I return to Canmore in early July. By now I’ve been away for four months and it feels good to be home. And even better when I move in with Marni, and our friends Colin Rankin and Dave Stark. All four of us are in one stage or another of breaking up with partners, so we call our place the Heartbreak Hotel. We share three bedrooms, counting on one of us being away at any given time, and sleep in whichever one is vacant when we get home. Now and then the system fails, and after trying each door and then swearing under their breath, the latecomer ends up on the floor. A floor is all I have anyway, until Chris builds me a bed and buys me a mattress. “With no strings attached,” he says.
It’s hard for the four of us to tear ourselves away from the breakfast table when we’re all home at the same time because we all have so much to talk and laugh about when it comes to our sad state of affairs. This is as normal as I’ve felt since life after Everest began.
I soon fall into a routine of guiding and training for my upcoming Full Alpine Guide’s exam next summer. I rise as early as 3 a.m. to climb and work through long days that will also include giving corporate presentations.
It takes me a month to prepare for my first presentation and audience. Chris, who is well versed in making slide presentations, coaches me: “Don’t spend more than a minute talking about each slide. Too many slides, too much talking, so pare them down. Use the images to cue you for every point. Write your points down on recipe cards.” I wake in the nights, my mind rehearsing, and write down ideas on a notepad I keep at my bedside. Although I thought I would be ready for anything after Everest, speaking to an audience for an hour is unimaginable. When the day comes, pure will marches me to the podium and sees me through. Will is all I can count on for now.
Barry asks if he can come to one of my talks, and how can I say no? I wince when I glance at him at the back of the room. His being there underscores the collision between my life as a member of the tribe who believes modesty and understatement are mandatory virtues, and my life as a perceived hero with a story to tell. It helps when the lights dim and I can’t see him anymore. I begin, “Ours is a story of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary results.” And I take the audience through the expedition over the next sixty minutes. Although I receive hearty applause, I have an uneasy sense that it is Everest earning the applause.
As people file through to talk to me after the presentation, they say, “That was incredible.” And I know they are referring to the mountain, as if all I need to do is show up. Or they say, “That was an amazing feat you pulled off,” and I hear this as an accolade for what I have done, not the team. I know Barry is hearing these comments and I feel embarrassed. Once the room is empty, and as I am collecting my slides and papers, Barry approaches me. He smiles, grasps my shoulders, tilts his head from one side to the other, examining the woman in front of him, and says, “You’re not ordinary! We’re not ordinary!” His words sting, as they echo my own thoughts. I am uncertain how to get past the awe of Everest to reach an audience with my own voice. I know as he does that my gratuitous self-deprecation isn’t the answer. But I do believe I am an ordinary person trying to accomplish the extraordinary task of meeting my own expectations.
For now I skulk out of town in my businesswoman’s disguise, hoping none of my tribe will see me. Moving between these two worlds—the one I know and the one where I feel like an imposter—I begin to separate myself into two women: the one who guides and climbs, and the one who gives motivational speeches.
I first get a sense of my own voice late that fall on a day when I’m delayed and arrive fifteen minutes late for a presentation. This predicament forces me into a state of mind I know well from when things go sideways in the mountains and there is no choice but to take charge. As I enter the meeting room, I hand my slide carousel to the audio-visual operator and ask him to start fifteen slides into the presentation. With no time to ease my way out of my self-consciousness, I launch right in. Within minutes I become aware of the hush in the room. For the first time, I make eye contact with the audience instead of gazing over their heads. I pause to let my words sink in rather than scrambling to fill the space with noise. Soon I feel these five hundred people are in the moment with me.
When I finish, however, nobody stirs, claps or utters a word. I hover in that silent void for what seems an eternity. Then a single clap breaks the silence. One person pops up, followed by another and another until the whole room is standing, whistling, cheering and clapping. This time, I sense that my message may have earned some of this applause. A thousand butterflies are taking flight inside me. I want more of this.
