Recovery is not Linear, and Climbing is a Metaphor for Life

In 2015 I was introduced to rock climbing and to be as cliché as possible, it changed my life. I had just reentered college after previously dropping out and felt like an imposter. My confidence was low while my self-doubt was through the roof. I was a college drop out, what am I doing back thinking I can actually do it this time? Thoughts like that plagued me every time I walked to class, raised my hand, opened a book. I had no trust, faith, or belief in myself.

Simultaneously, my partner was taking me rock climbing. I had been a few times outside and a few more times at the gym. Rock climbing is believed to be an extreme sport, for adrenaline junkies only. For some climbers this might be the case but for most, including me, climbing is more like a dance. It’s soothing, therapeutic, and it can bring you to some of the most beautiful places on earth— I gained an appreciation for my body and myself, as well as an appreciation for our planet through climbing.

I had always felt held back and ashamed of my body. I didn’t see my body as this amazing part of me to be loved, nurtured, and appreciated, but rather as a burden that I had to carry around with me, something that always needed improving. I felt uncoordinated and clumsy, never athletic and strong. My body felt like it was mostly just a means for objectification by the unwanted male gaze, which often led me to shrink myself, make myself small so that I could drift by unnoticed whenever I left the house. Then I started climbing and all of the sudden it was my body that was getting me to the top of these climbs. I felt graceful and strong, like a powerful ballerina, fluidly moving upwards on walls of sandstone and granite. Whether on a cliff in Yosemite or plastic holds at the gym, my body getting to the top of those climbs was invigorating, exhilarating, and oh so empowering. For the first time ever, I was proud of my body. This newfound empowerment seeped into everything I did. The way I walked, the way I carried myself, the way I looked in the mirror. I was walking a bit taller, chin a bit higher. It wasn’t that the way my body looked was changing, it was that the way I felt about my body had changed.

Climbing taught me the power of my body but also what it means to try hard and to fall and that making mistakes is actually a beautiful and refreshing process; it’s a direct challenge to my inner perferctionist. A climb that is hard and makes you sweat and flail and fall is infinitely more satisfying to get to the top of than one that is easy. That approach to climbing had transferred over into my every day life and all the sudden, school wasn’t scary anymore. Having previously dropped out was no longer a source of shame. I was raising my hand with confidence, and more importantly, I was unafraid to say something that might be wrong. Making a mistake no longer made me feel like I was a mistake; I was trying and that was all that mattered.

I continued to climb harder routes, get to the top of taller cliffs, as well as get good grades and write great papers. I was making friends and having stimulating conversations with folks in class. Climbing opened up a whole new side of me that I never new existed. I was more adventurous and took more risks. I was putting myself out there and stepping out of my comfort zone. And it was all paying off, in climbing and in life. My mental health was thriving and I felt in the moment and content. Those two years in college spent learning, growing, and truly living were golden.

So I felt wholly unprepared for the mess of rejection that came after graduation when I applied to countless jobs, landed only one interview, and received no job offers. I began losing trust, faith, and belief in myself almost instantly. The whole reason I went back to college was so that I could stop nannying and get a job that I was passionate about. I began to question our whole culture that puts the trajectory of college, career, then house, on a pedestal. Suddenly, everything I thought to be true and had strived for no longer felt like it was attainable or even for me.

Meanwhile, as I’m questioning my entire life, I subconsciously began questioning everything in climbing, too. I’m questioning whether or not this rope will actually hold me, if the rocks above are going to fall and crush me, if the bolts that I’ve placed my life in are sturdy or rusted through. I didn’t trust anything that was meant to keep me safe and alive while climbing. But I also didn’t trust myself. I didn’t trust my feet and my technique. I was suddenly afraid to not make it to the top and afraid to fall. I was having panic attacks while on the wall and sometimes while walking to the cliff. Climbing was no longer therapeutic and empowering but a source of pure anxiety and terror.

