Jennifer Logronio told her story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The wind stayed for at least four hours. A strong wind that you could hear your ear having that pressure. You can see the roof of your neighbors flying around, fridge on the ground, everything, basically. The trees especially.

I’m currently residing in Siargao Island of the Philippines. I was born in Davao.

I teach freediving. I’m passionate about actually quite a few things. One of them is teaching. I’m also very passionate about giving back to nature, especially in the ocean.

When I was 19, I started moving around. First I went to Manila. It was very eye-opening for me, because coming from Davao that doesn’t have very many people, I was like, Oh wow, there’s so many things here. But then after a couple of years working there, I said to myself, I can’t do city living anymore. Then I started to check on jobs in Siargao.

Siargao is a small island down south of the Philippines. It’s a surfing capital. So I thought, OK, maybe I belong here. So I started working in one of the resorts here, and that’s when I got into surfing. I work, I surf, I work, I surf. And then COVID hit, and the resort closed. Most of the people did not have work at that moment, but that’s when I started to learn more about surfing.

It was December 16th, 2021, when another thing happened, which is the typhoon. It destroyed the whole island. No electricity, no food, no water.

Unfortunately there were not a lot of warnings coming from the government. They didn’t say anything, like “OK, you evacuate here,” and whatnot. So we chose somewhere uphill, and there were around 80 people in that house. We stayed there overnight. Because it was uphill, we were scared of storm surge. We had some snacks with us, but there was not enough water.

The day after it was a beautiful sunrise, beautiful sunset, like nothing happened. After three days I left the island, because I didn’t feel very useful. I didn’t think I could help any of the people I know that were in need, not even for myself. And so I left, I went to Manila.

I felt like everyone that got out of here was carrying this weight in their heart. Because we felt guilty, leaving the island. But I couldn’t go back yet because the house was destroyed. The electricity was not back until almost two months later. And I had to continue working, I could not stop my life.

A friend of mine owns a freediving school in Batangas, that’s three hours from Manila. It’s a really nice spot for swimming, freediving, a lot of coral. I was not that interested. I was thinking, Oh, OK. I just go down and go up and that’s it. What else? Those were my thoughts. And so I did and I was like, Oh, it’s actually really challenging. Holding your breath with all the movements you need to do and equalization in the ears, it kind of made me think, Actually it’s not easy.

The challenge I had was my breath hold and equalization, basically the two big factors in freediving for you to go deeper. I started with a 30-second breath hold, and could barely reach three meters.

Most of the sports that I get into, what makes me do it is the challenging part. It kind of hits your ego in a way, like, Hm, you can’t do it. So your ego’s like, Can you not do it? You can do it. It’s a lot of self-talk. So I started doing a lot of training.

I told my friend, Hey, I wanted to learn and I wanted to teach under your school. So they agreed, like OK, you work for us, you can train, and then you can teach for us.

My very first deep dive, I hit 28 meters. I reached negative buoyancy, where your body just falls without you doing anything. We call this free falling, and I did not want to stop. That was the time that I knew that I’m gonna do more and I wanna do more.

I got back to Siargao, and you could still feel the devastating part of the typhoon. You could tell that everyone was trying to rebuild their stuff. I was here for a month, fixing our place and the things I needed to settle. But I did not want to give up freediving, because I saw so much potential in it for myself, and I liked to teach.

So I had all these big thoughts, like OK, so I’m gonna have a freediving school in Siargao and then if I get funding, I’m gonna teach all the locals, then this, so on, so forth.

Freediving kind of changed my perception in life. You learn a lot in freediving, the technicality of it. But the thing is that you can also apply it off-water, like being patient, calming down, relaxing. If off-water, let’s say if you have an argument with your boyfriend or whatnot, and you step back, relax first and then speak. Before, I was a very impulsive type, I didn’t have much patience. The thing is that it kind of makes me wonder, I don’t have a lot of patience for other things, but I have patience to do my training. So it made me think that maybe I have that patience inside of me.

I told this to myself. OK, the typhoon was a good thing and a bad thing. It was a bad thing because destroyed my island and my home. But then it was a good thing because I found something that I would never have found if it didn’t happen. I was directed to that. I was directed to freediving.

I found peace in freediving for sure. I did not need to see anything, coral or fish. It’s just the feeling that the water is accepting you, being there, not spitting you out. I’m already too grateful for it.

Jennifer Logronio is a freediving instructor and surfer based in Siargo Island, Philippines. One of her hobbies is crocheting beachwear and accessories. To learn more about her, check out her Instagram .

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Duy Nguyen told his story to producer Stepfanie Aguiliar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I knew it was gonna be hard, but I didn’t anticipate, honestly, how, how weak-minded I could become. Really wanting it all to be over like, I don’t care how many miles are left, I wanna go home. And I thought I could beat that mindset, and I was better than that mindset.

I’m in Los Angeles, California. I was born in Vietnam, came to America when I was one years old, and lived on the East Coast, Virginia, for about 18 years.

Professionally I run a couple of businesses. I have a restaurant out in LA. I’m a community organizer, host a couple of different event, I have a run club.

I went on a trip to Haiti to film this documentary about regular people running across the country for this nonprofit. I saw what running could do.

It was 200 miles over seven days, and these people weren’t professional athletes.You would see these people running down the street in your neighborhood. And so when I shot this, I kind of realized, Hey, this running thing is pretty cool.

These are all strangers, they decided to run across this country. The bond that they built, the relationships that were formed, it was such an incredible thing to see. I came back to LA and told my friend Mike, “Hey, we gotta do a run club. We gotta get people running.”

My friend and I started Koreatown Run Club maybe eight years ago. We weren’t runners, and we kind of just got pulled into the running world. Meeting all these people, and wanting to do something different and new, we’d never thought it’d grow and change our lives to how it has today.

This run across Haiti is kind of what started my running journey and starting the run club. I would go back every year when they would do the run. The first year, I brought a friend from the run club, and they finished it, and I filmed them. I documented the whole journey.
The next year, I was like, You know what? I got three marathons under my belt. I kind of know what I’m doing. I’m just gonna run it. I’m just gonna sign up. And I signed up to run the 200 miles. And honestly, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into.

So March or April 2018 was when I ran. It’s a multi-day thing. When you’re running 200 miles across Haiti, you gotta run a marathon, and then the next day you gotta run another marathon. It’s very stressful on the body, obviously. Ultras are different than marathons for sure. It’s a different mindset you go into to finish it.

