00:00:23.940One of the things that I think is the most difficult about being a woman is just how hard we are.
00:00:30.000on ourselves. We are often our very worst critics. At least once a week, but sometimes two or three
00:00:40.180times. I think that I am not doing enough. I think that I'm failing in a lot of ways. I think that
00:00:47.820I'm not accomplishing all of the goals that I should be accomplishing. And I also know that
00:00:52.300it is BS. Because on paper, I'm doing all of the things. I know this. And yet, and yet, and yet,
00:01:01.560I still often feel like I'm not enough. Maybe that's why I saw myself in my guest today's
00:01:10.320new book. We're talking to Melissa Arno. Melissa is an extraordinary mountain guide and climber
00:01:17.420who has accomplished the most amazing things. She has summited Everest multiple times,
00:01:23.960but she has also done it without supplemental oxygen. She is a true badass. But for years,
00:01:32.920she also felt like she wasn't enough. She felt like she was completely average,
00:01:37.400that she wasn't accomplishing all of the things she should be accomplishing. And not just in
00:01:42.240climbing, but in being a mother and being a partner and being a woman in the world.
00:01:49.380Melissa's journey is about so much more than her astonishing achievements in the climbing world.
00:01:55.360She's so honest about her struggles with self-worth, her tumultuous upbringing,
00:02:00.180and the relentless quest that all of us feel to be enough. I gotta say, this book reminds me so
00:02:07.660much of Wild because it is not just a book about climbing. It's a book about being a woman in the
00:02:13.620world and what it truly means to be enough. Hello, Melissa. Hi, Jo. I'm going to read a
00:02:29.140little section from your book. It's early on. This is very early on in the book. And there's
00:02:34.260so many things we're going to dive into today. We're going to talk about what it is like to climb
00:02:38.620Mount Everest, just generally Mount Everest, like a regular Mount Everest trip, and then a Mount
00:02:44.140Everest trip without supplemental oxygen, all of those things. But first, I want to talk about this.
00:02:51.080Could I rise above being average, a place where I had resided most of my life? Average had allowed
00:02:59.200me to get here, but the intoxicating possibility that I could be more was pushing me forward and
00:03:05.720begging me to risk it all. And this is a thought that you had as you were climbing Mount Everest,
00:03:13.420attempting to climb without supplemental oxygen. And yet, from what I know about you and your life
00:03:21.000leading up to that, you were anything but average, and yet you still felt that way. Why? Why do you
00:03:27.040think that? Yeah. You know, it's so interesting because I say this in the book, like you might
00:03:32.880think I'm, you know, baiting you by saying I'm average, but it was this idea that I had where
00:03:39.360with, you know, just showing up as myself, I could sort of get into the rooms that I wanted to be in,
00:03:45.080but I couldn't be taken seriously in those rooms. I couldn't be seen as somebody who belonged in
00:03:50.880those rooms and so I really was you know deep underneath that thought of like being average
00:03:57.540got me here but I had this really tempting idea that what if I could get beyond here and I was
00:04:04.580really talking about actually in my climbing so could I actually achieve something that really
00:04:10.300elite athletes achieved or could I also probably more so you know break free of the limits that I
00:04:20.000was holding for myself in my own mind, my sense of enoughness, my sense of belonging. And it's
00:04:26.860ironic because I went into an environment and a place where nobody looked like me. On one hand,
00:04:33.660I was trying to prove that I could achieve and exist athletically in this, you know, the highest
00:04:41.800mountain on earth without the use of supplemental oxygen, something that only elite climbers were
00:04:46.700doing and very few people at that. But the truer truth was that I was trying to prove that I
00:04:53.420internally was enough. And I was using this really flawed thinking of believing that if I achieved
00:04:59.300an external achievement that was objective, that nobody could say you didn't achieve that,
00:05:04.600that then somehow I would believe internally that I was enough and worthy of all of the big
00:05:10.300dreams and ideas that I had. Which to me is something that so many women feel about a variety
00:05:20.260of different things that we hold ourselves to such an impossible standard and say, oh, well,1.00
00:05:27.560we have to be doing this well at this job. We have to reach this point or we have to be this perfect
00:05:35.520at motherhood. We have to lead the PTA. We have to be the class mom, even when we don't have time
00:05:41.140for it. We're always setting ourselves to these impossible standards and trying to be enough,
00:05:46.980which is why I just, I wasn't sure why the book was called enough when you first, when you first
00:05:53.340started telling me about it. Uh, and then I opened it by the first couple of chapters, I got it and
00:05:58.920it resonated with me in such a way, because I think so many of us are asking ourselves all the
00:06:05.080time? Am I doing enough? Am I good enough? Am I trying hard enough? If you're even asking
00:06:11.920yourself that question, then you are. I think that you are, of course, right? Because you're
00:06:17.020the person that's pushing yourself like this. But it's exhausting. And it's an exhausting
00:06:21.940wheel that we're all on. And in this book, you're so raw and candid and honest about
00:06:28.380what led you to this. Somewhat flawed thinking, which also led you to achieve incredible goals.