The conference season ends in November and I work as a heli-ski guide in the Interior of BC through the winter months. Chris has been hired by the same company to visit their six lodges as a snow safety consultant, but that winter he spends a disproportionate amount of time at the Bobbie Burns Lodge where I’m based. He glides effortlessly through the powder snow, his skis a natural extension of his feet. He coaches me: “Keep your hands in front, get out of the back seat.” And he gives me tips on how to lead groups of guests who will always be right on my tail. At the top of a run, he will slide up beside me, lean in and whisper into my ear, “Take that line”—and I do.
As my speaking engagements start up again in March, Chris becomes my bridge to the business world. My Everest acclaim parachutes me into galas and receptions that precede presentations with blue-chip corporations. Groomed by an upper-class British mother, Chris tutors me in the etiquette of formal tables: the order of utensils used for each course, the right side to take my napkin from, the need to use my butter knife. He adds, “And stop swinging your fork in the air like you’re conducting a symphony!”
He reassures me when I receive a call one morning from a woman representing the University of Calgary Senate telling me that I have been nominated for an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. In panic, I wave madly at Chris to listen in on the conversation.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I tell her. “Are you saying that the university wants to grant me an honorary degree for climbing a mountain? Why?”
“Why, my girl, is because your accomplishment is symbolic for all women—and men for that matter—who are aspiring to greater heights in the world.”
I put my hand over the receiver and hiss at Chris, “I’m a high school dropout! I can’t accept this!”
He whispers, “No one needs to know. Just say yes!”
Public recognition is a deceptive mirror. Close on the heels of the doctorate, the American Alpine Club and the Explorers Club of New York jointly recognize me with the inaugural Tenzing Norgay Award for exceptional mountaineering. As I settle into the back of the limo at LaGuardia Airport, I puff up with the thought that despite being Canadian, these prestigious American organizations deem me worthy enough to fly me to New York City to receive the award from Sir Edmund Hillary himself. I’m heady with the thought of being united with this great man by our historic ascents of Everest. But as Hillary’s huge hand envelops mine, his mouth is smiling but his eyes are not. I read Hillary’s look as confirmation that I am just one of the more than two hundred climbers who have summited this beleaguered mountain. Instantly, I deflate. I should have known better than to fall for the opinions of strangers. The mountain has lulled me into this false sense of greatness, and I begin to resent it.
Everest becomes uncontainable. The carefully constructed box in which I keep it bursts open at unexpected times and places. Chris takes me to dinner one night to celebrate our engagement. And as the maître d’ leads us to our table, a diner grabs my arm. “Are you the woman who climbed Everest?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply, as Chris and the maître d’ stand by entirely ignored.
“Let me introduce you to my clients,” he says and proceeds to present me to everyone at the table.
Once Chris and I are seated, he leans in and hisses, “I can’t believe how rude that man was!”
“I’m sorry, I should have said something—at the very least, introduced you. It’s just that he caught me by surprise.”
“No, no,” he says. “It’s not up to you. He should have known better.”
I suck the air in between my teeth, and run my fingers through my hair, thinking, No, I should have known better. I could have prevented this spectacle.
I become increasingly wary of Everest. It opens doors, then elbows me aside. I start out poised and articulate in my presentations, then the mountain takes over. I finish bewildered, as though I’m waking from a spell.
More often than not, an hour of storytelling rouses a standing ovation. But I feel more embarrassed than exultant. The audience rises from their seats for Everest.
I hope to find my feet by returning to the mountains, where I’ve always felt grounded. In the spring of ’87, James and I set out to climb the Paragot route on the North Face of Huascarán Norte in Peru, a dream route that demands our rock- and ice-climbing skills and high-altitude experience to pull off. On our second day out, a softball-sized rock hits me square on the top of my helmet and knocks me senseless. For the rest of the four-day climb, I feel more nervous than engaged—a sure sign that I’ve had enough.