So the year I ran it, I really knew a lot of people there, but honestly, I was on my own a lot of the time, because the group spreads out when you’re running 30 to 40 miles per day. Me being on the slower end, I was coming in pretty late.

The first day, a 32-mile day, I did it. Obviously it was hard. But I did it, and then I had six days left. The second day was only 13 miles, but it was over a literal mountain.

Throughout the day, I just got slower and slower and more and more tired, as you would, and my mind was just going in a really dark place like, Man, I’m keeping everyone behind, I’m slowing everything down. There was a truck following me, making sure I was OK at that point. That truck had other things to do, but instead it was just pacing me at the end, and I just felt really bad. I was walking, and I could walk fine. I wasn’t injured or anything, but my heart just wasn’t in it. My lungs just were not in it. I was really wanting to stop at that point.

I was just walking and they were walking with me and they were talking with me. “How are you doing?” And I just didn’t wanna talk at all. I just wanted to tell them, “Just leave me, I’ll finish and I’ll see you there.” But they didn’t, and they probably shouldn’t because, you know, safety-wise, you don’t know what can happen out there.

Then it just got to a point where I was like, You know what, I’m gonna call it. I’m keeping everyone up. I don’t wanna be the guy that basically walked this whole thing.

So I called it, I was like, “It’s OK, I’m gonna get in the truck.” And they’re like,”OK no problem.”

I got in the truck, I drove maybe half a mile up the route, and I was at the top of the mountain at that point. From then on it was maybe two miles, all downhill.

That’s when I kind of felt it. I was like, Man, I could have just walked for another ten minutes and I would’ve been at the top of this mountain, and I could have just coasted down. But the moment I got into the truck was the moment I took that DNF, which stands for did not finish.

I knew even if I ran every other day of this race, I’d still have that asterisk of not running those three last miles, of getting into the truck and going back home.

And so the next day I felt really bad. Everyone was sympathetic and everything. They knew where I was coming from. They knew I wasn’t a “real” ultra marathoner, or runner. And, I did too, but I really wanted to be able to say, “Hey, I ran across Haiti, the race that got me into running.”

Even though I didn’t finish that second day, there were five, six days left.

It’s crazy because when you’re running a marathon or you’re doing something really hard and then you come up to the cheer zone where all your friends are and they’re cheering for you, you just get this boost of energy that I can’t explain. You just run hard. You just get all this energy from seemingly nowhere. For a brief moment, everything’s good. Everything’s cool. You’re not in pain.

When that third day came and there was like no real pressure, I was like, Well, no one’s looking at me. No one really is expecting anything from me. I’m just gonna have fun. And I went out there and I just ran. I didn’t really think about finishing it. It’s like, Hey, if I don’t finish, I already didn’t finish.

So I just ran with no pressure, just fun, all smiles. Ran with different groups. And I felt really good. I felt really, really good.

The final day was 52 miles. I had run the whole thing with my friend Iggy. I know he had suffered from an ankle injury, so we’d probably be going the same pace. And we ran the whole thing together and we really pushed that last two miles.

Me and my friend were just running from pole to pole. There’s a little light pole, you run there. Then, “Let’s go to that other light pole. Let’s go to that other light pole.” And it’s just a straight shot, and there’s nothing really around. You’re just running from one light pole to the next endlessly.

And I just remember, Oh my goodness, it’s about to be over. We’re finally going to stop running and we don’t have to run again the next day. And we ran all the way to the beach, and he ran literally all the way to the beach and got into the water. Once I passed that finish line, I just sat down and watched him get in the water and I was like, I’m done moving. Next time I’m moving, I’m going back in the car, going to the restaurant. But I just wanted to sit down, and that’s what I did. I sat down and reflected over the past couple days, and I was proud of myself, because I continued on and I did run 160-some miles. And for me at that time, that was a big thing. So I was proud of myself for being able to finish that, especially that last day. Because the last day was really, really tough.

I knew I wanted to sign up for it again while I was still there. I was probably the first person to sign up, and I came home and I was like, Yeah, I ran most of it. I didn’t do it all. But I knew that it was just a personal thing. No one thought of me any differently. They weren’t like, “He said he was gonna do one thing and he only, he didn’t.” It wasn’t anything like that.

I saw myself how others saw me. It wasn’t a failure. It was like a learning experience. Of course, one thing I really learned from that experience was to really take a step back outside of what’s going on, outside of how you feel, outside of what you’re even thinking. Think more clearly about everything that’s happening around you. I feel like if I had done that, I would not have dropped out. I would not have gotten on that truck. I would’ve said, I’m half a mile from the peak and I can cruise down, and finish and continue on to the next day.

But I wasn’t thinking clearly. I think I was just too in the moment. Everyone says to live in the moment, but sometimes you have to take a step back and pause and maybe just stop running and walk and really think about what’s going on before you make any decisions like that.

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. And just carry forward.

Duy Nguyen is a creative entrepreneur and community-builder based in Los Angeles, where he co-founded the Koreatown Run Club. He is still hoping to return to Haiti to complete the run again, this time officially. For more information about his work, check out .

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Ali Wines told her story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Throughout Europe at the higher peaks, there’s often crosses. And so looking up and seeing this cross sort of looming above us in the mist was really scary. It was eerie, and it felt like a sign that you are absolutely in the wrong place here.

I’m based in Toronto in Canada, but I am originally from Australia. I grew up in Melbourne. I am the Executive director of Protect Our Winters Canada. We’re a nonprofit that brings the outdoor community to rally in the fight against climate change.

It was our 15th wedding anniversary, and my dad had given us a gift of sending our kids to camp for two weeks. So, we decided that we wanted to do something special with the time.

We found Austria, and when I started doing research, I found this multi-day hiking route through the Tyrolean Alps, and just thought that that looked like the most amazing experience and something that would be really memorable for us to try.

I spent a lot of time researching the route, which wasn’t the easiest. It’s called the Höhenweg. If you do the full route, you do need ropes and climbing gear at some points. We had planned to do three days that didn’t involve the climbing sections.

