Survival of the Kindest

Posted on June 14, 2026 by sheraaaa

The most illuminating aspect of spending decades of my life walking across the world has been welcoming a shared experience with strangers in far-flung places.

*Kindness personified…in all these peeps!*

When I met Jesse on the Oregon Desert Trail, I could only see an angry rancher with a gun on the front seat of his pick-up until we started talking about the wonders of nearby Orejana Canyon, and we both turned soft and pleasant. Sue and Don rolled up an impossibly rocky road in their ATV while I was deep in the Superstition Mountains on the Arizona Trail; I started my internal grumble at having my pleasant morning interrupted by a noisy gas engine when they offered me a cold drink and fawned over my efforts. And then there was the time I met another Renee – we were both curious about the other: one, a world traveling solo female hiker meeting another: a former nuclear engineer on the remote Lemhi Pass along the Continental Divide Trail.

It all comes down to curiosity and kindness.

I have been offered more cold water, cold beers, and cold sodas by strangers than by my closest friends and family, and that makes me very happy. That gives me hope. That with face-to-face interactions: my humanity looking at your humanity, me in my dirty pee-stained legs talking with you in your fabric-softened jeans, we can laugh together, trade stories together, and marvel at unexpected connections.

I love strangers. Especially strangers I meet when we both have something to give each other: respect.

I am happy to report that my reliance on the world to keep me buoyed in optimism and hope began long before the cancer started. It began when I started traveling.

Even back in my first days in Zogore when I was the first health education Peace Corps volunteer to live in the subsistence farming community, not to mention the first foreigner, the curious and friendly welcome of the villagers instantly broke the initial barriers of language and culture in that sub-Saharan African community. Sometimes that looked like bored teenagers sitting in the shade with me while I waited for the shuttered health clinic to reopen after lunch. The head nurse, Adama, was supposed to return in the afternoons to reopen the clinic, but sometimes he didn’t. I taught the boys UNO – they taught me how to cheat. We drank millet beer out of calabashes and swatted flies as we waited the long wait.

I believe in survival of the kindest. Not survival of the fittest, which has been misattributed to Darwin for many long years. In Darwin’s first book about humans, The Descent of Man, and Selection In Relation to Sex, Darwin argued for, “the greater strength of the social or maternal instincts than that of any other instinct or motive.”

Survival of the kindest.

Why is it that kindness and connection can be easier to find away from home, when you are raw and vulnerable, or bewildered and in need?

Is that why I was transfixed by the United airlines in-flight entertainment when I started watching the Pole to Pole TV show recently?

In the first episode, I became enthralled when I saw Will Smith find a sincere connection to another human. (You must be thinking here: “Is she really referencing Will Smith twice in recent blog posts? Yes. Yes I am.) Talking about depression will do that for you, especially when each and every one of us has experienced its heavy pull before. Will was talking to professional rugby player – turned polar explorer, Richard Parks, in a tent after they traveled on skis over Antarctic ice. The camera zoomed in when both men became teary-eyed. Richard was explaining how he broke his shoulder during a rugby game, and when he couldn’t play anymore, he floundered with an identity that didn’t apply anymore (sound familiar??). Will…well in his case, you probably know about the slap heard round the world and his accompanying fall from grace.

“When you are the center of the storm, the key is to keep moving through it,” Richard said. “We need to be willing to step into the unknown.”

And suddenly I sat up in my cramped airline seat. His words echoed how I’ve been thinking about living a life with cancer. Wait, even before then… even when I didn’t know how to deal with the countless cases of malaria, AIDS, and Guinea Worm in Burkina Faso, especially when the village nurse didn’t come back to work.

I pressed play on the next episode. The next leg of Will’s journey took him to the Amazon to meet snake expert Bryan Fry. Bryan and Will were trying to find a large Anaconda and learn about indigenous ways of life when something slid into place in my brain: If you add our assured mortality to the qualities of curiosity and kindness, meditations on death really rounded out my new way of understanding the world:

We are all curious. We all benefit from kindness. We all die.

Bryan had spinal meningitis as a kid, and when he didn’t die, he decided to devote his life to finding venomous animals that might provide new cures to diseases like his. His purpose and curiosity drove him into deep caves and jungles to find the elusive toxins. I watched as Will and Bryan’s eyes welled with tears in the conversation. Did this TV show mean to reveal what happens when people are vulnerable with each other?

In order to find the really big snake, the two visit Waorani elder Penti Baihua. The Waorani live very close to nature, with very little between their skin, the jungle, and their way of life. It turns out the snake, and in turn the tribe, is threatened by oil drilling. The drilling portends the death of an ecosystem, and Penti then says, “When I walk the jungle is when I feel most free.” Haven’t I said the very same thing? Just without the jungle part?

There are connections here that I’m just starting to pull on with this blog post. If I pull too hard, I’m going to have to write a book about it, so I’ll just outline some things that are jumping out at me.

Documenting this very scene in the TV show and discussing the Waorani’s fight to save their home, even highlighting the activism and political mobilization they are engaged in, is the essence of what I’ve begun to mull over…I call it creative activism. Creative activism is using our particular talents (like the expertise of the National Geographic storytellers and camera people) to help communicate dire social or environmental problems to the world in order to activate others’ curiosity and kindness when faced with death.