00:06:37.960Yeah. And so because of that, this isn't your average adventure book, your average climbing
00:06:43.340book. This is a mining of your soul in a lot of ways. Did you feel that way while you were writing
00:06:49.140this? I did. You know, forever it was called This Is Not a Book About Everest because I felt like
00:06:54.920every time I told anybody, oh, I'm working on a memoir, a book, they would say, oh, about Everest.
00:07:00.020And I would say, no, no, it's not a book about Everest. And then right at the end, it just
00:07:05.020really became clear to me, like, I want to say what this book is, which is this foundational
00:07:09.740theme that, you know, I came into the world with some pretty serious questions of my belonging
00:07:14.980and my worth. And that led to a pretty complicated path forward and amazing things. I've had
00:07:22.420incredible opportunities. Obviously, you know, I work as a professional mountain guide. I have
00:07:27.200since I was 20. I've seen some of the most stunning landscapes in the world. I've gotten to travel
00:07:31.400and have just incredible experiences. But it also, you know, was really being propelled by this
00:07:38.540belief that, you know, as I mentioned, if I somehow achieved external success, that then I would have
00:07:46.020it all. And, you know, spoiler alert of my journey in the book, I came to find out that I actually
00:07:52.720had to heal that, you know, worth wound that I was carrying, that sense of not enoughness to be able
00:07:59.960to have it all. Like I was incapable of achieving. And even, you know, I'll just say with full
00:08:06.260disclosure, like have it all. I don't know what that means, but I don't know. I don't know what
00:08:09.760that means, but I know what you're saying. Yeah. We all know exactly what you're saying. And I had
00:08:14.060this very specific and tangible goal of wanting to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen.
00:08:19.660No American woman had done that successfully. And I thought if I do this, then I will be seen
00:08:28.140as enough and I will believe that I am enough. But I really actually had to know that I was enough
00:08:34.000to be able to achieve it. It would not have happened. I would not have succeeded had I
00:08:39.240not been able to go through the really tortured journey of sort of self-discovery of finding out
00:08:46.640that, you know, I am somebody who is deserving of forgiveness for past mistakes. I am somebody who
00:08:53.640belongs innately in the places that I choose to belong in. And that's a forever process. Like I
00:08:59.700just today, this morning, right before we talked, I was running and three of my sort of acquaintance
00:09:05.160friends were running ahead of me on the road and I was like a hundred yards behind them and sort of
00:09:11.680laughing to myself like this is really funny because this is like my friends running without
00:09:17.540me nobody invited me to this run and I here I am like by myself sort of like their little sister
00:09:22.800being like hey you guys wait up for me and still wanting to belong and I had to sort of self-talk
00:09:29.120myself into this place of like, hey, if I want to go and run with them, I can. I can be where I
00:09:35.440choose to belong. I actually want to be by myself right now. I'm choosing this and suddenly it just
00:09:40.540felt a lot better, but it's not always quite so nice. You know, I can spend a whole day in anxiety
00:09:45.960about that. And I think we all can. I think it's very easy to have this worth hole, this worth gap
00:09:55.260and this longing I know I have I have it all the time too I've written 13 books at this point
00:10:03.480they've been best sellers I've done like if my 25 year old self could see me right now she'd be0.91
00:10:10.000like holy shit girl you're you're you're doing it okay like you were doing all the things you
00:10:15.980ever wanted and still every every day at some point during the day I do wake up and I'm like0.99
00:10:20.720It's not enough. You're not working hard enough. You need to do more, to strive for more. And it is a constant challenge for me to slow the F down and say, whoa, can you just make a choice here and realize that you've done it and appreciate the things that you've done.