A new problem to solve or a new route to climb used to fulfill me. Every climb was an investment in attaining greater mastery. The passion sustained me—defined me. The realization of what I have lost is frightening.
I count on the comfort of the familiar when James and I return to a summer of guiding and training for our upcoming alpine guide’s exam. In September when the examiners summon me to tell me whether I’ve passed or failed, they are quiet. They don’t look at me, and I know the news isn’t good. Everest, looming and omnipresent, is impotent in this room of qualified men who don’t care.
“It didn’t seem like your mind was on the exam,” says the first examiner. The others nod in agreement. “However, we are granting you a conditional pass. If you can meet these conditions, we will approve you for full alpine certification.”
Although I know my heart isn’t in guiding or in high-altitude climbing anymore, I am disappointed. Later that fall I spend a few days climbing with an examiner and clients to meet the conditions for my certification. But the question that preoccupies me is what will fulfill me. A barely audible voice inside urges me to be patient and have faith.
Faith carries me through the next year. Without warning, I realize one day when I’m watching Chris rolling on the floor playing with his friend’s two young children that I want to have kids. As I run my fingers through his strawberry blond hair in bed that night, I say, “The way you fawned over those kids today makes me want to take on the biggest science experiment of my life.” I had always seen my reproductive system as an inconvenience—a liability in my arena. Now, I’m fascinated with the miracle.
A year later, Chris sits beaming in the chair beside my hospital bed. The nurse helps turn me and arrange the pillows to prop our newborn son against me. My nose hovers above our baby’s head, taking in his scent. The nurse squishes baby Robin’s face to my breast and I feel him latch on for the first time. Love blows my heart wide open. Chris brushes his tears away.
Just then one of our doctors waltzes in on his rounds. “Well, what was harder,” he asks, “a twenty-four-hour labour followed by a Cesarean, or Everest?”
I am taken aback by this bizarre question. It was well intended, I’m sure, but I resent how that mountain has permeated my life, my identity—even here. Even now!
Marni comes to visit me and her new godson in the hospital the next day. A few minutes later, the nurse scoops Robin up and urges me to take my first walk while Marni can escort me. Every step wrenches my freshly sliced, gutted and stapled belly. With one hand I clutch the bag of jelly that was once my stomach to keep it from jiggling. And with the other, I grip a handrail as I shuffle to a sitting room at the end of the hallway.
“Are we there yet? This feels like my hardest climb ever.” I start snivelling, “What’s happening to me, Marni? What did they do with the woman we knew?” A flood of emotion presses in my throat. My confidence plummets, my world shrinks, I shrink.
She grips my bicep to support me and says, “You’re a mother now.”
“No kidding. How am I ever going to manage anything in this state beyond caring for Robin? I can’t, is how. Marni, I can’t be your friend anymore.”
She laughs. “Oh honey, I’m here to stay—and to give you perspective. You’re in shock after all you’ve been through, and under the influence of some drugs and heaps of hormones too, I imagine. Give yourself some time to recover before you make up your mind about what your life is going to be like and who you will or won’t have room for. I think you’ll be surprised.”
Six weeks after Robin is born, Everest comes calling again when I am contracted to speak to a company based in Calgary. The theme of the talk is accomplishing more with less. I can relate. Twenty kilograms more of me, and much less brainpower. I pull on the only bottoms that fit, a pair of maternity pants, and I cover my top half with a dark blazer. Robin wails when I hand him to our nanny on my way out the door. I hover there, taking one last look at him, as she rocks him in her arms. Looking down at Robin, Ruth croons, “We’ll be fine won’t we, won’t we. Yes, we will.” This kind older British woman says this as much for me as for Robin. I step across the threshold and wonder how I will close the gap between now and speaking at the podium.
A senior partner in the law firm introduces me to a mostly male audience—all I see are starched white shirts and cinched ties—filling a smattering of chairs. Intimidating. A few people stand in the back close to the door, ready to bail.