When I finally landed a job working at Trader Joe’s, I was thrilled. I was working with the most welcoming, fabulous people. I had fun seeing how fast I could restock the spinach, breaking a sweat organizing the crates of pre-mixed salad in the fridge, sharing laughs with my coworkers while shelving the apples. At first, the occasional condescending and patronizing customer would throw me off for a bit but as the weeks went by, the rude, entitled customers got under my skin more. (Folks, just because the person restocking the milk doesn’t hear you, it doesn’t give you permission to touch them. And for the love of lettuce, if the store is out of green onions, I can guarantee you it’s not the fault of the employee so treat them with kindness because the person that asked before you most likely did not.)

The offer to work a dream job in a theater in the South Bay couldn’t have come at a better time. I felt ready for a new challenge and new experience. However, transitioning into the new job was not easy, as it never is for a woman of color working in a white, male dominated environment. While the folks I worked directly with were great, I missed my coworkers at Trader Joe’s. Microagressions at the theater were a common occurrence so I’d wear my TJ’s shirt to work like a comfort blanket— I was proud of the work I did at Trader Joe’s and wearing it made me feel a bit closer to my friends back at the store.

I kept climbing but anxiety continued to plague every trip. Every once in a while I’d have a great trip where I’d actually have fun climbing. But more often than not, the fear of the rope breaking, thoughts that told me falling equals death (when normally falling is just a short ride to a soft, bouncy catch), were at the forefront of my mind. I tried all kinds of methods for gaining control of my anxiety. Within climbing, I tried exposure therapy, climbing up a bit, paying attention to my thoughts, taking deep breaths, hanging on the rope, and proving to myself that I was okay. I did research on what anxiety actually is, what happens in the brain that causes panic attacks. I adjusted my approach to climbing based on what I learned but wasn’t seeing any major improvements.

Work was getting busier with no signs of letting up and my mental health was declining rapidly. After working over two weeks straight with not one day off, I woke up one morning and saw a major depressive episode right there on the horizon. I swear, it was a giant, black hole of a cloud, smirking and waving at me. I see you, Chelsea, and I’m coming for you. I decided that it was time to quit my job in order to prioritize my mental health. I didn’t go climbing for a while after I quit, feeling too depressed to engage in any kind of physical activity. When I finally made it outside, it was just as bad as I thought it would be with the usual panic attacks, feeling like a failure, hating my anxiety and furthermore, hating myself.

At this point one might ask, okay so why do you keep climbing when you obviously hate it? Easy. It was the knowledge that recovery is not linear. There have been times in my life where I’ve been in deep depression, where nothing was fun and everything was hard, but I treasured the knowledge and the words of my radiantly wise grandma that this too shall pass. Nothing is forever, not the good times and not the bad times. And I was still having those aha moments, where I’d be on a climb and make a move that I didn’t think I could get and feel that same feeling of empowerment and joy that I felt before. They were short and fleeting, but they existed nonetheless. I was still having moments of fulfillment while climbing and I was clinging onto them as a sign that I wasn’t ready to let go of climbing just yet.

My partner and I always joke that climbing is a metaphor for life, but it kinda is. You can do a climb that is hard but still make it to the top without falling. You can come back to that same climb a month later and fall all over it and maybe not even make it to the top. You don’t just continue getting better without any setbacks in climbing; it’s not a straight and narrow path to becoming a 5.12 climber. You get hurt. You get scared. You feel unmotivated. But you keep going back to it because eventually, you’ll make it to the top. Truly, just like life and just like recovery.

After I quit my job, my partner and I set off with the ambition of converting an empty cargo trailer into a full time life on the road mobile. We worked on it every day for 6 months, taking the occasional break to go on a climbing or backpacking trip or game night with friends. Even though we were working towards our dream lifestyle, I wasn’t getting any less depressed and climbing wasn’t getting any less scary. I was in therapy and on medication. I had the privilege of living at my partner’s mom’s house rent free so even though I wasn’t working, I had housing stability. With my own savings as well as the fact that I come from a middle class family, I had no financial worries either. All of the things necessary for mental wellness were there, but my anxiety was still high.