00:10:44.480And your book made me slow down, slow down and just start thinking about that more, which is what I think it's going to do for a lot of people.
00:10:52.460I appreciate that so much. And the idea of enough, you know, is so multifaceted. That word contains so much. It's, you know, we're talking about this idea of I am enough, but it's also this idea of I have done enough. And it's this idea of I have had enough, you know, and all three things really mingled together.
00:11:13.740And I have come to know that myself as a person, I'm never going to feel totally satisfied by any sense of accomplishment, right?
00:11:22.620Because I'm internally always sort of seeking to achieve more for both internal and external reasons.
00:11:29.960And those internal reasons are pretty healthy.
00:11:32.220And those external reasons, those validation ones aren't as healthy.
00:11:37.080But just like you're saying, you can look at your objective accomplishments and still feel like, oh, my gosh, I should be doing more or especially comparative.
00:11:46.000Right. Like were you. Oh, that's that's the worst for me, the comparative.
00:11:50.660Yeah. You know, for me in my early climbing career, I didn't have any female mentors to compare myself to.
00:11:56.060So I was comparing myself to male mentors who seemed really satisfied by external accolades.
00:12:01.640Like it was enough. It was like I achieved this thing. I've been lauded for this thing.
00:12:06.160And now I climbed this mountain. I climbed this rock. It's such a really like conquering. I know I always describe like somebody, you know, could just look at this activity that I'm doing, which is just walking to a place, taking a picture, turning around and walking back down and like getting clapped for for that is just truly ridiculous.
00:12:25.320But it's this idea of, for me, it's this idea of what is my agency? What am I personally capable of? Because no matter how I climb the mountain, you know, you can criticize all the different ways people climb a mountain. You are doing it under your own power. And there's something incredible about what that does for me as a human.
00:12:44.780And it aligns with my value set. And it also tickles my need for validation, which I have to just always be a little cautious that I don't dip on over to like, just seeking validation, just seeking approval, because no achievement that I'm ever going to have is going to ever satiate that, you know, that has to come from within. And I hate I'm like, you know, hearing myself talk right now. I'm like, being as though this is attainable. And I don't think it is.
00:13:10.680It's not because it's not really clear. Like, I don't I didn't figure it out. You know, I'm still in this process, but it's a lot more of a healed process than it started out as. And I and the book really takes you on that journey of, you know, all of the flaws. I personally were inflicted on me and I inflicted, we'll say.
00:13:31.520Right. Both. Right. And that's what I want to dig into next. Before we take our break, though, for people who aren't as familiar with the climbing world, with your career, could you tell us a little bit about the climbs that you did achieve before attempting to climb Everest without the supplemental oxygen? And also, why does supplemental oxygen matter on Everest?
00:14:46.540It was a curiosity of can I do this in a way that is truly independent because I was like that obnoxiously independent child and I really had this deep desire to prove that I could do it by myself.
00:15:00.600And then that word prove was another huge part of what I wanted.
00:15:03.320I wanted to prove that I could do this in the hardest way possible so I would be in my mind taken seriously by my peers because I was very young by like 20 years or more younger than any other guide working on Everest.
00:15:16.540I was very small and 5'3 and 120 pounds, and I just wasn't taken very seriously.
00:15:22.860So I had this desire to prove that I could do it.
00:15:24.960And climbing without supplemental oxygen is very different than climbing with the use of supplemental oxygen.
00:15:30.920To climb mountains as high as Everest, we usually put on an oxygen mask above like 24 or 5,000 feet.
00:15:38.160And that actually saturates your blood with warm oxygen so that you don't get frostbite.
00:15:47.100It doesn't make it not hard, but it makes it a lot easier.
00:15:49.640And I always think about time as an easy way to measure that.
00:15:52.180So getting ready to climb without supplemental oxygen, just putting on my crampons, boots, and getting out of my tent could take about three hours.
00:16:24.140Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and when we get back, I want to dig into your backstory and your childhood, because a lot of it wasn't easy, and I recognize a lot of my own childhood in it.
00:16:35.860And you're just, you're much more honest about a lot of the things that happen to you
00:16:41.400than I think we typically see in an adventure, outdoorsy kind of memoir.