What is my part to play as a creative activist? Could it be writing this very blog? For another creative activist I admire, check out Jeremy Collins’ book Eventually a Sequoia.

Ok, before I get too meta about it, I’m going to rein it in and go back to what I learned on the airplane.

Will Smith goes to the Himalayas and meets some strangers to talk about finding happiness (turns out, happiness doesn’t necessarily involve going to this gorgeous mountain range, but, I mean, it doesn’t hurt, right?)

It immediately becomes apparent that in those experts’ eyes, happiness is closely tied to experiencing death. The guide narrowly escaped dying in a car crash. Another had a brother who got advanced cancer. Will? A death of ego.

These folks hiked up to a remote monastery to speak with a Buddhist monk who said, “When you turn your full attention to death, you understand what is important and what is not.”

Will went on to extrapolate, “Staring at death introduces you to freedom.”

Chills.

It’s as if everything I’ve been thinking and processing over this past 18 months now has been summed up in this show. In fact, almost everything I’ve been thinking and living is also outlined here.

The courage to follow curiosity.

How can I be happy versus how can we be happy?

Freedom through movement.

Who are we when we react to death?

The unbearable heaviness of being

Posted on June 3, 2026 by sheraaaa

The unbearable heaviness of being…in chronic pain

That was going to be my blog post this week.

That I found out there are no surgical fixes for my damaged spine.

That my only option is pain management.

And this was the song I was going to have you play:

But I’m not going to tell that story. I’m not going to explain how I walked away from the surgeon’s office feeling like a weight had been lifted while at the same time feeling a deep a sorrow pulling me into the ground.

I’m not going to tell you that the doctor had been incredibly empathetic. That he had looked at me with eyes that spoke of regret, regret that his knife couldn’t solve me.

There is nothing surgically to be done.

I won’t tell you that I wanted to drown my immediate feelings in a big, bold bottle of red, but because I’m not drinking, I instead sat in my Honda Fit, scrolling on my phone, trying to find the name of a passable non-alcoholic red wine. I gave up. There are none. Determined to feed my feelings, I heard the call of my next vice: sugar, and drove to the store, walked down the ice cream aisle, and grabbed several pints and boxes of treats. I fought with good cancer patient me who should be avoiding added sugars. The hurting me was determined to drown my emotional chaos in caramel swirls, but good me took control and peeked at the nutrition labels. It was too late, several sweet options were switched out for sorbet and no-sugar-added yogurt treats. This disease haunts me, even when I want to indulge.

This isn’t the story I’m telling you because it changed when I got home. I put the ice cream in the freezer – unopened, then popped the tab on a can of watermelon flavored La Croix. Something shifted.

This is where the story starts:

My body is my home.

The news that I have to accept my back’s limitations didn’t come as a surprise. In the month since I wrote that I wouldn’t stop until I got surgery on my spine, I had secretly considered that my current limitations might be permanent. That driving down two-track roads which disappeared into a sagebrush horizon would forever be out of reach; that the washboard rattle in my vertebrae would be too painful to endure.

Instead of the news prompting another round of grieving for what I lost, I stopped. I sat. I stared at the wall.

This is my body now.

This is my life now.

In the great pause of the afternoon, I got several texts from dear friends. I received a phone call from a radiant soul checking in on me in the exact moment I needed someone to check on me, and I knew I could let go now. That my friends can carry me, that my peeps got me, the world will catch me.

The final message was when I decided if pain was to be my constant companion that it didn’t matter if I was in pain at home under a heating pad, or in pain on a trail, out in the world. Yes, I had been living this way all along, walking the camino last fall, going on rafting trips, and snorkeling adventures, but I FELT it now.

This is my body now.

I looked up the yoga schedule at my local studio. I haven’t done yoga since January when I thought I was falling apart. I wasn’t physically any different now than I was then, other than I understood that I was going to have to exist in my body as is. This is as good as it gets. I might as well start doing yoga again.

Then I saw it. Joanna was teaching the 6am class, the class I had started taking 16 years ago. The class that had seen me through career changes, thru-hikes, and confronting an aging body. Joanna is a member of my cancer support group along with Pam, who just happened to be my first teacher at that 6am class on a murky morning in November. THIS was a sign. It was time to go back to yoga. It was time to find out what this body is capable of, without thinking a magical cure might appear out of my future’s uncertainty.

I entered the warmed air of the studio, eased my body into it’s first child’s pose in a very long time, and breathed as Joanna explained today’s theme was: Your Body is Home.

Tears welled behind my closed eyes.

My body is home.

This is my body now.

This is my life now.

There is certainty in that. I have a future I can work with now.

This is the song I want you to play now. Close your eyes, sit back, or better yet, lay down in the grass and let it sink into you.

Trust the World

Posted on March 16, 2026 by sheraaaa

*I saw the sunset almost every night this week*

“Leap and the net will appear.” I found myself saying to Bumblefoot, a 33-year-old PCT hiker from Canada who sat across from me at breakfast in Costa Rica this morning. The very fact of a conversation that veered towards the existential angst of living in a world of infinite choice, possibilities, and uncertainty was a beautiful thing. That we were both PCT thru-hikers? Mind-blowing.

