Climbing Mt Kili

When everything feels icky & squirmy & totally uncertain

Mom Says:

I was a bulging, sweating, 8 months pregnant hot mess in the middle of one of the hottest heat waves we have ever experienced. My husband will recount to you tales of woe and suffering as he endured the words “I’M UNCOMFORTABLE!!” more times than I care to remember. It has become a standing joke between us, one that is typically accompanied with boohoos and mockery to indicate said Uncomfortablist is being entirely unreasonable.

On a happier pregnant days — On a happier pregnant day at the cottage

The word comfort has been an enemy in so many ways throughout my life. At the start of our marriage, I would share with my husband (often) my thoughts that the minute we were comfortable, we were done for. Comfortable meant being normal, stagnant, conforming and lacking passion. I didn’t want us to ever get there. I wanted us to strive for date nights and spicy moments so that the notion of comfort would never take hold.

I am often found pushing myself past my comfort zone. Whether it’s skydiving, scuba diving, motorcycling, bungee jumping, or climbing mountains, I have done it all. At the start of every one of these adventures, I am scared poopless. Every. Single. Time. Until I do it & then realize that that wasn’t so bad after all.

The whole fam came out to support me when I jumped out of a plane. I hope we are teaching our kids to be fearless. — The whole fam came out to support me when I jumped out of a plane. My only hope is that we are teaching our kids to be fearless.

I like it & I don’t like it. It feels icky and squirmy and often disagreeable. Yet something about pushing through the hard parts, to conquer and achieve a challenge on the other side makes it so worth the initial grossness of it all.

The thing is, I have started to think of my comfort zone as exactly that. It’s just a zone. It’s not your prison cell. Your zone can take on different shapes or sizes. The more we push, the bigger our space of allowable adventure becomes. We just have to keep pushing out the walls.

As we hit our 3 month window before we leave on our #CuppaRTW Round The World trip, I have recognized I have that uncomfortable feeling once again. This feels new for me because this time it’s not just me getting out of the zone. We as a family are taking this on, all parts of it feel foreign and unsettled.

I have been trying to explore what is actually causing these whirl-a-gig butterflies inside me and I think for the most part I have figured it out.

We are planning to not plan which for a planner makes things all kinds of up in the air. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster that’s pulled out of the station and already on the ride but need to get past the urge to hold my breath through the whole thing because its a long time before its over.
I am curious how we are going to manage surviving as a family 24/7 over the next many months. We are a strong team and we all love each other dearly but we already know we are going to plan for breaks or we will end up killing each other before we get out of South America. We have even invented a safe word to roll out on the days for the kids (or each other) are driving us so batty that we might say something we regret. We are also planning on taking days in which one of us takes the kids and in which we each take one kid to keep things different and exciting.
Very soon, we will no longer have a home. We are letting go & rid of most of our stuff. The grounding stuff. As we start packing up, we are starting to work on how to create a new version of “Home” for us & the kids. We will have no place to come back to and the concept of coming home will now have to truly live in “home is where the heart is”. So how do we teach that to our kids?

I know these are all just growing pains as we start this new chapter in our life. I just can’t wait till my brain is settled on the other side and starts feeling more comfortable (baahaaahaa) with it all.

Climbing Kili was something I thought impossible. Until we did it.

Dad says:

oh, the pain of comfort…

I am, unlike above, comfortable with comfort to a point. The balance I constantly try to strike is to look around and appreciate accomplishments before running off to literally jump of a cliff. There is little joy in a life so hectic that you forget to breathe, look around, smell the roses, you know, LIVE…

Part of joy is enjoy, which is a poorly spelt word that should be in-joy. Get in the moment, relish it, then set you sights on the next adventure.

My business has already been to the top. Now it was my turn.

The year was 2011 and I had no idea my date with destiny was about to begin.

Having started my business less than a year before, I was still trying to figure out the definition of what that business looked like. I felt lost. I was catering to clients I wasn’t passionate about because they had the money. It didn’t resonate with me AT ALL, and I felt compromised in my value system.

So what does one do when they need to figure out their business? Most would probably go back to honing their audience or creating a tighter business plan.

Me? I went to a psychic.

My friend Laurel would laugh if you called her a psychic but she is most definitely intuitive and gets messages that tend to be wickedly accurate to pass on to you. We had met quite a few times but it wasn’t until a fated coffee date with our friend Susie Parker that I realized how important she would become in my world. We had been talking about the struggles of business and she simply had said:

“When you are working towards something you are passionate about, it will never feel like a war in your heart.”

I had started to cry. Something about that statement felt like an arrow piercing my heart and left me with a nagging need to talk to her more. I set up a Skype call with her to help figure out where I needed to get my business in order. We set forth on a visualization of where I saw myself in 5 years. As I closed my eyes, I assumed it was going to be business oriented, developing a new digital product or something and being able to travel the globe with my family (If you dream it, it will come right?).

Instead, as I closed my eyes, I saw Africa. In all its glory.

Everything about the visualization took place in a school yard in Africa. I could hear the children playing, I could see my kids in the school yard laughing with them, I could touch the single level turquoise building that housed the classrooms, and I could reach out to the man who was sitting beside me on a picnic table in the yard. It was so vivid and felt so right.

Where exactly this was, I couldn’t tell you but I can share that I felt at peace, quiet and satisfied with something we had accomplished in being there. As I woke up from the visualization, we talked about what I saw. Immediately I felt relief, I felt a sense of purpose and I felt like I had a date with Africa in the not so distant future. I remember telling Laurel that I felt like it wasn’t 5 yrs away but sooner. Laurel mentioned that education and Africa would play a role in my life moving forward.

That day would be marked as one that defined a path for me. It changed my business. It helped me focus more on working in ways that would feed my soul and follow my heart to what I am passionate about.

That was 3 years ago. Tomorrow, we are leaving for Tanzania to Climb Mt Kilimanjaro and #LiveLifeIntrepid. Thanks to the amazing people at Intrepid Travel , we are working with them to help raise money for kiliproject.org, a project that helps support educational opportunities for children in Tanzania.

If you would like to support #TeamPowell raising funds on this climb, you can do so by DONATING HERE

The funny thing is, I had forgotten until recently that because of this path to Africa, I sponsored a good friend as she was in need of hitting her goal of raising funds for a MAD Climb to Kili, never in a million years dreaming that a few short years later I would be embarking on a Kili adventure of my own.

We are so looking forward to setting foot on Uruhu Peak and celebrating our milestones.

To following your passion. Who knows what kind of mountain you will get to climb.

Finding the Edge of Comfortable

When everything feels icky & squirmy & totally uncertain

Mom Says:

Climbing Kilimanjaro – My Date with Destiny