The first day was amazing. The beginning of the route is at the base of the widest waterfall in the Tyrol region, and you actually hike up right beside the length of the waterfall. So it’s this stunning hike through what feels like almost a temperate rainforest with the water gushing down to one side. And then you emerge into this valley, which has the river flowing through it that feeds the waterfall, which is just this incredible glacial blue. Mountain goats wandering through the grasses, and Austrian huts. It was like something out of a painting. It was just so beautiful.

It had sort of been a steady climb to that point. Then once we were in the high alpine, there was essentially a vertical wall of rock in front of us that we needed to get up and over. There were two ways that we could possibly go. One was a potentially easier route, but would’ve added two hours of additional hiking and scrambling time to the journey. Or we could go up and over the ridgeline.

At this point, it was three o’clock in the afternoon, and the thing that we hadn’t been able to know or plan for was the fact that in this region, the weather comes in at three o’clock. And so we were standing at the base of this ridgeline, and the clouds came in faster than I’ve ever seen them do anywhere else. And all of a sudden, there was no visibility.

Everything around us got quite dewy and quite slippery very quickly. I was pretty scared, my heart was racing, particularly because of the slipperiness of the rocks. I just knew that there was no opportunity to lose any footing or you would be going down. You couldn’t really see the drop beneath you, but we’d seen it from the bottom and we knew that any fall would be pretty serious. So we were climbing really, really carefully and pretty slowly.

I started to have all of these thoughts of guilt because we’d left our kids at home and I thought, Oh my God, I’m gonna fall and die in this place and noone’s gonna find me. And I’m a terrible parent. I was being a little bit dramatic, but it felt dramatic at the time.

In my mind, I had just focused on the ridgeline, and I didn’t think about what was on the other side. We got to the top and it was only about a foot and a half wide. The climb down on the other side was even steeper. And by this stage, everything was damp. We could barely see a thing in front of us, and I just sat down on the top of the ridge and I cried.

I was really worried that maybe we wouldn’t get down. We had zero cell reception, so no one was going to come and get us. We hadn’t brought a GPS phone or anything on this particular trip, which in hindsight was definitely a mistake.

Sitting on top of that ridgeline, once I’d given the panic a minute to subside, I had that realization that I didn’t have a choice, and that being in a state of fear and panic was actually gonna do me a really big disservice and make everything more dangerous. So I needed to pull myself together, calm down, and think about how I could get down in the safest possible way.

Having been in situations before where I knew that panic was not my friend, I was able to draw on that a little bit, and use that to suppress that emotion of fear to the point that I could take action and get myself out of that situation.

Using deep breathing helped. I meditate fairly consistently in my daily life, and that was absolutely helpful to just slow down the nervous system and calm all of those physical responses to fear. I think the second part of it was being my own parent, and giving myself a very strong talking to that you are absolutely not gonna be sitting on a ridgeline when night falls, and that you need to just get your act together and get down.

My husband definitely took on the protector role. I think looking back on it, he was actually more scared than I was, but he felt like he had to rally a little bit himself to make sure that I was gonna be OK. So we just took a minute on the top of the ridge and we sat there and we breathed, and we thought, What’s the best solution? Do we try to go back? Are we better to go forward? And at this point, we knew that we were closer to the second hut than we were to the first, so we decided it would be safer to try and just keep going forward, even though we didn’t know what the terrain looked like.

We got down very slowly. I just kept telling myself, One step at a time, one step at a time. And also, Don’t look down, don’t look down. My husband and I worked pretty well together as a team, just coaching each other down, telling each other which footholds to use, which rocks might’ve been wobbly, where we could put our hands. And that way, just taking it as slowly as we possibly could, we were able to get down safely.

I remember getting close to the bottom of that ridgeline, and looking between my feet and in the very, very far distance seeing the next hut. Just feeling this absolute flood of relief, feeling like we were finally gonna get there.

I knew from past experience that if I thought clearly, I would be able to get myself out of a sticky situation. So that helped me, sitting on top of that ridgeline, to think that I’ve done this before. But if the panic starts to set in, that’s when you’re going to get into trouble. So go slowly, focus on taking everything one step at a time. Just solve the first small part of the problem in front of you, and then solve the next small part of the problem in front of you. And through that process, you’ll get through it.

Allie Wines is the executive director of Protect Our Winters Canada. She grew up skiing, horse riding, and climbing trees in Australia before her career took her to London and then Toronto. For more information, you can visit , or connect with Allie on Twitter .

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Mikah Meyer told his story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was like, How do I communicate in a photo that I’m gay? Should I throw glitter in every picture, or do I hike with a unicorn floaty? And ultimately the best option I came up with was to take pictures with a rainbow flag in front of America’s most iconic National Park Service sites. If I stood in front of Delicate Arch with a giant rainbow flag, that would very quickly communicate, Here is somebody who loves the outdoors, and who is also gay.

If I had to pick one title for myself, it would be storyteller, because whether it’s speaking engagements, or creating social media content, or doing advocacy work, the one uniting thread between everything I do is storytelling.

I’ve also called myself a full-time adventurer, or I tell people I do everything Rick Steves does, I’m just one thousandth as famous.

My dad was a minister. In fact, he was an award-winning minister at the largest Lutheran campus ministry in America. So for me, coming out was a whole lot of nightly praying to God to fix me, to change me, to let me be anything but what deep in my heart, I knew I was.

When I was 19, he passed away from esophageal cancer. A few days after his funeral, I took my first ever independent road trip, and it was such a healing experience for me that I made it a goal that I would do one road trip every year for the rest of my life around the time of his passing, April 29th, as a way to honor the retirement that he never got because he passed away at 58.

So I’d been doing these annual road trips for over a decade, when I knew that I really wanted to do something epic at age 30. What I ended up deciding to do was to try to set a world record by visiting all of our 400-plus National Park Service sites. There had only been two dozen people in the history of our country that had visited all of our National Park Service sites, so I could both become the youngest person to do so, and the only person to ever do so in one continuous trip, which would set two world records.

So I was 30 years old when I started the journey to visit all of America’s National Park Service sites. And I finished three years later when I was 33. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

About a year into my National Parks journey, I was sitting in the front seat of my Ram ProMaster cargo van that I was living in. I opened up Instagram, and I got a new message and I pulled it open and I started reading and it said: “Hi. I am 15 years old. I go to a private Baptist school in Texas, and I’m not out of the closet to anyone, but I read about your journey and I looked you up. And I just want to thank you because now I know when I grow up I can be ordinary.” Then the message continued and he said, “Then I found your Instagram, and I see you’re setting world records. And now I know when I grow up I can also be extraordinary.”