My sojourn in this Central American country is coming to an end soon, and it’s been a wonderful investment in time, energy, and money…despite needing to pop frequent pain medications and wear my neck brace from time to time.

As most of you know, I’m operating under the “retire as I go” life plan, as I have done most of my life. This trip to Costa Rica fits right into that philosophy – even with incurable cancer. Strike that…especially with incurable cancer. I need to live as hard as I can right now because my next brain MRI is scheduled for shortly after I return. Someone in my position can’t get off the treadmill of living in three-month intervals between scans and labwork and doctors’ appointments. The possibility of being struck down at any point still lingers close to the surface of everything I do, so I’m practically throwing myself at life.

The jarring whiplash of existence with an incurable disease when I’m feeling pretty good right now is agonizing. Is it incurable or terminal? What is the right terminology? People in my writing retreat this week asked why I use the word incurable when chances are that I will die from this disease. That word choice is intentional. It’s easier to live when I say incurable, much as it’s easier to live when I say remission rather than NED (no evidence of disease). Some in my position would never use the “R” world to explain their current state. The reality is an NED status is a snap-shot in time, and the tests used to determine that status can’t see down to cancer cells smaller than 8 mm, so there very well could be some dangerous little buggers still swimming around in my body, waiting for my immune system to drop its surveillance, or stressors to mount to a point where the barrier has worn down and they can take hold again. In a way, I use the word remission as an illusion of control. Illusions mean everything. I choose to believe I’m cancer-free. I choose to believe I can live a full and fulfilling life despite my physical disabilities. I choose to live.

I came to Costa Rica to take part in a writing retreat with my friend and fellow hiker Anish (aka Heather Anderson) and to explore my book ideas with the other participants. Something that kept surfacing when I noodled on my memoir, was that I refuse to operate from a place of fear – the fear that would keep me from fully engaging in life. I refuse to give in to the fear that could keep me at home, wrapped in bubble wrap, instead of walking the beach in search of sea turtles and dodging crocodiles in the nearby estuary. That’s not how I’m choosing to live.

*The retreat participants: Boo, moi, Heather & Johanna*

I’m choosing to live, especially after watching Andrea Gibson’s documentary yesterday, Come See me in the Good Light. That film highlighted the fragility of what we are dealing with here. If Andrea can die three years after the first diagnosis, then so can I. Cognitive dissonance then reared its head when I read an enlightening Substack post by Oncologist Daniel Flora, When the End Doesn’t Come, about how many of us with incurable cancers are living far beyond their initial life expectancy and enter a kind of limbo where we know we might be like Andrea, but we also might live for 20 more years. WTF? Can you imagine living the rest of your life thinking that you might be given a death sentence every three months? Even when you are feeling good? Welcome to my world.

Jenny (or Bumblefoot) and I have talked about life in the way most people only achieve in years-long friendships. That’s the magic of meeting someone on a long trail, in a foreign country, or when living with stage-four cancer, or in this case, all three. She and I both expressed our delight in sitting across from one another and finding out we had a shared experience. The serendipity of it all. I relayed a story about when I had just arrived in London for grad school and was very uncertain that I had made the right decision. I sought out refuge from my oscillating emotions on a visit to the Museum of London. I walked in the door and was greeted by one of those life-sized cardboard cut-outs that you can put your face into. The cutout? He-Man, thrusting his sword into the air, calling upon the power of grayskull, much like I had done the previous year on the top of Blood Mountain on the Appalachian Trail when I received the trail name She-ra. Well, that museum exhibit and silly photo I took with my face shoved in the cardboard cutout became a sign that I was in the right place in the right time. I gave myself permission to follow the breadcrumbs of my curiosity and fully invest in life in London. I feel the same way about Costa Rica, not just because I was getting to learn from Heather and her process in writing three books about thru-hiking (heads up, you can buy her new book Farther now), but also because the main facilitator, Johanna Garton, grew up close to me in Wisconsin. I went to school in Waupaca, and she, 40 miles away in Appleton. I live for those coincidences. I live for those breadcrumbs. Coming to Costa Rica and investing in this retreat means I’m on the right track.

So I’m going to continue trusting the world. Continue to believe that I can do this, that I can live a full life despite the pain and uncertainty. I hope you can too.

P.S. Johanna has a few more writing retreats coming up this year. Soak in the pura vida vibes in Playa Grande and get some excellent feedback and direction on your writing project. Find out more here: Costa Rica Writing/Yoga Retreat

I Didn’t Join the Peace Corps for Nothing

Posted on January 29, 2026 by sheraaaa

All the turmoil in the world and in my body has me asking again and again: What can I do? What in the world can I do to make it stop, or fix it, or support others who are hurt?

It’s probably no surprise that I’ve been spending more time on Substack lately since stepping away from other social media platforms, and this post caught my attention, so I had to add to it:

The uncertainty.

It always comes back to the uncertainty. Can we be ok with it? Will accepting the uncertainty make everything more bearable?

I used to think so. I used to be sure that I could adapt to whatever came my way. One of my favorite bits from the poem The Waking by Theodore Roethke goes:

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

I would repeat these lines to myself when in my village in West Africa, stunned by my decision to live in a country where my do-gooder desire to “change the world” met with reality. I repeated the lines after my first big heartbreak when the guy I had moved to London to be with broke up with me and I was left living in a massive city where I didn’t know anyone. I repeated the lines when I fell in love with thru-hiking and didn’t know how to make that transformative experience last.