00:16:46.640And I want to get into that when we get back from a quick break.
00:16:53.720I didn't like what you said, Odin pauses, about the future.
00:16:59.080This is the love story of real hinge couple Odin and Edward,
00:17:02.880written and read by me, Curtis Garner.
00:24:07.680You know, you don't there's people who have suffered far worse abuse than me.
00:24:10.880I wasn't, you know, the worst abused child by any stretch of the imagination.
00:24:15.040And there's also people who have experienced less and their pain is still valid.
00:24:18.140You know, like we're it's just so crushing. And also, I feel that, too, like I'm I the reason I really had to go back into therapy was because I was at my kindergarten daughter's assembly and I had like a panic attack in the school.
00:24:33.580and I realized like oh my gosh I'm gonna have to confront my daughter becoming a sixth grader
00:24:38.200when all these really bad things started happening to me and and I already have to
00:24:42.240confront it all the time as her mother where I want her to be heard and seen and I'm sure I'm
00:24:49.200like overcompensating in a million ways uh because I just that's my wound right was that I really
00:24:54.220always wanted to know my voice mattered and I never thought it did and now my daughter interrupts
00:24:58.640everybody because she's like, my voice matters. And so that's what we do. We like botch them in
00:25:03.800the reverse way. We go the complete opposite direction. Complete opposite. Same. Hard same
00:25:09.760there. Yes. I love that you go there because I say this all the time. The more honest we can be
00:25:17.260about our real stories about what really happened and not sugarcoating them and talking about our
00:25:23.960actual motivations for going in there and doing hard things i think just the more we can relate
00:25:31.000to each other and understand understand each other better which is what we all really need
00:25:37.340right now is to work on work on our empathy muscles so i'm just i'm really grateful that
00:25:43.560you did that because i i do think it's easy to look at a book like this it's got this beautiful
00:25:49.180turquoise cover of the mountain um I'm picturing seeing it in REI it's going to be it's in all the
00:25:56.140places where where books are but I was just just dragged to REI but Nick Astor yesterday to stock
00:26:01.760up for our family cross-country camping adventure and uh I had the book with me because I was reading
00:26:08.160it in the car and you know you think you think you're getting something in in a climbing memoir
00:26:13.960and you get something completely different in this but then you know after after we've got the
00:26:21.140prelude to the adventure we get into the actual adventure to this world that is so male dominated
00:26:30.600this is a whole other conversation that we need to be having I mean as we're talking about women
00:26:36.580breaking into male dominated spaces or being in male dominated spaces and burning out because
00:26:42.900because men did not, were not taught how to make space for women.
00:26:47.860I want to know what that was like.1.00
00:26:50.620You chose to go into this world where there were very few women.0.96
00:26:56.140How many women were there at this level of climbing when you started out?0.99
00:27:01.460And not exact numbers, but just generally.1.00
00:27:03.660Yeah, like a couple, you know, like notably maybe three.
00:27:08.100And most of them were not, you know, were European.
00:27:10.840And so I didn't have any regular access to them. And especially, you know, like my beginning, my first year on Everest was like the beginning of Instagram. So there wasn't social media presence in the same way. So it felt even more remote and more isolated.
00:27:27.180And, you know, I really wanted to be, you know, you go back to that idea of like wanting to be seen.
00:27:39.680It's a very weird psychological glitch that I had.
00:27:42.300And I think maybe a lot of women can relate to this.
00:27:44.940Like I wanted to be seen as belonging and also completely unique and special, you know.
00:27:51.520And so partly that's what drove me into, I think, because I worked in emergency medicine prior to getting into working as a mountain guide and then alongside it.
00:28:00.840And that was also a really male field that I was working in.
00:28:04.280And I sort of liked, I coveted being the only girl there.0.87
00:28:07.720And I, partly because of my upbringing, I'd only really known how to exist with other women inside of a competitive structure.0.91
00:28:14.620You know, like I was always competing with my mother in a very weird and toxic way for my father's love and attention.1.00
00:28:21.000And so I struggled to know how to interact with other women. So being surrounded by peers as men, I kind of knew how to do that. But I also had some pretty confusing ideas about the relationship of men and women and power. And I knew I wanted to be in the room with power.0.55
00:28:41.240So that is what drew me to being a mountain guide. And not just climbing was something that was really satiating to my adventurous side, that independent little girl. And also just like fundamentally, I'd always been really athletic, but never very competitive. I wasn't drawn by competition. So team sports didn't appeal to me particularly, but I liked to challenge my body. I liked to feel capable and strong. I liked to be outside because it felt so, you know, both encompassing and infinite. And I really loved that feeling.