I just started wiping the tears from my smartphone. I realized that, I had spent the first part of my Parks journey hiding the fact that I was gay, actively working to despite being out of the closet for almost 10 years, doing everything I could to keep the outdoors community, to keep the media, from knowing I was gay because I was sure that if I didn’t fit the mold of every other outdoorsy guy, that nobody would support my project. Nobody would help crowdfund, I’d get no sponsorships. And so it was this moment where I sort of broke down because I was not helping this kid at all. I was just adding to the problem by hiding myself and hiding this part of me to try to fit in and make everyone else more comfortable.

So many queer people, we fled the rural towns we came from. We fled these outdoor spaces that we enjoyed because we felt like we weren’t safe unless we were in a neighborhood in an urban center, or we couldn’t be ourselves in these places because of the culture. I realized that the problem with outdoors culture was not the danger or the toughness of the trails or the adventures, the problem with outdoors culture was straight people making queer people feel like they couldn’t be who they were in these spaces.

So at that point, I basically was like, OK, I know that I need to now be out on this Parks journey, and I need to do it for this kid, and I need to do it for ten-year-old Mikah who grew up in Nebraska. My window to the outside world was watching the Travel Channel. And I never saw any openly gay person out living this gnarly life, so I never thought it was possible. And in that moment I realized I now could be that person that all these people needed to see so that they could have an easier time being themselves.

The idea was, How can I use this platform that I’ve built as a result of this trip? How can I use my profession and how can I use my privilege as a cisgender gay white man one step away from the apex of privilege to help those people?

The concept that I came up with is called the ���ϳԹ��� Safe Space Program. Essentially it’s a symbol that gives individuals the agency and the ability to make our outdoor and rural spaces more welcoming by wearing the symbol as a pin or a sticker or apparel or anywhere on their body, so that when queer people meet them in outdoor and rural spaces, they can see an ally, and we can start to hopefully change this perception that outdoors and rural people aren’t welcoming. And if they are unwelcoming, hopefully we can start to slowly show that there are allies, and pressure the homophobes into becoming allies.

The ���ϳԹ��� Safe Space tree was really intentionally designed. In one portion of the tree, it’s the rainbow flag. And in other parts it’s the bi flag and the trans flag. They were specifically placed to make sure that they were the longest, strongest branches of the tree, to recognize the way that those communities have been left out of inclusion even within our own queer conversation.

Instead of being those rainbow colors, the trunk is made up of all different skin tones to show that all of these different queer identities come in every race around the world. And for everyone who doesn’t identify with one of those flags, the entire tree is made up only of triangles, which is a traditional symbol within the queer community.

People wouldn’t know I’m gay unless I share that. And in the same way, I don’t know if you’re an ally unless you share that. So the ���ϳԹ��� Safe Space symbol is a way to give people the ability to communicate that they are something that is unseen otherwise and needs to be communicated for others to know.

It’s so important that we have visibility, both of queer people and allies, in the outdoors, because we’ve spent our whole lives hiding who we are, so for many of us, the only way to be proud of who we are and own who we are is to be visible and is to share this part of ourselves.

Mikah Meyer is a storyteller, singer, and record-setting adventurer. You can find more information about him and order your own ���ϳԹ��� Safe Space tree pin at . Or, follow his adventures on Instagram .

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Gunnar Lundberg told his story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

He actually passed away on our camping trip. Which was a really tough thing, especially because the river we were all at was one of my favorite places. My family had spent so many summers camping there. So it really felt like the universe was being very, very cruel.

When I was hiking the Appalachian Trail, my trail name was Mr. Darcy.

Right now I’m working as a substitute teacher in St. Paul, and then I’ll be starting an English PhD program at the University of Minnesota. I really love sitting by the campfire, preferably with a little lake breeze, reading a book of poetry.

One of the biggest challenges I had to overcome was losing my best friend Alec at a really young age. We were on a camping trip, a bunch of 18-year-olds just graduated high school. And he drowned in a river we were swimming in.

It was a really life-shattering moment where I was just so young and we were all so excited to move on with our lives. We were all gonna be starting college in different cities. So it was already an area of my life where I expected to have to navigate a lot. But I think just with that loss on top of it, it really became an overwhelming grief and overwhelming sense of directionlessness.

I had actually decided to go to school abroad for all four years. So I went to a school in Switzerland, and I think it was really a great distraction. I could travel on the weekends to different destinations. I feel like I was almost always in a kind of transitory state, never staying long enough to think too long about where I’d been. And so it was really after I graduated in 2020 and COVID set in, and we all had that year where we were stuck inside staying at home, that I was forced to take a good, hard look at my grief, and really evaluate how much it did impact me. I kind of felt like I needed a way that I could rest and process it without sitting inside and sitting at home.

My plan was to hike the Appalachian Trail. It really fit for a lot of reasons. The nature of how Alec passed away was one of the factors where I thought it was high time for me to get back on the trail and try to find that joy that I got from camping and hiking in the outdoors. Then also when you’re 22, you don’t have a lot of money, but you have a lot of time. So I tried to figure out the most affordable, cost-effective ways that I could do some crazy adventure, and thru hiking just happened to be one of the things that came up. I dove in and figured out the plan.

So it was kind of a really lightning speed preparation for that. The thru hike was everything and nothing like I expected. It was definitely physically a lot harder than I imagined.

The first few days, the blisters were rough. I thought I had a pair of boots that fit really well. And then you wear them for a week and you’re like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I ever thought these boots fit my feet. The entire backs of my heels had peeled off in sheets of skin that were the size of my palms. There’s just nothing you can do but keep walking, and every step is just so painful.

I had always told myself, Just hike until you don’t want to hike anymore. Just see how far you can get. You’re not out here to prove anything to anybody. You’re just out here to have some peace and quiet and some alone time. But the moment I got up to the southern terminus on Springer Mountain in Georgia, I think I had maybe half a breath to myself to kind of take it in before I heard someone speak up behind me. There were just so many people out there that it really was not the sort of solo solitude that I was expecting.

There were days where it was miserable and awful and I was hiking 10 miles in the pouring rain. The spot that I remember most specifically, it was hiking out of Hot Springs, which is a little town on the trail. I had just met a hiker who told me about how she was grieving the loss of her mom, and we kind of bonded over our journeys a little bit. And so it was just thinking about not only my own journey, but kind of recognizing that a lot of the people around me were even maybe working through a very, very similar journey.