A bloom of milk soaks my blouse as I step up to the podium. I congratulate myself on the choice of the loose dark blazer for this occasion. Blank faces stare back at me. I reach for help and Albi flashes through my thoughts. Some have judged him arrogant for his brash confidence, but he believed he was good at whatever he took on, and therefore he was remarkably effective. With his example in mind, I begin. “You might wonder—what does climbing Mount Everest have to do with you? Everything,” I declare.
The audience asks a surprising number of questions afterward, including, of course, “Once you’ve climbed the highest mountain in the world, what’s next?”
I hesitate, then say, “What’s next is this,” and I flash the last image I’ve held back uncertainly: a picture of a swaddled newborn Robin. “Everest was just training for this: the biggest adventure of my life.”
Everyone leaps from their seats and claps. I keep the picture of Robin up on the screen, rejoicing inside for their endorsement of “what’s next.” For the first time, Everest isn’t the darling of the show.
When our second darling, Daniel, arrives in February of ’92, Chris is in increasing demand as a snow safety consultant, which takes him away most of the winter and mires him in reports and contract bids in the off-seasons. A dozen or more speakers’ bureaus now represent me. They warn me to keep building my career or I will lose it, so I accept up to fifty engagements a year throughout North America. Nannies come and go, and we hire an office manager. I let go of guiding for the less time-consuming yet more stress-inducing work of speaking. The reality of what needs to happen, and all at once, in a woman’s thirties if she wants to establish a family, a career and a secure future, rankles me. Stressed, hormonal and strapped for time does not make me a good wife or mother at times. Then just when I think I can’t take on another commitment, a wave of inspiration transports me from feeling beleaguered to impassioned.
School is imminent for Robin, and I attend a public meeting with the school board to discuss upcoming budget cuts. When I listen to what is going to get cut, it sounds like the kids are going to come up short. I walk out with another mother whose child is Robin’s age. Within minutes of talking, we hatch a dream to start our own school.
I lie awake in bed that night as that spark of a new dream lights me up. In the morning Marni laughs when I tell her about my concerns from the school meeting and the idea of starting a school. “There it is,” she says, “a gift in unfamiliar packaging! That’s what you call setbacks and obstacles in your presentations, isn’t it?”
“It’s an impossible dream, though. I’m not an educator and I don’t know a thing about starting a school.”
“Well, as Kevin would say, ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen by trying?’”
So I try, pouring my energy, with a like-minded group, into starting a school. The gift in unfamiliar packaging is a level of passion and engagement that I haven’t experienced since I was gunning for Everest. Mountain Gate Community School opens in September of ’96 with a first class of thirteen students, grades 1 through 3, in a single room. The school will expand to five classrooms, kindergarten through grade 6, by 1998. And I will remain in a leadership position until Robin graduates and moves into the public system. Ironically, Everest lends me the credibility to attract donors and raise funds for families who couldn’t otherwise afford to pay for a private school. I have never worked harder. The pride I find in this thriving and vibrant community we have created means everything.
In a school that once seemed an impossible dream, it feels like we’re changing the world kid by kid, family by family. And the biggest surprise: this gift comes in the giving, not the taking.
The humbling experiences of motherhood and the school shift my approach in my presentations from performing to giving. I feel invigorated as I integrate this new sense of empathy and connection into my scripts. I elbow Everest aside for a change, turning the mountain into the stage rather than the star. My shift in perspective becomes apparent when a booking takes me to Orlando to speak to a conference of five thousand nurses, the largest crowd I have addressed yet.
I take long, slow, deep breaths and chant my mantra, believe and begin, believe and begin, as the emcee introduces me. My title slide “Everest—the Impossible Dream” comes up on the screen behind her and on the six other eight-by-eight-metre screens along the sides of the stadium. I walk up a dozen or more stairs to the stage while Elvis Presley’s “The Impossible Dream” booms through the speakers. I put this outrageous fanfare out of my mind to focus on what is important to me.