00:29:15.840And I liked the side of it that was I was unique.
00:29:20.360You know, I liked being seen as somebody who was different from all the others.
00:29:23.660I didn't like all of the actual practicality that that contained of constantly having to validate my worth of being there in a room.
00:29:34.740You know, if I was working as a guide, it was very quickly assumed that I was somebody's girlfriend. And for me, in some cases, much to my shame, I was. That was how I was getting some of those jobs. And I hated that. I hated it so much because I was also judging every other girl who was maybe leveraging that same thing as well.
00:29:54.060But I wanted, you know, it's a double edged sword. I should say that because I liked the aspect of getting to be the unique thing. But I then I wanted to be accepted as one of them. And, you know, that is an impossible equation, of course.
00:30:05.540Right, of course. And I think any woman who's been coming up, and I'm not even going to say in male-dominated fields, because the majority of fields are dominated by men.
00:30:19.420I experienced something very similar in the newsroom when I first started at the Daily News. I wanted to be, yes, so many incredible female journalists had paved the way, but I was still, so many of the top editors were still these old white men.0.84
00:30:35.540And I did. I wanted to be like the girl Friday, the Lois Lane, right? Like the special one. But then I also just wanted to be seen as good as the men. And yeah, it's a very confusing way that I think that we've also been pitted against each other too, to view, as you said, all of these other women as competition.0.72
00:30:58.760Well, because there can only be one really special.0.65
00:31:25.420And then the next part of that was like really a tortured equation for me because I had to constantly and I think like a lot of women can understand how this very tricky dance of doing the thing where you're like, if I don't be desirable, if I assert myself as here based on the merit of my skills and skills alone, and that is like the only way that you can see me, I will be rejected summarily.0.98
00:31:52.400You know, there is no upper echelon of boys club that's like, let's bring her into our room. And so I'd have this like internal fight where I'm thinking like, I just want to be appreciated and respected based on my skills and my experience and my, you know, what I'm bringing to the table that's equal to what my male peers are bringing to the table.
00:32:12.480but i also knew enough to know that like if i was i i said very early on in my career i said
00:32:18.840you can either you know be the joke or make the joke and so i learned all the dirtiest jokes and
00:32:25.020i made all of the men in power very comfortable by being the one to tell the joke because they're
00:32:29.240like oh she's cool she can come in and be with us and then i would get in with them and i would
00:32:34.300have to do the dance of figuring out like oh okay no they want more and how am i going to now0.92
00:32:38.700negotiate and navigate this and what an incredibly terrible I mean so many women have so many women
00:32:46.880in that myself included a hundred percent I venture to say like almost every woman has probably found
00:32:52.620herself in a room with that equation whether it was like gentle or not gentle you know being
00:32:59.380displayed in front of her and the problem for me is that I like willingly kept leaning into it you
00:33:06.460You know, I was really unsure of how much I could leverage this power without compromising my own belief in why I was there.
00:33:16.320Because I knew there was this line that I had in my mind of I can't sleep with my boss because then I will not know why I'm here.
00:33:24.460But if I don't sleep with my boss and I just like tell all the dirty jokes and be the fun girl and let him say like terrible things about me and in front of me and objectify me and I really do a good job, then I can convince myself at night that I'm here because I'm doing a really good job.
00:40:00.880saying how you feel out loud is terrifying but that's what hinge's new free audiobook
00:40:09.320no ordinary love is all about it's a collection of real love stories about five couples that met
00:40:17.360on hinge the stories are written and read by temby dinton hurst nicola dinan curtis garner
00:40:22.880raven smith and rufy thorpe i hunter harris wrote and read the forward the audiobook's out now give
00:40:30.100it a listen. I also think that the timing of this is very interesting. I mean, since we talk about
00:40:42.140social media so much on this podcast, you're starting to come out as this quote-unquote
00:40:49.100celebrity climber and getting all of this attention. But it was also, social media existed.