I remember when I got to the top of the climb out of Hot Springs, I just sat on this bluff and I looked out and it was sunny, it was warm, the breeze was going a little bit, and I just realized how beautiful the surroundings were and how much fun I had had on trail. It was sitting there that I realized, I want to finish this hike. And not only do I want to finish it, but I want to enjoy it. I want to have fun. I want to talk to people, I want to share memories I had about Alec. I want to really make this experience not something that I felt like I had to do to get over my grief, but just something that could change my life in so many different ways that I hadn’t even expected.

I think that when I took the chance to open myself up to growing in different ways, in different directions other than just overcoming my grief, it really changed my mindset, and really gave me the energy to keep hiking all the way to Maine.

One of my mottos came from an Emily Dickinson poem, and this was a poem that I actually read in her collection, Final Harvest, which I stole from a hostel. I mean, it was kind of a take a book, leave a book deal, but I did not have a book to leave, so I did take it from their shelf. There was a poem where it talked about climbing a literal and I guess metaphorical hill, and then the final line was just, “all is the price of all.” Which really resonated with me. I just felt like it had really encompassed my journey and the experience thus far, where if you want to take everything that the trail has to offer, you have to give all of yourself to it.

And if that means sleeping in a tent for five months, and eating nothing but instant mashed potatoes and ramen, and running out of toilet paper and having to use leaves, and getting blisters and all of that sort of stuff, it just made me realize, if you want to get the most out of life and out of the trail, you really have to be willing to sacrifice and experience everything.

When I finished the trail, I was able to finally let go of all of the guilt that I had been carrying for so many years, and really try to take that first step in a new process of grieving, which was celebrating the years that I did have with Alec, and just even being able to say Alec’s name out loud, and to share any sort of happy memories I had with him.

At the end of the day, I didn’t think that too many of my priorities or my goals in life had changed. I think I was, if anything, more certain than ever of the direction I wanted to go. What changed was my mindset and my approach to things, and really just being absurdly grateful for anything and everything.

Gunnar Lundberg is a published writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He enjoys reading by a campfire and hiking. He tweets on .

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Lyla Harrod told her story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

There’s so many times when your body and your mind have conspired and outvoted you, and they’ve decided, Hey, we’re done. We’re gonna sit down right now. And even still, it’s important that you have to press on. You have to have a way to connect with yourself throughout that, because you cannot just shun yourself.

My trail name is Sugar. I am a 35-year-old sober, queer, transgender woman. And more or less full-time thru-hiker.

Last year in 2022, I set the women’s unsupported, fastest known time of the White Mountains Direttissima. I’m currently living and working in Blairsville, Georgia, which is right along the Appalachian Trail.

I’ve been sober from drugs and alcohol for over five years, and I’m somebody who has not always loved myself and not always been true to myself. Being an alcoholic in active addiction for about 16 years, I felt like I was having my soul or my heart scooped out with a melon baller, one scoop at a time.

And I felt myself getting smaller and smaller and smaller until I barely existed. I got sober at 30 years old, and I was finally able to be honest with myself about being trans and about the fact that I needed to transition. Getting sober and transitioning saved my life.

Being in nature and hiking is when I am the most myself. There’s something special about hiking alone, because it is a chance to dig down deep and to feel that connection that you have both with yourself and with the ground underneath your feet, and all the plants and animals that are around.

When I was finishing up the Pacific Crest Trail in 2022, I knew that I wanted to spend some time in the White Mountains, and I had always wanted to try to hike the White Mountains Direttissima. The Direttissima runs about 230 to 240 miles long. And just out of curiosity, I looked up what the fastest known time was at that time. And, and figured that I would have a chance at perhaps doing a little bit better. So I decided, Why not?

The challenge of that unsupported fastest known time was that I had to carry all of my food and supplies for the entire journey on my back from the very beginning. There was no resupplying except to take water from natural and public sources.

When you do an unsupported fastest known time, you really are unsupported. There’s no one out there. You can’t have a friend come and hike with you. There is no support, emotional or otherwise. And when you don’t have support from other people, it is fully on you to emotionally support yourself. That can oftentimes mean caring for yourself like you were a child.

The second to last day was the day that I had to go over Franconia Ridge, which is a notoriously steep and challenging point in the hike. Franconia Ridge is fully exposed, so there’s nowhere to hide. If you want any respite from the wind and rain, you have to duck under a boulder and tuck yourself in.

The rain had fully wetted out all of my clothing and my pack and even if it’s 40 or 50 degrees, that’s more than enough to be fully hypothermic pretty quickly if you stop moving. My body was exhausted. I was mentally already broken down from having hiked over 10,000 feet of elevation and about 25 or so miles for the day. I had to choose whether or not I could push on or whether I had to call it quits.

It was a whole set of phrases that I was using to talk to myself and to talk directly to that inner child, just saying things like, Hey, I’ve got you. You’re okay. We’re gonna do this together. And, even doing things like holding yourself or holding your hand against your heart and feeling your own heartbeat is a way of connecting to your body and connecting to yourself. All those things that you want to hear from loved ones and people who would be cheering you on if they could, you then have to do that for yourself.

I just knew that I could do it. I just gave everything that I had, and I found myself just weeping. I had to stop a couple times and I was crying. It felt really cathartic, processing the emotions through those tears, and through sitting with myself for a few minutes. It gave me strength to push forward through a really challenging moment in the hike.

Once I got through it, once I got over the ridge and down to where I camped for the evening, I could finally let my body relax. Having some time to myself to decompress in my tent after a really difficult, challenging experience, I found myself crying again. I found myself relaxing and feeling deeply proud of myself for what I had just done.

I find when I am talking to my inner child that it will tend to make me feel more emotional because I’m somebody who’s grown up being afraid of a lot of my emotions. It’s not something that’s come naturally to me because of how I grew up, and also as being socialized as a male. It’s something that I had to learn and, and come into as I grew into myself.

I now see those emotions and being in touch with my emotions and being willing to express my emotions as one of my greatest assets, both as a person and as an athlete. I got so much out of the Direttissima because it proved right to me something that I always knew was in me. Long distance hiking and taking on big challenges like big thru hikes and going for a fastest known time, they’re things that I feel are attainable because I have already felt so much discomfort through my substance use that’s deeply, physically brutal.