But somehow, the shaking this past year has me reeling in a way that I haven’t experienced before. I’ve discovered that I can’t tough it out, muscle through it, or ignore it like I might have done in other situations. BUT I have experienced something this past week that helps: genuine human connection.

My blog post last week was filled with uncertainty about my body, about what was going wrong, about trusting myself to understand the pain, and get to the root cause of it all. But when I uploaded the post and made doubts and fears public, what I did was let others see my vulnerability (scary!), and several of you responded in ways that helped me tremendously. I felt seen. I felt understood. I was taken seriously.

And I think that is the answer.

For all the problems with the healthcare system (and the world), a simple fact remains that a small group of people who are willing to listen to you, hear you, and genuinely want to help, can have a profound effect.

What happened? On Friday my physical therapist assured me that she would help me find the right kind of help. On Tuesday a former trail work volunteer of mine, who is also a retired physiatrist, took a look at my scan and assured me that help was possible. Throughout the week many of you responded with things that have helped you through similar situations of self-doubt and uncertainty. I feel seen, and know that care and connection is one of the most beautiful, human, and inspiring things you can do for another person.

What is the point of this life if we don’t try to alleviate the suffering of those around us? Can helping to alleviate suffering be the answer to all of it?

I think the real power is taking it one step further: what if we all actively worked to bring out the best in other people?

I’m a member of a creative freelancing group. We meet every other week on zoom and share struggles and tips for how to navigate the life of a creative freelancer. I’m still taking part even though I haven’t been working since my cancer diagnosis because the ladies are awesome. One of the items we’ve been designing for ourselves this year is a creativity bingo card (google it! you will find a ton of interesting results). I put one together with things on it like: buy myself flowers, go to coffee with someone new, and move at least 10 minutes every day. But the one that has blown everything out of the water so far has been: do acts of random kindness.

I was getting a coffee from a local place this week, and noticed a lovely tattoo on the barista’s arm. I complimented her on it, and her response was a beautiful smile that literally beamed back at me. As I was waiting for the coffee, I turned to see a man at one of the tables wearing a shiny gold puffy coat. I told him I loved it, and that the sun filtering through the window on it brightened the place up. And he beamed! He started talking and couldn’t get the words out fast enough because I had shown interest in him. It was an amazing experience, and I walked away thinking this is it! We need to see people, acknowledge them, listen to them, recognize their humanity, and in doing so, we can start to bring out the best in people.

On that vein, I have a show recommendation for all of you: Queer Eye. It will restore your faith in humanity. I promise. (Season 10 just dropped!) Every time I feel depressed, I put on an episode, usually cry a bit, and feel immensely better. The fab five really do bring the best out in people.

So I’m going continue with random acts of kindness, even when I fill my bingo card, and try to really see people, and try to bring the best out in those around me.

I think that’s a way I can help change the world.

Ride the wave of being alive today

Posted on January 9, 2026 by sheraaaa

In the last week, I had a PET Scan that surveyed my neck down for cancer, a Brain MRI to look for changes from my last scan, and lab work. And they were clear! Clear of cancer I mean. There are still tumors (masses of dead cells), there is still damage to my spine, and there is still abnormal labwork, but it’s abnormal in the ways it has been abnormal for the last year, so in essence, normal for me.

Am I relieved? Of course! So relieved!

Am I back to my optimistic, positive, pollyanna self? Well…I seem to need to sit with this news for a while, and it’s not like you just bounce back from thinking the cancer is growing again…there is the whole “well, why has my pain been increasing” question. And I have to accept that there will always be pain, that managing it is my new reality, and that some of it could have been stress-related from the PTSD over the last year.

So friends, all this means I have another 6-month lease on life!

So, I pulled the trigger on some more trips. In fact, there are still a few openings for a yoga and writing retreat in March with Anish if any of you are interested.

I had intended to write this post yesterday after all the test results had come in, but it turns out I needed a day.

I woke up like normal, drank my coffee with mushroom powders, and picked up and finished The Word for the World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin. When looking for the next book to read, I surveyed the shelves filled with cancer-related books, and just had to stop.

So if I’m not going to die yet of cancer yet, I’m going to go read about cancer and dying? No. Not today.

Cancer just hijacks your life. Especially with the chronic pain I’m experiencing now, well into remission. There is not a day that I’m not reminded that I could die soon, or not. Could be 1 year, maybe 5, maybe even 15! Good luck NOT thinking about that every day.

I needed a day to marinate in it, and I gave myself a 100% unstructured, uncommitted day yesterday, where I only tried to ride the wave of existence, knowing I don’t have an active cancer, and If that doesn’t elicit joy, then what are we even doing here?

I took a walk. This week I haven’t been doing yoga, in fact, I haven’t done yoga in about a month…the fears and all, but I have been going on walks: early morning walks before the sun is even up. I talk walks in the icy morning, stepping gingerly down the road with my yak tracks on, knowing my spine is like a pretzel stick, brittle and prone to breaking when it falls to the floor.