00:40:55.060Of course it did. But it was pre the era where everyone was a personal brand, where, you know, my dentist is now a personal brand on social media.
00:41:06.000Like our local trash man is a personal brand on social media during a time when it still felt uncool to be promoting yourself in such a fashion.0.80
00:41:15.420I think it's probably still uncool in certain parts of the adventuring world, but the world has shifted even just in the past three years.0.93
00:45:04.220I feel like multitasking on a goddamn mountain is a very important thing to do.0.90
00:45:09.080So in that sense, men may have different strength abilities, perhaps.0.98
00:45:14.260perhaps but women have so many other abilities that I think would make them such better guides
00:45:20.140yeah I mean I think task prioritization and the ability to um see big picture when things are
00:45:26.740hectic like women nobody's better than that than women like we make it more hectic and we can zoom
00:45:33.580out and it's this really amazing and I think men have a harder time they have to cultivate that
00:45:39.200skill and there's men that can do it and do it well. But innately, like I and especially we're
00:45:45.180going to talk about the difference of like me being a climber and being a guide. I have to be
00:45:50.260able to multitask, manage a whole bunch of things, complex decision making, extreme risk management,
00:45:55.860and also the care of my clients, not just physical care, but their emotional care. And I think of a
00:46:03.500good guide as somebody who allows you to be who you are and pushes you to who you want to be.
00:46:07.740And I'm very, very good at that because I can tell quite quickly if this person needs to be cuddled to the summit to get there.
00:46:15.580Do they need, you know, words of affirmation and a lot of encouragement or do they need a firm hand?
00:46:20.860And do they need that kick? Do they need that structure?
00:46:24.340And I think women are really good because of so much of what we're put through, both personally and professionally.0.99
00:46:29.520We are required to figure it out really quickly.
00:46:32.420And so we get really good at figuring it out really quickly.
00:46:35.260and you know for me it's an asset and the clients that I work with you know I just pretty much do
00:46:41.860private guiding now so I have a roster of clients that I work with I don't have any space in my
00:46:46.160schedule really to take in new clients and those clients that work with me they get it right they
00:46:50.920get the value of why having me particularly as their guide is what they want and it's interesting
00:46:57.360Because I think that, you know, the person that views a 6'2 beefcake dude as a better mountain partner than, you know, 5'3 Melissa is missing that, right?
00:47:10.800Like anybody can learn, you know, I can't, I don't have the same physical strength, but I guarantee you that has made my rescue skills sharper, faster, more diverse because I have to solve the problem, the same problem in a different way.
00:47:23.240I can't rely on brute force so I have to be able to do it in a different way and that is going to
00:47:28.500come in handy and so there's that those sides of it which I wish as a younger self I could have
00:47:33.640just like leaned into a little bit more and told myself like you're doing a great job right but you
00:47:39.140didn't know that's the thing you don't know what you don't know and I love that I love this quote
00:47:43.100from you that one of the greatest things about big 8,000 meter mountain climbing is that it's
00:47:48.800super gender neutral. And in that atmosphere, you're just a human. And it's challenging for
00:47:53.500everyone. Yeah. I don't think that there's a gate you pass through that checks your external or
00:48:00.160genitals. It's like, oh, yeah, you can do this. You can't. It's just not that way. And it requires
00:48:08.360a myriad of things. And the opening scene of the book, I'm with a climbing partner who is a mentor
00:48:14.580of mine, Dave Morton, and he has always been faster than me. And I have always had better
00:48:20.880day over day endurance than him. And, you know, we kind of think about it like it takes all the
00:48:26.500things. And for me to be able to climb without oxygen, I actually think the day over day endurance
00:48:31.200was a far more useful trait than any speed in one moment. You know, so you just don't know what it's
00:48:38.740going to take. And I don't think that that was like a gendered skill set. That's probably like0.68
00:48:42.380specific to each of us. But I do love that. You know, I talk about that idea of like when you're
00:48:47.100climbing Everest, you're wrapped in this big down suit that is, you know, completely takes away your
00:48:51.960identity. You're just a, you know, a marshmallow stuffed in a marshmallow and you have your face
00:48:57.020obscured by, you know, an oxygen mask in most cases. Or, you know, if you're not using oxygen,
00:49:01.960you still have a mask covering your face to prevent frostbite, goggles on your eyes. You're
00:49:06.220just, you lose all your sense of individuality. And there's something that I sort of always loved
00:49:11.660about that like you can't tell who the women are and who the men are you there's just no way to