I knew that I had the strength to do it. I knew that about myself, but I needed to be fully stripped down to know that the inner child or that voice inside me that needed love that it’s not something that could or should ever be ignored. And I’m just really happy with who I’ve become.

It’s not, just an adult Lyla, with the job and the responsibilities and those kinds of things. Now, I do think about myself walking with a young little girl Lyla version of me, that we can sort of hold hands together, walk through this life together, and support each other.

Lyla Harrod holds the woman’s unsupported fastest known time record for the White Mountain Direttissima, a trail that connects all 48 of the 4,000 foot peaks in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. She is a professional thru hiker, writer, and mentor of first time queer and trans through hikers. You can connect with Lyla on Instagram .

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Cat Runner told his story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Sometimes I’ll be at the crag, and I’ll hear strangers having a conversation, and they may not be directly saying something transphobic or racist but the tone of the conversation may turn on that level of guard I have and then I can’t focus on climbing. Whereas if I’m around people that I feel supported with, I can be more vulnerable and completely give myself to climbing.

I’m a transgender photographer, athlete, founder, and director of the Queer Climber’s Network, and now technically a pro climber. I’m currently in Kentucky, and I was raised in Kentucky. It’s the land of humid weather. In the summer, God help you.

I was a participant on HBO Max’s The Climb, a new climbing competition from Jason Momoa and Chris Sharma. It tested a group of climbers on different disciplines and terrains all across the world.

I had heard about casting for The Climb. And what drew me to just apply was the worst thing that could happen was I don’t get picked, and the best thing that could happen was I get to go on a paid international climbing trip.

I remember coming into the first location and not knowing anybody. I, along with everyone else, didn’t know the format of the competition. We didn’t know what it was gonna be like. I didn’t know if there was gonna be some sort of psychological component of it, like in Survivor. So, we’re over here just talking about climbs. I’m like, Is all of this a ruse? Is all of this mental strategy to learn the opponent?

The way we filmed it was kind of split into two parts. For the second half we began in Jordan. One of the strongest memories I have is the first time that we got to drive out into the desert into Wadi Rum, and you’re just surrounded by all of this tall, amazing rock. It’s so vast and so flat. It was so magnificent, getting to be so small in a place.

Starting in Jordan, I was starting to get fatigued, of having to be on all the time. When you’re in a bubble doing a show like this, you in some way are performing certain elements of yourself and recounting certain parts of your story no matter how traumatic they may be, you’re kind of going back into that headspace frequently, and it can get tiring. Something that’s really common for any people of a marginalized identity, when you are serving as the representation for your community, you’re often projected into a spokesperson role. Whether or not that is or is not wanted.

It was the start of a new year. Which also coincided with the start of a new legislative session, and 2022 is when we saw this new rise in anti-trans legislation. I was reading the news or hearing about the news from my friends and family and it was just sad and frustrating.

There’s a group of people who believe that trans people shouldn’t exist and shouldn’t have the same rights as others. Normally, I would be a lot more vocal, and I would be doing a lot more for my community, especially as my community was hurting, and I was just in a place where I wasn’t able to do that. I use my platform to educate, to share my story, to help humanize trans people, and also to spread resources. Because of the people who follow me, for a lot of those people, I may be the only trans person that they know. So if I’m sharing information about what’s going on with my community, that may be the only time that they’re ever gonna see that information.

As we were filming the show we were all radio silent. We weren’t allowed to post on social media. And I felt like there was nothing I could do. I felt very defeated and very hopeless. So I called my best friend and I was like, climbing feels so arbitrary right now. It feels so unimportant, and I feel like I should be putting my time into so many other things than being here and living my dream in a lot of ways. There’s so many people right now who are scared and suffering in my community and I can’t do anything about it. What do I do?

Then she told me, “What you’re doing is important.” You being there is eventually going to be on TV, you’re gonna change who people see, and that part that you’re playing is a big enough part in the grand scheme of things.” It’s funny because I know that, and like I’ve told myself that, and I’ve told all of my friends too when they ask, “How can I support trans people?”

I’m like, “The best thing you can do is just make it known that we exist. And talk about us and make us a part of daily life to the point where we can’t be ignored.” Because when you do ignore or dehumanize people, it makes it much easier to do things that hurt them.

So I was like, here’s my chance to do this on a larger platform. Here’s my chance to bring words and a story that people who maybe watch in the future may not have thought about how these are implications that someone feels.

Whenever we talk about activism or advocacy, the key to it is creating a habit and showing up the best that you can that day. It doesn’t have to match someone else’s best, and it doesn’t have to match your previous best. But, I’ve seen a quote somewhere that, “If you only have 40 percent to give that day, and you give that 40 percent, that’s a hundred percent of what you have available.” So you’re showing up the way that you can show up that day.

So much of how I’m able to climb is impacted by who I’m climbing with and who surrounds me. I was lucky enough that I had a really, really supportive group around me in Jordan. The people that I was with made it the most magical trip in the world. We were climbing our best and we all recognized each other as extremely, extremely powerful, strong, creative, amazing climbers and people. I was climbing to do my best, but I was also climbing not to go home. Because I loved everyone I was with, and I loved the experience that I was having.

I did win. I won The Climb. I am, debatably, the world’s best amateur climber. You can put that on my business card.

Cat Runner is a photographer, founder of Queer Climber’s Network, and in 2022, he won The Climb, a competitive reality TV series for amateur climbers. He’s passionate about community advocacy and his dog Ramona. You can follow him on Instagram .

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Audra Robins told her story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

As we were leaving the house, I thought for a moment, Maybe I just shouldn’t go. It feels weird to go on vacation for my birthday when my friend just passed away.

My nickname is Ah-Y, or sometimes A-Dog. I’m a personal trainer, and also a group fitness instructor, at a local gym here in Lancaster, California.

How would I describe myself? Adventurous, lighthearted, great sense of humor. And nature’s a big part of my life. And, so are my kids, my family; I’m very family oriented. I have six kids. I would say a big accomplishment would be birthing four kids at home.

I had a friend, Beth, that was a friend of mine for maybe, gosh, 15, 16 years. She taught me almost everything that I know about life that is worthwhile. She taught me about home birth. She taught me about herbal remedies, and just natural ways of doing things. She also was a lover of nature.