Yesterday I went walking just after sunrise and was rewarded with light and color. It was one of the first days in Bend with a dusting of snow on the ground, and even though the paths were treacherous with ice, it was so worth it to have those views and that reframe. The day before, darkness; today, I was walking out of the dark.

Can I surf the roller coaster of emotions instead of sink into them?

Ride the wave of being alive today.

Ride the wave of being alive today. Became my mantra as I gingerly walked the world awake.

Ride the wave of being alive today.

What will 2026 look like now? I have decided I need some more structure to my days, and the many groups that I’ve joined will help in that: writing groups, book clubs, creative freelancing groups, and cancer survivor groups. A renewed commitment to adding more structure to my days may help erect some scaffolding and assist in giving me a way to pull myself out of the listlessness that was December. Periods of time where I explore deep ideas and read a lot. And I’ll continue taking walks, lots of walks. Reading, walking, thinking, writing; I’m kind of designing the perfect life. I can’t adventure as much, but I’m living a version of my life that’s pretty good right now. I know challenging and scary things are around the corner, ready to jump out at me and knock me down. (That goes for all of us. The world is just plain SCARY right now!) But today I’m standing and walking in the light.

I’ll leave you today with the announcement of one of my first events of the year, of the post-illness year, a presentation I’m giving in April for the Empowering Women Through Adventure series: Adventuring is Different Now: How To Find a Path Forward when Your Body Changes.

For our final 2026 Speaker Series we welcome back a previous speaker, local triple crown thru-hiker Renee “She-ra” Patrick. In late 2024, Renee was diagnosed with advanced cancer that left her in a wheelchair and unable to carry a backpack due to extensive neck and spine damage. Now in remission and walking again, Renee is exploring how to continue hiking and adventuring in a body that has dramatically changed. She successfully completed a 170-mile hike of the Portuguese Camino by using a luggage transport service, and continues to investigate alternative forms of travel so she can continue to find solace and connection in the outdoors.

Join us to re-connect with Renee and explore a topic that so many of us can relate to in our own way, what it looks like to adventure when our body changes.

PET Scan Eve-Eve

Posted on December 31, 2025 by sheraaaa

How am I doing? Let’s see. It’s the last day of 2025. It’s the eve-eve of my next PET scan, or the first PET scan since my cancer has been in remission. I’m not doing well. In a way, my remission has been haunting me, especially fiercely the past month or so.

I’ve been dismal and down in this season of laughter and joy, but I’ve been high too…these emotions rollercoaster through me, sometimes on an hourly basis, where I can be delighted and hopeful, followed by a deep sorrow that drips off me and weighs my body in heaviness.

Ask me to my face, and yes, I’m doing fine, “Grateful to be here!” I reply cheerfully. To a few, I’ll say, “I’m struggling,” like when Kirk comes home to find me in tears and just enfolds me in a big hug. To myself, I say, “What is the point?” I’m finding this listlessness is manifesting in me forgetting to take my meds. I’ll have breakfast or lunch and then realize two hours later that my pillbox is still full. I hurriedly eat a handful of nuts or a spoonful of peanut butter to soften the landing of the gel caps on my stomach lining.

I am haunted. Haunted by what these next few scans will reveal.

If the scans show there are no new growths, then I have to accept that the increasing pain and discomfort I’ve been feeling over the last month is either in my imagination or my body still coming to terms with being irreparably damaged.

If the scans show there are new growths, maybe it’s a relief? Then these next months will be a series of appointments, and I don’t need to think too much. I will just need to go with it and renew my low-sugar, low-processed food habits.

It’s like I’m just now figuring out how to live with this disease, and it’s not going smoothly. I know all the tricks and tools: go for a walk, get coffee with a friend, read a book, go to yoga, tell Kirk and my closest friends the truth, take a bath. And it all works, for a short while. It pulls me up and out of the funk, but now it seems my default state is in the muck when before it was in the air, floating on thermals above the fray.

And there has been joy….really, there has been – islands of happiness, or just plain contentedness.

Christmas with my mom and brother.
Dan and I walking along the Lake Martin swamp where we saw a huge gator sunning himself on a log.
Brooke and Adryon meeting us for dinner and my first sip of a Red Chair beer in a few years.
Carrie giving me a make-over.
Marina having us over for quiche and cheesecake.
Cross country skiing again.

Kirk bought me new cross-country skis with metal edges for Christmas. They are quite a luxury as I have only ever owned garage-sale skis from decades past. We took them out to our favorite snow park the day after I got home from Louisiana; the sun on my face, and the quiet swooshing of the skis in the tracks were a balm to my overthinking brain.

Before we left the parking lot, I couldn’t seem to remember how my ski boots worked. It had only been two years since I had skied last, but it was like I had never worn these boots before. Turns out I had grabbed Kirk’s boots, which I had in fact, never worn before. Ha! I can still laugh at myself. The skiing was good, until it wasn’t. It turns out that I can’t use my left pole, and I can’t go uphill. The pressure of the poles, especially when trying to climb anything, hurts my left shoulder too much. In fact, four days after the last ski, my neck and shoulders are so sore that I’m taking daily pain meds again. Is this cancer? Or is this skiing for the first time in two years?

Keep going. I just have to tell myself to keep going.