00:49:17.340know and like everybody's just a climber and we're all just working and toiling away towards the same
00:49:22.920silly thing that we're doing just just walking uphill slowly walking uphill slowly yeah exactly
00:49:28.780i love being reminded of that because and also the limits to all of us of climbing mountains
00:49:34.920i mean i've told you before what happened on kilimanjaro how i was worried that i was going
00:49:38.740to be the one who's going to be very bad at walking uphill slowly uh given my physical limitations
00:49:44.060and my husband got the altitude sickness and we had we had to go down i will say we didn't have
00:49:52.000a single female guide with us yeah and it was a very male heavy group that we were traveling with
00:49:58.800as well i don't he wasn't taken care of particularly well in hindsight knowing everything
00:50:06.860that i know you know reading about so much of the stuff you've done i think he could have made it
00:50:11.520with the right guides um but our guides were very quick to abandon him in favor of the faster
00:50:19.720walkers um and to not give him the encouragement that i think would have would have gotten him up
00:50:26.560that mountain we're gonna do it again like i said before i hope with me i need you to come with me
00:50:31.460yes please well i always say you know it's like the easiest thing to do is to go to the summit
00:50:36.320with clients that's like by far the easiest type of guiding you just that's just walking uphill and
00:50:40.560walking back down the work of being a guide comes in helping people get to the summit also it comes
00:50:47.300in knowing when it's not safe or prudent and working through that and still having a really
00:50:52.460beneficial experience you know and to me it's one of those things like if you don't get to the
00:50:57.520summit i want you to come down with a clearer knowledge of why that was why this was a good
00:51:02.960decision and where you want to go from here and that's a success if it's just sort of like which
00:51:07.320it so often is in guiding you kind of float out into the ether you don't really know and you're
00:51:12.320left with like the questions that you have right like maybe he could have if it if this had been
00:51:16.500different and there's no real acuity on like this is what needed to be different or this is how i
00:51:22.580would approach that differently in this scenario and this is what we learned and this is how we're
00:51:26.020going to approach it again you know because it's just again such a silly little activity to do and
00:51:30.660if it's if we're not learning from it then what the heck are we doing exactly exactly and I will
00:51:35.860say I mean the fact that Nick didn't make it up was a much better ending for my book how to be
00:51:40.160married so god bless everything happens for a reason Joe and for night timing and that one
00:51:46.640was to really come up with a banger of a climax yeah for that book oh my gosh I love that so much
00:51:54.040the last thing that I really want to talk about and I could talk to you all day
00:51:58.640is but we'll have so much time when we're climbing Kilimanjaro together is this idea
00:52:04.280of having it all that we mentioned briefly yeah earlier you know and what is having it all
00:52:10.180for a woman what does that picture look like you know it has been presented to us in many ways as
00:52:16.920having a career having a career that is very successful and then not just successful but
00:52:22.080also personally meaningful and then also a marriage a happy successful marriage and then
00:52:28.240also on top of that perhaps becoming a mother and on top of that being a good mother it's so much
00:52:35.200it's so many layers of of having it all most of which I don't think I think a man would say I
00:52:42.360have it all if I reach a certain level of career success I don't think it has to do with all of
00:52:47.100those personal things yeah I mean I like to think of it as um especially now in my life you know I
00:52:53.000have a two-year-old who's been two for like 17 years it feels like like how are we god they're
00:52:57.900two for so long girl and three is three is even three is even longer okay i know and i have a
00:53:03.360almost seven-year-old so i've been through it already you know but i so i have this wonderful
00:53:08.380kids and i have my marriage and i have my personal pursuit of goals and my physical desire to like
00:53:16.420move my body and be outside and i have my professional work and then i have my creative
00:53:21.200work. And if those are all my cups, I know now enough to know that like it's very rare that any
00:53:28.000one of those cups is going to be full. And if it is, I'm going to try to stop and acknowledge that
00:53:33.780and not that's not having it all. That's just like, holy shit, my marriage is in a wonderful0.97
00:53:38.780full cup place right now. And then I'm going to glance at all those other cups and just make sure0.98
00:53:43.820that it's not that any of them are empty. So I've sort of like redefined how I think of having it
00:53:48.220all, which is just that every cup has something in it. I just want none of them to be empty. It's
00:53:52.880basically like I can't have it all, but I don't want to be I don't want to have nothing. Right.