I feel the power of my intention as an improbable hush falls over this immense crowd. I focus on the nurses in the first few rows as I say, “To make the impossible possible on Everest, we had to raise our baseline from surviving to thriving. Thriving is not about working harder, carrying heavier loads or putting in longer days. Thriving starts with altering our perceptions. I have spent a disproportionate amount of time wishing: if only I had more of something, or better conditions—a myriad of if-onlys. All that does is take up energy and hold me back. Once we get over the if-onlys and commit, all form of resources and assistance become available. The trick is to recognize these gifts, wrapped in unfamiliar packaging. That takes an open mind.”
As I close I say, “I’d like to answer the question I’m asked most often: Once you’ve climbed the highest mountain in the world, what’s next?” I advance to the last slide of Daniel and Robin, four and seven years old, wearing climbing helmets and standing on either side of me holding onto my harness. “This is what’s next,” I say, “raising two sons. I realize this is considered an ordinary affair—one that society expects of us. But this is my next. And it is the most difficult yet most rewarding climb I’ve ever taken on!” Five thousand people stand in a wave of thunderous applause.
When I arrive home three days later, no one greets me at the door. I find the boys in the playroom engrossed in their Lego construction.
When Chris arrives home a few minutes later, he shouts out, “Hello this house!” The boys rush him squealing, “Daddy, Daddy!” They leap up into his arms.
“How’re my boys?” Chris blows a raspberry fart into Daniel’s bared tummy. Robin hangs off his other arm, tugging him into the playroom to show off their latest box fort.
If only he would kiss me. If only he was that happy to see me. Oddly, I am jealous of how he cherishes his boys more than me. It’s as if I existed in his heart only long enough to bring forth a new male generation and now that that’s done, he’s done—with me. Doesn’t he know our love is what will hold our family together? The truth is we’re both so busy thriving in our work lives. All we have time for before one of us is gone again is who’s paid the bill for what, how the latest nanny is working out, and what changes there have been in school and homework routines.
As I watch Chris with the boys, I think, What the hell is going on with me? Is it the big fall from the adulation of thousands of strangers, to this—feeling like a stranger in my own home? I feel selfish for wanting this love from Chris and I know it isn’t right. I carry my own little war around inside: resentment versus shame and self-loathing. I castigate myself, thinking that I should be able to alter my perception, open my mind, see the gifts of this husband and two beautiful boys!
I cherish times when I lie flanked by Daniel and Robin at bedtime, reading aloud the adventures of Harry Potter. I love to voice the characters as Robin nestles in and his brother clings to me. I stroke Daniel’s head and knead Robin’s fingers as the boys drift off to sleep. I float in these sublime moments. I swell with pride in the wild times, such as the day we’re at Marni’s place and she gasps when she looks out the window to see Daniel trailing Robin across the peak of their garage roof. Of course, we stop them from trying to leap across to the neighbour’s garage. But I know they are irrepressible and adventurous souls by now, not mine to own but to love and protect as best I can. These magnificent boys show me a capacity for deep, fierce love and tenderness in myself.
Chris’s mom dies the following summer, then my dad in December and Chris’s brother in January. The losses devastate Chris and me and further strain our relationship. We fly directly from my dad’s memorial to Chris’s brother’s service in Toronto. As president of the school—keeper of the peace between teachers, children and parents—and motivational speaker, mother, and co-ordinator of nannies and office managers, I have no time to pause.
The respite I find in my boys and my work begins to crumble. And the slightest things begin to unhinge me: Robin refusing to do his homework, Daniel dropping a glass on the floor, a scrap between the two of them. I hate it when they fight. They are vicious. I shout at them, call them little shits, push them around and hate myself for it. My doctor urges me to try antidepressants, but I’m too proud and too afraid of the stigma attached to mental illness. I’m not depressed! I know I can fight this. I know I am strong. These problems should be trifling compared to the mountains I’ve climbed.