Maybe the pressure valve that is questioning my damaged body will be released after these next scans, and then I can keep going. I have a number of things I want to do in the new year, but am waiting for these scans to make any plans… I want to be grateful, but I am not sure how to feel most days. Sometimes my morning walk will be enough to trick my brain into being hopeful, and I come home and make my smoothie of broccoli sprouts, spinach, ginger root, flax, chia, hemp seeds, nuts, and strawberries, but sometimes the hope masks itself in feeling normal and takes me to the bakery where I stand in line for something sweet.

I investigate other hiking options: llamas! I could hike with llamas! Or do a car-supported hike, as many people do on long trails when they meet friends or family at road crossings, the car filled with camping gear, water, and food. Or I could do another Camino – I’ve already started outlining what the Camino Ingles would look like. Or tap the friends who said the would sherpa for me. Oh, and then there are the carts. I asked Reddit about hiking with carts, and after a lot of “you’re stupid for asking that question,” I got a few helpful replies, but ultimately I think carts work best on pavement, and that’s not the kind of hiking I’m hoping to do right now.

Is this clinging to hiking an unwillingness to give up the last 24 years of my life when hiking was my all and everything? Probably. I was one of those lucky few who found what lit them up inside, who found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, who found true freedom and purpose in a life lived on trail. I’m not quite willing to give that up, which may be, or probably is, at the root of my despair.

There are many disabled folks who continue to hike: Bill Irwin hiked blind. Wheelchair Bob is out on the PCT all the time, and a local friend, Geoff Babb, even invented the Advenchair, an all-terrain wheelchair, so he could still get around after his stroke. Hiking with a disability takes more time and more effort, but it’s possible. It’s possible. It’s possible.

Oh, the effort though. I’m getting caught up in the effort of doing all the “right” things to help mitigate my body feeling like a 500-pound elephant sinking into the sea. A part of me knows I will get through this, and may even return to my resting disposition in the clouds. A part of me knows letting myself feel the feelings may be the only way through, and a part of me needs to keep finding the effort that leads to small joys.

This isn’t a cry for help, I’ve done that already. This is an effort to be real with you about those “How am I doing?” questions.

I guess the next update will be in the aftermath of my PET scan, brain MRI, and labs. I’ll be a completely different person then.

Some happiness lately:

Choose Joy

Posted on December 16, 2025 by sheraaaa

*Finding joy on the PCT was part of why I kept hiking and made it my career.*

Maybe I’ve been going about this year all wrong. Ok, I’m going to backtrack a bit…I don’t think I’ve done it all wrong, there have been a lot of beautiful moments, like when Amber opened up her house to us to have an exuberant birthday party with about fifty wonderful souls who rallied around me even when I spent the day puking. Like when Kirk and I went snorkeling in warm Gulf waters this May, or when I finished the Camino in Spain with two new friends. Is it this book project that’s tethering me to the pain of the year? What if I let that thread go for a while? What if I let the scab grow, which might be faster to do if I’m not picking at it all the time by trying to write too soon?

I’m going to choose joy for a while and see where that leads me.

And yes, that still involves writing, surprise!

Yesterday, I was working through an exercise from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft book, the one about reading your work aloud and having fun with the sound and play of words, and something blossomed inside. I was writing around a scene on one of my hikes, a day filled with laughter and play, and I kept returning to that story again and again over the day. I wanted to be in it. I wanted to keep that scene fresh in my mind because the feeling was so different than writing about how my radiation has made my lower back perpetually painful and tight, or how a different approach to the tumors that surrounded my brain could have left me with memory loss or cognition problems. I want to think about something else for a while.

The hangover from that joy has been growing. I decided shortly after writing that exercise that I wouldn’t feel guilty about having christmas cookies for breakfast. I did eat a few nuts so that I got the protein that I need while taking my morning medications, but I ate cookies. I ate cookies dipped in whipped cream and I didn’t feel guilty about it at all! I decided to take the rest of the year off from guilt as well. If life is indeed short, what would it feel like to search for and create joy while saying goodbye to guilt?

Anyone want to give it a try with me?

Let’s make this a fun experiment…because that’s what I like to do! Let me know how it goes for you: the seeking joy and forgetting guilt for a while part. Perhaps in this next phase of trying to figure out who I am now, I will write about how my experiment is going, and also tell some stories from some of your experiments. When I worked at the publishing company for four years, that time was primarily filled with writing profiles on artists and businesses around town. It wasn’t quite journalism; it was finding what was interesting, compelling, and unique about these community members and sharing that through my writing. What if we do some of that with these stories?

I’m posting this over at Substack as well where commenting is easier. All my posts are FREE. Just click ‘none’ on the subscription options.

Write from the Scar

Posted on December 10, 2025 by sheraaaa

*In happier times…just a few days ago in fact! At the ONDA Christmas party with Phyllis* *and Mary, two amazing women.*

I’m so tired. Maybe it’s the ghost of the impending anniversaries from December 2024 and learning the truth about my injuries, but what’s my excuse this year? I’m discombobulated. I’m depressed. I’m in pain, and I’m grieving for something. I think it’s for who I used to be.

Yesterday I sunk into the depths of a dispair that I didn’t know existed, but today I woke up determined to have a better day. That looks like standing up without bracing for the rushing pain of low blood pressure in my head and shoulders, and instead slowly moving through it, anticipating the other side of the dizzyness, not getting derailed by the dizziness. That looks like leaving the house to write at a coffee shop where I can type these sentences with the accountability of being a human in public.