00:53:57.780So there is a nice space somewhere in between where it's like, yeah, I can't achieve this
00:54:03.240balance. I cannot do it. I really have tried to figure out how to both go to work and not miss
00:54:09.900my kids and not want to flee from my kids. And like that is a forever teeter totter. I can't
00:54:15.140make it forever and ever. Yeah, I can't fix it. And so what I'm going to do is just like make sure
00:54:19.500that each of those cups has something in it. Myself as a parent, my giving this to my kids,
00:54:23.960myself into my work, I'm going to put a little bit in each cup and I'm going to be fine with that.
00:54:27.740I'm going to know that like those cups might fill up more and less and it's going to equal 100 at
00:54:33.240the end of the day to me, which is just a sense of wholeness. Because when I try to fill all the
00:54:39.180cups, I just feel so frazzled and I feel like you automatically are set up to feel like you're
00:54:44.200failing because it's impossible I think to do and instead I'm just deciding to look at the cups as
00:54:49.820like if the cup isn't bone dry then we're winning and like that is good enough for me and that has
00:54:56.780really helped me a lot in my view of um the having it all because as a person who you know obviously
00:55:04.540has an achievement complex like I just want to do more be more whatever and I have to talk myself
00:55:10.260off that ledge because I know, you know, what the alternative can look like. I've gone to the
00:55:15.700dark place of nearly having nothing. So having a little bit of something is a lot better.
00:55:21.900I love that idea that, you know, we just have to keep a little bit in our cups at all of our times
00:55:29.580and it can't be everything. It just can't. It can't all be overflowing with us. You have another
00:55:37.580Another great piece of imagery in the book where you're talking about after Kaya was born, she's little and she's in the carrier on your body and she's only eight pounds.
00:55:52.820And you say she was also the weight of balance.
00:55:55.100Yeah. You know, I had really lived a life partly because of my professional environment where I believed that becoming a mother would weaken me and would take away all my opportunities and it would relegate me to this useless pile of a has-been.
00:56:14.000and yet it felt like something that was so healing and such a deep purpose and like
00:56:23.440I got a daughter you know I had this mother who really struggled to love me and I got a daughter
00:56:30.180to love and that just felt like this really divine and beautiful balance and also I got a
00:56:36.720daughter who's like truly one million years old she's lived a thousand lifetimes and she knows
00:56:41.540everything and so much more than me and that's humbling that's really humbling I'm an expert in
00:56:46.680every space I existed and I don't resent it I like really love it and yeah it is you know her
00:56:54.940tiny little eight pounds for me in that moment were sort of that weight of balance and this and
00:57:00.980again like it didn't happen in one moment it's the slow perpetual moving towards acceptance
00:57:07.520of this new reality that you know I and I think about it all the time right now when it when
00:57:13.440things are hectic and even just saying like my two-year-old's been two for 17 years I so often
00:57:18.420can get trapped in the like wanting to get through it like okay I just got to get through him being
00:57:22.240two and then I have to pull myself back and say like I don't want to get through it this is what
00:57:27.700I want like this is my life I don't want to just this is my life yeah I have to live in my life
00:57:32.500I want to be here. And of course, I have other wants, too. But like, again, take a glance at all the cups, like something and everything. And and that weight of balance, that weight of, you know, being able to, for me, create life and live life. That's my eternal balance that I want to achieve.
00:57:52.240that's all we have for today thank you for being here melissa is so inspiring to me we met we met
00:58:00.760like a decade ago man before before i started having babies and i just i've been following
00:58:08.360her journey with such awe and and also the way that she is so honest about her story and the
00:58:18.260feelings that she has about not being enough and never feeling like she's accomplished all of the
00:58:25.980things she feels like she's supposed to accomplish. I think it's all of us, even if we are not people
00:58:32.320who are going to climb Mount Everest. But I will climb Mount Kilimanjaro again. I will. And I'm
00:58:37.800going to make it up that mountain this time, maybe with or without Nick Astor, maybe just with
00:58:42.700Melissa, maybe or make a girl's trip. Who wants to do a girl's trip to Mount Kilimanjaro with me?0.97