I never really had female role models growing up. All I remember is seeing those impossibly skinny and perfect models on the cover of magazines, the same magazines you see at the grocery checkout to this day, as a matter of fact.
The only models I could even remotely relate to were the ones with messy, windblown hair.
In March 1992, just two weeks after I got busted, I was leafing through a Climbing magazine when I came upon the photo of a woman climbing up a crack in a rock face. The image really captured my attention. For one thing, there were very few women in climbing magazines back then. But I also noticed this woman’s large biceps, her strong shoulders, and the look of determination on her face. I thought to myself: “I wonder if I could do that”. I looked down at the caption and read the climber’s name: Kitty Calhoun. This woman became a role model for me, and having just gotten out of jail, I was in dire need of a healthy role model.
In the summer of 2006 I got a call from a woman in Colorado who runs a company called Chicks with Picks to see if I wanted to instruct for her all-women’s ice climbing clinics that winter. I said yes, and in January of 2007, I arrived in Ouray for the ice festival and Chicks clinics. I quickly realized that I was getting as much out of these clinics as the women were: I loved nothing more than to share with them the activity that had literally changed my life. But the most amazing thing for me about working for Chicks was that one my fellow guides, the woman standing in front of me in this photo, was none other than Kitty Calhoun.
In that moment, I realized that I had become the role model I had needed when my life hit rock bottom…
Whenever I would see Kitty, I would say to myself: “Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to tell her my story, to let her know what a positive influence she had made on me without even knowing it? But of course I didn’t, because back then my past was a carefully hidden maze of secrets…
But in the fall of 2009, I applied for, and got accepted into, the Banff Mountain Writer Program. After decades of keeping my past a secret, there I was, writing what I can only refer to as my tell-all expose. The only way I was able to write the book was by telling myself that I never had to publish it. But a year and a half later, there I was, launching my secrets for the world to read.
Many people have asked me why I wrote the book when I could easily have taken all of my dark secrets the grave. I’ve got lots of reasons, but I’ll hit some of the highlights for you.
I wanted to give a voice to my depression, something I lived so intimately with for decades, but never got the chance to express. At this point, it feels like my closest friend, albeit one that I don’t want to hang around with much anymore.
I wanted to help remove the stigma in our culture toward topics like mental illness, drug addiction, and suicidal tendencies. I feel that these topics are highly misunderstood, not to mention judged, and that they could use some air time to dispel the myths surrounding them.
Most of all I wanted to let people know there was hope. Human beings are incredibly resilient, and have come out the other side of seemingly impossible situations. I want you to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, even when you can’t see it.
P.S. I received an email in early August of this year letting me know that Chicks was being dissolved. This marks the end of an era. But the spirit of Chicks will live on: in the hearts and minds of all of the instructors, clients and broader Chicks family that was created over its twenty-one year lifetime.