I don’t yet have the words to explain why I dip into these deep chasms of weeping, but when I try to understand, when I type out the sentiment behind the feeling, I can at least distance myself from it enough to see it a bit more objectively. That perspective takes on more weight as I circle around and around the idea of writing a book about my cancer experience. “Write from the scar, not the wound,” author Cheri Kephart said in her workshop, and that makes sense for a book. My book will be written from the scar, but this blog is written from the wound. From the bloody front lines of a life torn apart and knitting itself back together. At times I think I’m healing and toughing up, but yesterday reveals that I’m still raw and bleeding. The wound is tender and sore.

Bits from this blog may end up in the book, but I imagine the book will look back on this experience from a larger scale (hello fractal, my old friend). It will be putting all the pieces back together as a work of art, with thought and craft and structure… but now I’m still discovering what the pieces are, and what shapes they take. Writing here is sometimes messy, unshaped, uneven, and scattered, but it’s helping me find the pieces far faster than if I were stewing in this malaise and pain without getting it out into the open and letting it breathe. Writing from the wound is completely appropriate to this phase where I’m trying to make sense of what it means to almost die, to get a second chance at life, to confront my limitations in this new body, all within the context of losing my Dad just a few months ago.

*Saw this on Substack and thought it appropriate, is depressed almost the same as stressed? In dessert speak, that is.*

In a way, remission has been harder than treatment. At least during the treatment phase, I had a reason for being tired all the time, I had an excuse for staying in bed and not answering my emails. But after? Maybe it’s the scanxiety (the anxiety of the cancer coming back…all to be revealed in my next scans in early January, and every three months after…for the rest of my life) or it could be PTSD from my close brush with death a year ago. Or maybe there is no reason, and it’s just one big pile of shit that threatens to suffocate me each day.

Some days I don’t feel better, and wonder, is this the new normal? Now I’m starting to understand why people give up, why they don’t want to be alive with cancer anymore. But just thinking that thought scares me into thinking that thought will invite it back. If our minds are that powerful, can thinking about it coming back open the door? (proceeds to tear hair out)

Writing here has been such a lifeline; that’s a reason not to tear my hair out. Fun fact: my hair was thinning during the chemo process, but now it’s growing back, and in certain mirrors I catch a glimpse of myself with 2 inch hairs standing up from my part line; it does make me giggle (actually, you can see it in the photo above!). Through writing, I’ve been in conversation with myself and with you, and these connections have been everything. I’m sending out holiday cards this year, and it’s truly overwhelming. I look at the list of people who donated to my go fund me, who sent cards and care packages, who dropped off meals and stopped by for a visit, and there is not enough stationery or stamps to write enough cards. Hundreds of you came through for me this year, and even if you don’t get a card in the mail, please know how important you were and are to me. I’m so rich in friendship, true connection, and love that I know none of this has to be faced alone, even when I feel alone.

So let’s end this blog post on a high note. Thank you for listening. Even if it feels like I am screaming into the void, I know you are listening and care. That helps so much.

Death is Coming for Us All

Posted on November 13, 2025 by sheraaaa

…but not today.

It’s very easy to take myself too seriously. Especially when starting something new like writing a book. After the Central Oregon Writers Guild conference last month, I was totally humbled and walked away from the weekend with my brain full of words and concepts, straining to remember what I could from college literature classes 30 years ago. It took four days and a walk in a tangerine sunrise before an inkling of confidence came back. After all, I’ve been writing constantly for those 30 years; I wasn’t starting from scratch, was I?

Then I thought about my story: the months and years of living the dirtbag hiker lifestyle, discovering my love of strangers in strange lands, and how illness changed my relationship to all of it, and hope returned. I’ve lived through so many hilarious and scary moments that I could easily write an entire book about almost dying – like the time I could have slipped down a frozen ice shoot of snow on the Continental Divide Trail when approaching Gray’s Peak in Colorado. If I can walk across that icy death trap with bald trail runners, then I can write a book, right?

What helps is knowing that I didn’t start this book process just to place a shiny cover on my bookshelf, but to live the life of a writer, and to be a student again. I love the learning, I love the challenge of trying to condense 48 years of living hard into something bite-sized. I mean, how often do we let ourselves start at something new, knowing the journey will be filled with uncertainty and stumbles? Hmmmm, kind of a thru-hike? But what is different this time is that I never questioned my ability to finish a thru-hike. Not even on that first 2,000-mile one in 2002. I knew I would do it. Why is writing a book any different? I’m in a daily wrestling match with myself…but what a luxury to have this conversation with living me, when in an alternative universe I didn’t make it? This is all a bonus. This is all the icing on top.

I was in one of those self-doubting funks when a friend sent me this interview with author Ursula LeGuin, and watching it immediately turned my attitude around.

