you haven't listened yet, head there first — then come back here for everything I was still thinking about after we stopped recording and in my listen back. The phrase Do it Scared gets thrown around in self-help circles, it even looks good on a mug. Doing it scared in this context means feeling the fear, and pushing through, happily ever after. But that’s not quite what I mean. I mean something closer to what I texte

This is the companion post to Episode 2 of the podcast. If you haven't listened yet, head there first — then come back here for everything I was still thinking about after we stopped recording and in my listen back. In the pod, I say, “In hindsight, I’d do things completely differently.” Let’s talk about it. I am not the same person who stepped onto the JMT nine years ago. I know that sounds like something everyone says but I mean it in a specific, bodily way. Since the JMT,

This is the companion post to Episode 2 of the podcast. If you haven't listened yet, head there first Remembering the year leading into this hike I remember feeling chronically underprepared or ill-equipped to accomplish such a feat. I remember anxiety spiralling trying to convince myself it wasn’t the scariest thing I had ever decided to do, that I wasn’t over committing myself, that I hadn’t puffed my chest to full of hot air, bravado, and very little knowledge or capabilit

This is the companion post to Episode 1 of the podcast. If you haven't listened yet, head there first The greatest shock in the process of this podcast thus far is how loudly we were screaming about the trauma endured in the years we spent in graduate school. A period I have jokingly, or I suppose now I see not so jokingly, said was the hardest period of my life. In the process of developing this podcast we went in completely void of reacquaintance with our documentation of m