But no amount of strength, will or pride helps me now. I get worse. I am driving our boys and some other kids home from school, and their mother, Jo, meets us at the car. This Australian woman takes one look at my red-rimmed eyes and says, “Get out of the car. You’re coming in for a cuppa.”
While the kids play, Jo settles me at her table with a hot cup of tea and then says plainly, “So, what’s going on?”
I trace the paisley pattern on the tablecloth with my fingers, look at my hands—anything but her—as I say, “I can’t stop crying. I cry when I drop a plate on the floor. I cry at the dread of getting through another day. I feel out of control, Jo. I’m terrified by this outpouring of sadness.”
She has watched me start and manage the school, the board of directors and my life, with will, strength and competence. When Jo, a nurse, midwife and proponent of natural remedies, declares, “You’re depressed; you need drugs,” I surrender.
The act of surrender is powerful. I reduce my commitments with the school and work. Within a few weeks I feel a side effect of the antidepressant when my fingers begin to tingle. Then soon after when I’m riding up a long hill on my bicycle, I feel a sudden rush of euphoria and clarity. My only guess is that the meds are combining with the exercise-induced endorphins and, voila, turbo power! I feel a fluttering sensation in my chest as if I’ve just pushed hard off the bottom of a murky pool and am rising upward. The cause behind the depression is biological. It’s not all me.
I continue to see more light in my life. In November, I bow before Governor General Roméo LeBlanc at La Citadelle in Quebec City as I receive the Meritorious Service Medal of Canada. As he places the medal around my neck I register the irony. I bow too to the duality in my life: gift and curse. The constant movement and striving that have earned me this medal have also staved off the depression I’ve had most of my adult life. I would never have asked for this epiphany to come to me this way, but I trust that I’m still being guided to slow down and allow room for self-compassion. But it seems there is still more ground for this new state of being to take.
It’s a balmy New Year’s Day. I’m wheeling fast down a trail on my bike when my back tire slips on the snow as I go to jump over a log. My bike hits the log, comes to a hard stop and I soar over the handlebars. I hit the frozen ground headfirst, suffering a concussion and fracturing some facets in my cervical vertebrae. The accident pins me down with nausea and dizziness. The doctor tells me to avoid any fast movement and busy places.
Fortunately, it is off-season in the conference business. First, I pick up a papier-mâché project I’ve been working on with the kids at school. One day I conjure wings boned with coat-hanger wire; the next I sculpt claws and teeth out of a paper clay. Soon, long past when everyone in the house has gone to sleep, I’m listening to Handel’s Messiah and, as if under a spell, rendering armatures for life-sized coyotes. Night after night, I cover the mishmash of rebar and aluminum foil tubes with paper pulp and sculpt it into muscle, hide and fur. From inspiration to reality, from garbage to spirit, these creatures take shape. This flurry of intense engagement is a refreshingly private affair of no importance to anyone but me. This creative process nourishes me.
Bookings made a year in advance have Everest dragging me back to the podium by early March. I wonder how I will manage on stage in this vulnerable state. Remarkably, I find myself speaking with stronger conviction and Everest sliding into the back seat. After my presentations, people come forward and say, “I can be honest with you now. A few of us were wondering why they brought in someone to talk about Everest—of all things for an insurance company! But oh, do I get it now! You’ve inspired me take on a whole new approach with my support staff.” Others say, “It’s like you were talking directly to me, like you were referring to my challenges alone.” People come forward to confide their stories to me. And I listen with new ears to the similarities in their challenges and our narratives. My anxiety moves toward a sense of ease as my public and private persona inch closer to becoming one.