It lit my brain on fire in a couple of different ways and really got me excited about trying my hand at fiction. There are so many takeaways from this interview, but at one point, she mentioned that you don’t want to talk to a writer at the end of the day if they haven’t been writing. Even the best of us struggle. In a workshop I attended this week with author Cheri Kephart, she rattled off a few other quotes like this one from Hemingway: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” and then I found this one from George Orwell: “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.” But then I stumbled upon this Emerson quote that helped: “The only way to write is to write.” True dat. This blog is helping to serve that purpose. It’s giving me something other than the obvious task at hand to have fun with. I keep a running list of things I’d like to explore, or that struck me, and have come to enjoy the cadence of writing a blog post a week, sometimes about writing, sometimes not. I think it’s the writing that is key here. Just doing it.

I’ll leave you with this song that always helps lighten the mood when I’m bogged down by gerunds or trying to wrap my head around how to use the past perfect tense.

Here is my favorite part of the song, 100% Endurance from Yard Act:

“It’s all so pointless, ah, but it’s not though is it?
It’s really real and when you feel it, you can really feel it
Grab somebody that you love
Grab anyone who needs to hear it
And shake ’em by the shoulders, scream in their face

Death is coming for us all, but not today
Today you’re living it, hey, you’re really feeling it
Give it everything you’ve got knowing that you can’t take it with you
And all you ever needed to exist has always been within you
Gimme some of that good stuff that human spirit
Cut it with a hundred percent endurance.”

Giving Back is Connection

Posted on November 7, 2025 by sheraaaa

It’s 0-dark-30 in Pendleton. My room sits eye-level to busy Highway 84, and I try to drown out the sound of trucks breaking and cars racing through the city by turning the fan on high.

I arrived in the late afternoon and shook off the four-hour drive. A pain had just started to take hold of my lower back, but some light stretching and walking helped to ease the stiffness that had set in.

It’s time for the yearly Oregon Outdoor Recreation Summit, and arriving here brings back all sorts of memories of my body last year. What do I mean? Last year, I was in such debilitating pain, still blaming my condition on slow-healing injuries, that I was jacked up on pain meds and moved so deliberately that many people noticed something was wrong. Only weeks later would I be diagnosed with cancer, which explained the constant neck and back spasms that had been plaguing me for months.

The Summit is designed and hosted by the Oregon Trails Coalition, the group I have been leading as Chair of the Steering Committee for the last three years, and this is my final summit in this volunteer role.

That first night I stopped in distillery where about 50 other summit folks milled about. Entering this room was both exciting and daunting. Many people knew of my challenging year because I’ve been quite public about it, but others had no idea. It was as if I was breaking out of a cocoon…a cocoon that had been smashed and thought destroyed, but not. I had emerged on the other side of my brush with mortality to find myself on a similar path I had been on before. It was both exciting and confusing.

But I digress. I wanted to write this blog post to talk about volunteering and how remaining involved in the Coalition has been a vital part of my healing. My fellow board members cheered me on this year, they ran the monthly meetings until I was able to engage again, and gave me lovely gifts like home-made granola, books, and a bright yellow t-shirt that I wear constantly.

To have a purpose greater than yourself and to be of service to your community is a powerful motivator and force for healing. I was deathly ill a year ago, and now I’m walking upright. I still have the glow from the Portugal sun on my cheeks, and am reimagining my future. This summit doesn’t represent my swan song; it’s a re-awakening. It’s a rebirth. BTW, this seems an opportune time to mention Renee means “reborn” in French. How can it be the first time I’m drawing this connection?

So volunteering. Volunteering has helped pull me out of my self-focused fog. Sure, I could have dwelled on my pain, quit the Coalition, and sulked about my inability to backpack, but I decided to use what energy I had to continue supporting, promoting, and advocating for the preservation, development, and stewardship of a statewide network of trails. Using my precious hours in this world for good has always been vitally important to me. When I was faced with a million career options after college, I pushed that all away to become a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. I wanted my time to mean something to someone. I found that direct aid was the best way to disentangle myself from the rampant consumerism and individualism that modern society primes us for. Volunteering connects us to the collective, much like I believe hiking connects us to the land. And connection is healing.

My mom will be spending Thanksgiving and Christmas at a diner serving dinner to those in need. And with the SNAP benefit disaster, I expect this small act of kindness will have a dramatic impact on her community, and her outlook in the wake of my dad’s death.

Are you volunteering?

My brother has always loved animals, so I’m encouraging him to look into animal shelters in his area and explore if they need help walking dogs or petting cats. Volunteering could look like anything. You could show up for children, the elderly, the sick, or the natural areas around you. You could pull invasive weeds or plant milkweed for migrating Monarch butterflies. It’s endless! And when it feels like everything is falling apart, volunteering can connect you with the beauty of what is working, what is alive around you.

If you are in Oregon, we are in our recruitment period for the Oregon Trails Coalition Steering Committee and Advisory Board. The Advisory Council strives to be truly representative of the Oregon Trails community of professionals, advocates, volunteers, and trail users. It advises the Steering Committee on coalition advocacy positions and campaigns, and helps implement and promote events and programs. The Steering Committee provides oversight and guidance to the Coalition Director, is responsible for carrying out the Coalition’s mission, and generally acts in accordance with the Advisory Council’s recommendations.… and you get to work with fabulous people. Please join us!

I’ll leave you with this post from my friend Jess, and I’d love to hear from you. How do you volunteer? How would you like to volunteer? I bet we could connect you with a meaningful opportunity that helps you see the beauty and richness of an engaged life.