When we hit the road with our trailer in tow, I was ready for change and I felt ready to tackle my anxiety with climbing. We headed straight to one of my favorite climbing destinations ever, Indian Creek. Since the day I learned what a hand jam was, I have been in love with crack climbing. Indian Creek is a crack climbing mecca, so I felt confident that even though I’d feel scared while climbing, the fear wouldn’t outweigh the fun. In the end, I found that for some climbs this was true and other climbs, not so much. Sometimes I’d get to the top and sometimes I wouldn’t. The key was that I was trying and it felt like I was making slow but steady progress. I had reached a point where on the days that I felt ready and excited to climb, I did great. I felt a little panicked on more exposed routes, where the ground feels lightyears away, but overall, my expectation of fun outweighing the fear was proving true.

Then the pandemic hit and Moab, the town closest to Indian Creek, shut down. As tourists, we felt it only responsible to pack up and leave so we eventually went back to the Bay Area, back to my partner’s mom’s house. My anxiety spiked, as did most everyone’s, and I was back to where I was with climbing pre-Indian Creek. At that point, I stopped climbing altogether. Struggling to manage my anxiety even at the grocery store, my anxiety at the crag was even worse. I was back to square one, where anxiety had trickled into everything I did. So I went back to therapy.

After talking through initial pandemic anxieties with my therapist, we started talking about my anxiety with climbing. We retraced my anxiety journey and pinpointed the arrival of my climbing anxiety to the time of college graduation, when I wasn’t able to get a job. She asked me how I felt during that time and I immediately broke down. I told her how I felt like a failure, like everything I had experienced in my adolescence that taught me I was a failure was actually true. But what about the two jobs after college that you did get? Those didn’t matter. They didn’t change how I felt about myself. I was still holding onto the shame surrounding not getting a job so when I actually got a job, it didn’t help me regain the lost confidence or the loss of trust in myself.

Coming to that realization, that after all this time I still didn’t trust myself, made everything else click. My anxiety struggles all started to make sense. If I’m having a hard time trusting myself to do things in regular daily life, of course I’m going to have a hard time trusting myself while climbing, trusting anything while climbing, for that matter. Now that I was beginning to understand where my anxiety was coming from, my fear that I’d never love climbing again began to resolve. I still decided to take a break from climbing, while continuing to speak with my therapist once a week, working through root issues of my anxiety.

That brings us to just a month ago, where we spent a couple weeks in Yosemite before making the final move to Alabama, again with the trailer in tow, where we’re staying now. I hadn’t climbed in months and so the first few days that we were there, I opted out of climbing. On a day when I felt excited to climb, Dylan and I hiked out to a sunny and secluded spot in the valley and the first climb I hopped on, I cried. Y’all. I cried tears of joy. I got to the top of that climb and realized that that was the most fun I’d had climbing in years. I sobbed when I got to the top and sobbed some more when I got back to the ground. I felt empowered and motivated and ready to climb more. The next climb I got on I flailed and fell and still had so much fun getting to the top. I wasn’t thinking about dying, wasn’t afraid to fall, my anxiety was nowhere to be found.

Once we got to Alabama and started climbing out here, my anxiety came back. But this time, it was different. I didn’t feel defeated by my anxiety because I held onto the understanding that recovery is not linear. I have good days and bad days, great and terrible, and everything in between. But those bad, terrible, and meh days in between do not define my path to recovery. Those bad days aren’t there to tell me that I’m never going to enjoy climbing again. They’re there to remind me that recovery is hard and it’s an ongoing process. They’re there to remind me that I’m trying and that’s what matters.

So on my not so great days, when climbing is terrifying and my anxiety is high, I am working on reminding myself that this too shall pass. This single day does not define where I am in my recovery nor does it mean that I’ll be anxious and scared of climbing forever. It means that for some reason, sometimes within my control and sometimes beyond my control, my anxiety is high and climbing just isn’t feeling fun. It does not mean I’m a failure and it doesn’t mean that I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life as an anxious ball of fear and nerves. If anything, it means that it’s time to be kind to myself, to love myself with intention, and to show myself a bit more compassion. On days when you’re struggling, when recovery seems so far out of reach, I hope you remember that recovery is not linear, that it’s often a battle, but that those good days are waiting for you on the other side.

*Main photo was taken in Indian Creek, Utah which is on stolen Ute, Pueblo, and Southern Paiute land.