This state of surrender is deepening my connection with my audiences. But the opposite is happening with Chris and me. The contrast is becoming unbearable, and I realize this on Easter Sunday morning when I’m fulfilling my duty as parent-janitor of the week at the school. I’m scrubbing the tops of the children’s desks, puzzling over the discussion Chris and I had about the logistics of childcare and our travel schedules before I left the house. As I lean in to work on a stubborn streak of ink, I realize that our arguing stopped some time ago and in its place is indifference. Somewhere in one of the many books I have read on the mysteries of human behaviour, it stated that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. This premise thuds home as an unassailable truth and a feeling of calm resolve infuses me. I phone Chris and tell him I want to separate. He says flatly, “I’ve had enough too.”
Although we dread telling the boys, we sit them on the couch. Kneeling before them with a hand on each of their knees, I say, “Mommy is going to move into another house, so now you’ll have two houses.” Nothing changes in ten-year-old, wise-beyond-his-years Robin. But there is no cajoling Daniel, who starts wailing—inconsolably. I sweep him up into my arms and hold him tight as he clutches my shirt and sobs into my chest. I thought I would cry too. But strangely I don’t. I feel his despair yet I know this is what I must do. I trust my decision in the way I trust airline attendants when they tell adults to pull on their own oxygen masks before helping others. We must help ourselves before we can assist our children. There is no argument over custody, as I know the boys will need Chris even more than before. I hope he’ll stay home more often now. And I don’t utter an unkind word about him.
“So what do I call Chris now?” I ask my friend Genevieve during what we call our running dialogues on one of our regular trots along the mountain trails. “I can’t get my head around the term ‘ex-husband.’ Surely there’s got to be a more compassionate title for the father of our children.”
“Well,” she huffs, “I call mine my ‘wasband.’” With no better option, I adopt the term on the spot.
After our run that day, I invite Genevieve in to see my new place. I hear my voice echo off the walls of the empty living room. “The worst part of separating is thinking about how I’m going to bear living apart from my kids in the same town.”
“You’re the one who says in your presentations that the anticipation is the worst stage of doing anything difficult.”
“Yeah, and how many times do I have to learn this before I get it?”
“A mere nine times and nine different ways before it sticks,” she says. “I don’t know where the nine times comes from, but the point is: it’s a cumulative process. One day, you get it and a voice inside you shouts, ‘Aha!’ And there you are: living your future, thriving in the present.”
Her theory starts to prove itself when a couple of days after Marni and Steve’s wedding in August, the newlyweds help me move into my house and make it a home. I ask myself, How is it I’m so lucky to have friends who help me move on their honeymoon? This extended family is my family. This support and sense of belonging helps me quit the meds. Hard as it is to be on my own with or without the boys, I begin to notice how satisfying it is to run my own little home and business with a comfort I couldn’t have imagined a short time ago. As I settle in, the rest of my world does as well.
Chris and I finalize our divorce the next year. On a good day I trust that I am embracing my new life. On other days I am tested, as I am when I find an essay Daniel has written for a school project. I step back and wilt as I read it: “I knew happiness until I was eight, then it stopped when my parents got a divorce. I’ll never be happy again.” Of course I consider my responsibility for his despair, but I hold fast to faith in my decision. The length and degree of Daniel’s suffering stretches beyond its due time, which prompts Chris and me to take him to talk to a psychologist. As any competent practitioner does, the doctor treats the whole of the problem by asking Chris and me several questions about our own history. He’s confounded by how we speak so kindly of one another and asks why we split up.
Chris answers, “We buried my mother, my brother and Sharon’s father, and then I buried myself in my work. I wasn’t there for Sharon’s mourning.”
His admission astonishes me. Tears trickle down my cheeks as forgiveness opens my heart to let us both in. It dawns on me that my compassion is taking a slow turn toward a new and deeper love for Chris, who I’ve blamed for not being who I wanted him to be. Although we will remain divorced, a fierce loyalty begins that day for this friend and father of our children.