She was what you would call a doula, for birthing, labor purposes. But I never really called her that. She was just my best friend that was there at birth, and would help me all throughout my pregnancy. She was just a really supportive person in my life. Just a beautiful, beautiful spirit.

Beth always heard me talk about Mammoth. Mammoth Lakes is my home away from home. I’ve never been more in love with a town or outdoor space or with nature than in Mammoth.

Beth was planning a trip with her husband. And I was like, Oh my gosh, you have to go to McLeod Lake, that’s one of my favorite hikes because it’s super short. It’s nice and sweet. So if you’re hiking with kids, or if you don’t want something that’s super strenuous and you just want to get to a place that’s majestic, McLeod Lake is the place to go.

So, I gave her directions, let her know where to go. That whole moment just was super special because she was communicating, texting me like, “Gosh, this is just beautiful. It’s everything that you described.” And I remember her sending me a picture and everything. She just loved it. She fell in love with it just as much as I love it.

Beth had been given a diagnosis of breast cancer. But she kept the intensity of how badly she was doing away from a lot of people that she was close with, and especially from me because I was pregnant at the time. So I didn’t know how badly she was going through it.

Normally, four weeks before you give birth, we have a birth team meeting for the home birth. And Beth would always attend it when she could. She had been with me through all of my births with my babies, up until that point. So I just touched base with her, and I was like, “Hey, this is our birth team meeting is happening really soon.” And she was like, “OK, yeah, I’ll be there.”

I ended up getting a phone call from my other good friend that lived next to her, that things were looking really bad. My friend had to convince me how bad it was. And she was like, “You need to come see Beth. Because we don’t know how much time we’re gonna have.”

All of a sudden, I realized that my days with her were down to days, if not hours. My world just crashed down.

I went to go see her, and those were my last moments with her. It was on my birthday that I found out that she had passed. I still joke around that I think she did that so that I wouldn’t forget the date because I’m horrible at dates. So I think she had to plan it out, so it made it easier for me to remember her anniversary.

We were actually on our way to Mammoth. So, I thought for a moment, Maybe I just shouldn’t go. But then my husband was like, “You know what Beth, she would want you to go. This is everything that makes your soul sing and is healing for you, and allows you to feel her energy. She’s gonna want you to go.” So, we decided that we were gonna still go.

We hiked up to McLeod Lake. That was very emotional for me to do, but as emotional as it was, it felt very healing to be in the same spot that she last was when she was there and feel the beauty that she felt.

It was peacefully still. You could hear the wind bouncing off of the lake and the light glistening. You could just hear and feel everything around you. I decided that I wanted to do an honoring of her and do a couple sun salutations. Right where she was last out when she was in Mammoth.

It was taking a moment to honor a being that I felt like impacted the whole entire earth, whether you met her or not. And it felt like for a moment, everything just stood still.

Something that Beth used to tell me all the time, that I’m probably gonna one day get tattooed on my body is, “Feel the feels.” It’s such a simple saying, but I was raised very much that emotion is not good. That you shouldn’t show emotion, it’s weak to show emotion. She taught me—and nature has taught me, as well—that to feel your feelings is actually a sign of strength and growth.

So I would say feel what you’re feeling. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be ashamed of it. And everything will be OK.

Audra Robbins is an adventurous, nature loving mother of six children and a personal trainer and group fitness instructor in Lancaster, California. As a Pacific Islander, ocean love is within her blood.

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Gabby Beckford told her story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In Iceland in the summer, the sun doesn’t go down except for four hours. So, everyone just slowly goes to bed. We’re talking about the next day making plans and stuff. And I’m sweating. I’m like, I am such an idiot. If they find out, they’re gonna be mad at me. Or if they find out, they’re gonna be like, Why are we letting kids on this trip?

I am a military kid through and through, so I’ve moved around my whole life. Today, I’m in Tacoma, Washington.

By the end of high school, back in Stafford, Virginia, I was so burnt out. I was so academically focused that I think that’s where I got a lot of my self worth, proving myself and getting those A’s.

I didn’t do the typical movie high school things. So now going into college, how can I balance having fun and making memories and meeting people, having a good quality of life, and doing what I’m supposed to be doing?

Because of financial reasons, it was a college that was an hour away. And I was like, Oh my God, I’m only going an hour away. Where is the adventure? Where is the razzle dazzle?

So, in that interim summer between high school and college, I stumbled upon a trip to Iceland that was half in the city, the capital Reykjavik, and half backpacking through the wilderness. And I thought, This is what I’m looking for. This will set me up for college, and it will help me manifest the person that I wanna be in college and the people I wanna surround myself with. I’m gonna start off with a cool challenge. It just sounded great on paper.

Did I do any research before I went? No. Did I look at how fit I had to be to backpack the Laugavegur Trail for four days? No. I really went based off vibes.

First hiking day, I was in the front, I was just high on adrenaline and endorphins, and every photo I have, if it’s a selfie, everyone else is in the back of me. I’m running up the hills, these beautiful rainbow colored sand hills and these glaciers. And I’m like, Life is amazing. This was my first real backpacking and outdoors experience.

Other people were in college already, and there was a college professor who was there, who was around 40. So I was the youngest, I was the only person of color. I was one of three women. I was like, what am I doing here?

But from high school doing such advanced classes, I was used to being the youngest person in the room anyway. Now going into college and just getting out of high school, I wanted to not be perceived like that anymore.

So, on this trip, I’m like, Okay, this is my chance. I’m gonna be tough. I’m gonna transform. It’s gonna make a man out of me. We’re gonna be good.

So it’s the end of the first day. Everyone’s like, “Alright, take out your sleeping bags and take out your tents.” Everyone knew we were all sharing a tent each. The other girl I’d met on the trip was like, “Oh so we’re sharing a tent.” We’re getting along pretty well. We put up the tent and she’s like, “Take out your sleeping bag. Let’s make sure we can both fit.”

And I was like, What? They have sleeping bags?

I had a flashback in that moment to hiking, and I was like, Everyone is so slow. This bag is so light, y’all are acting like this is so heavy. I did not have a sleeping bag. I don’t know why I thought that someone else was carrying it, or maybe I just thought they compacted so well that one guy was carrying all of them.

I didn’t have a sleeping bag. I was like, “Girl, psst.” She’s like, “What?” I’m like, “We’re in trouble.”