I soon cut back on my speaking. And I feel pulled to begin guiding again. Although I have been climbing consistently, guiding demands high standards in client care in the mountains. I ask Dwayne, Albi and fellow guides to coach me in bringing my skills up to current industry best practices. I’m surprised when old friends and colleagues welcome me back to this profession, and I feel like I’m coming home.
I am surprised at how much I have missed this craft of guiding people in how to move on rock, snow and ice; conserve their energy; and find their way and sometimes themselves in the mountains. By showing others, I remind myself that difficulty and discomfort are often a matter of perception, not necessarily reasons to stop what we are doing. And I love it best when my clients, and for that matter anyone other than a speakers’ bureau, are not aware I have climbed Everest.
I like that Everest seems to be edging out of my life, yet it still manages to catch me off guard. At Chris’s annual Boxing Day party, when I join the crowd in the kitchen, a hand clutches my arm. A woman I don’t know exclaims, “Oh, you’re the Everest Lady, aren’t you! Come with me, I must introduce you to my family.” Once she has us assembled, grandchildren and all, she says, “So! Tell us the Everest story.”
I’m surprised to hear myself shout, “No!” I watch this woman’s smile morph into a big O. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m here to visit friends I haven’t seen for ages.”
I excuse myself and head straight for Chris, who’s at the sink. I wrap my arms around him from behind and whisper into his ear, “I just said no for the first time!”
He turns and hugs me. “Good for you!” he says and squeezes me tighter. He knows I mean that I have just stood up to my overbearing friend, Everest. From this point onward I’m more polite, yet firm about who’s in charge.
Jane tells me one day that I’m more available.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
She replies, “You’re kinder and gentler with yourself and it shows on the outside.”
While out climbing another day, James tells me, “You’re less intense.”
I balk. “What does that mean?”
“You’re more fun to be around.”
I laugh.
“See,” he says, “that’s what I mean. You might’ve bitten me if I told you that in the past.”
Laurie tells me I’m more confident. “You don’t put yourself down so much anymore, Sharon. Don’t worry, though, I know you’re still in there.”
I realize that twenty years on from the climb, it still comes up every day. Although it never ceases to amaze me, I am growing to accept that the mountain is a part of my life and here to stay. And I am content and grateful.
I realize my perspective on Everest has shifted dramatically as I stand amidst about a hundred students, aged ten to seventeen, in the gym of a small independent school. As I bring up pictures on the screen, the kids’ hands shoot up, some pumping their arms with urgency. Everest is the platform for what feels like an intimate chat about life—mine and theirs.
A little boy asks me, “What’s it like to be famous?”
“What does famous mean to all of you?” I ask back. After the kids shout out several definitions, I give my own slant: “Being famous can be lonely. Or it was. I’ve learned that it is most important to feel famous in the eyes of the people who matter most to me: my family and close friends. I don’t recommend fame unless it happens because you’re doing what you love to do.”
“I want to be an astronaut cuz I love space science,” says a little girl. “Just like Roberta Bondar!”
“Fair enough!” I say. I ask half a dozen other kids what they love to do. If they tell me what they want to be, I ask them again what they love to do. “Don’t do something to become someone. Think of getting there another way. Love what you do, then become.”
I know by now that the kids nearest to me, those whose hands pop up and who are most vocal about their passions, will be fine. I look for the ones who sit quietly with their hands tentatively wavering by their ears. I catch the eye of a teenaged girl whose hair hides half her face, and I nod. She asks, “Where did you find the confidence to climb Mount Everest?”
“Hmm, confidence. I struggled with that. Does anyone else?” I get a resounding agreement in reply. “I’ve learned that confidence has to come from the inside, in believing whatever you’re doing is really important to you. Love what you do, practise and have people in your life who want you to succeed. We will all have moments of doubt and need to remind ourselves of this, won’t we?”
“Yeah!” they all sing. And my heart sings as I rejoice over how at home I feel these days, on stage or off.