And of course we’re already in the wilderness. If I had thought of this yesterday, I could have bought one. No. So, I was like, “Please don’t tell them. I don’t want them to worry. I don’t want someone to have to leave the trip and go get a sleeping bag.”

My focus was to not bring down the trip, really. Everyone else was very experienced in the outdoors, had been backpacking before, had been hiking and had the best gear. And I was an imposter.

Luckily, the girl who I was talking to, she’s five-foot-ten, and I’m five-foot-two, and she’s like, “I mean we could probably work something out. We won’t tell them now, but we’ll see how this goes.”

I put my little jacket on, I think I’ll be fine. Ultimately, we ended up back to back sausaged into this sleeping bag. Face to face, back to back. It was just a weird thing. It just kind of worked out. We were back spooning each other, and we had to turn our heads to peek out for air, and we just cocooned together.

I think anyone else would’ve been like, “This is an invasion of personal space. Why do I have to do this with this girl?” But, she was very nice. She pitied me, and I’m grateful.

The next day I was feeling very sore, but I thought the terrain really couldn’t get worse than what it was because it was very vertical. And that’s when they’re like, “Okay, we’re going into the Dragon’s Nest,” which is volcanic spiky rocks. It’s like bouldering. Just huge boulders you have to navigate. Iceland is absolutely gorgeous, and the appeal of the country is how variable its landscape could be.

But it shocked me and beat my ass.

The wind was absolutely blistering the next day. We couldn’t even hear each other, the wind was so loud. And I think the third night was when I was the coldest to my bones. I was squeezed into that sleeping bag with that girl; we’re back to back. And I remember just laying in my hot dog sleeping bag, tears going down my face. Because it was so hard.

I also remember in that moment thinking, Do I wish I hadn’t come? And I was like, No, I would rather be doing this than being back in that time period where I felt really limited to my studies or limited to high school, and I couldn’t explore the world around me.

In those hardest moments, I could still feel myself growing.

That first day I was overexcited and suffered for it later. So, the next day, I made sure to drink a lot of water and take rests when I needed to. And so, though it was difficult, I could feel every day I was getting better and better.

The biggest risk that I felt wasn’t my physical wellbeing. It was that I was dragging down the team, or that anxiety that I wasn’t doing as well as everyone else was. Which is why I think I overcompensated in the beginning, being in the front of the pack and not asking for anything on the trip, or going into the trip. Not being like, “Hey, can you double check my pack to make sure I have everything?” I guess I didn’t wanna show that weakness.

If I could go back to that version of myself at 17, I would say, Have confidence in yourself and go for it. Don’t be afraid of looking stupid. I think I would just tell myself it’s okay to be new at something. It’s okay to be bad at things at the beginning. You just have to start and that’s how you become good at them. So I would just say be bad. Do it anyway.

Since her first backpacking trip at age 17, Gabby Beckford has become an intrepid adventurer, traveling to 47 countries, 14 of them solo. You can follow her many adventures on Instagram .

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Sabrina Shay Pigg told her story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I woke up, and I was like having that feeling again where I was like, I just feel … I don’t know, just like nothing’s happening for me, it just felt like no wheels were turning. As if the universe was kind of against me. I knew that I had the capability to do something and be someone, but I was like, But what? What is it?

My name is Sabrina Shay Pigg, and my artist’s name is Sedusa. I also work in the beauty industry, so I promote and sell hair products using TikTok. So, I’m in social media marketing. Right now I am in Sacramento, California.

My personality, I definitely have a balance of the light and the darkness, and lots of energy. I have ADHD, so I’m always moving and hyperactive. I’m very talkative, very social. I like to talk to people, like to listen to people talk.

There was this time where I was feeling really lonely. I was in this relationship that wasn’t really serving me, honestly. I was just sacrificing my wellbeing to be around someone.

I had left California, and I went over to where they were living, and that’s when I was just feeling really unfulfilled. I felt like I had no direction and I didn’t know what I was doing, and the things I was doing were just kind of fun, but never something that was like, Oh, I’m excited to wake up and do that today.

I usually was being woken up by this person because the apartment was small, and they worked in a Zoom type of setting. So I always woke up to a Zoom meeting. I didn’t have as much money, so I was just like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know, I feel like I would just wake up with a dark gray cloud over my head, every single morning.

That day, I remember I woke up and I was like, I don’t even know who I am. I don’t know what I like. I don’t know what I want to do. And I was like, OK, let me just leave the house because I gotta go. Because I honestly have nothing to do. So, I started driving.

I didn’t know what I was doing. So I just drove anywhere, and was just listening to music and just trying to ground myself in a sense. But it totally wasn’t working, because I was just getting even more and more stressed out.

I got off the freeway, and I started driving down this road, and I saw a trail leading into this mountain. I was like, Oh, OK. I just immediately stopped, got out of the car, and I got my backpack.

I was walking on the trail, and I remember I was wearing an all-black outfit and I happened to have been wearing leather leggings. So, it was starting to get really hot because the sun was beating down on me and I was thinking, OK, this wasn’t a day to dress cute.

I didn’t know where I was gonna end up. But I was like, I’m on a trail so it must lead somewhere. And then, this other part of the forest called to me, and I was like, I’m gonna go over there. I just got off the trail, and I started walking in that direction.

Then I came across this pond, and it was just really magical. I sat down on a log, and I pulled out my journal and I just started writing and writing and writing, and all these things started to come up and I was having all these realizations. Why do I feel like this? What’s missing? It feels like something’s missing. What is it? It was a lot of like, why, what?

Then I heard a noise, and I turned, and a snake slithered next to my foot. It was orange and white, I remember, kind of striped. I was just staring at the snake for a while, and I was like, Whoa. Is this real?

I feel like my posture changed after that, and I was just different. I was noticing all the little things that were happening around me, like the way the sun was shining, the way the wind was feeling on my skin, the way I felt sitting on that log. And I remember I kept hearing this frog in the background. Everything was just really heightened.

It really felt like something divine in that moment. And then I was like, Oh my God. I wanna make music. I wanna sing. I wanna be a singer. Why have I been so confused this whole time? Little me? This is what she wanted to do the whole time. But I’d just pushed it so far deep down that I forgot about it. It was almost like a wish came true. A fairy godmother came to me and was like, “Alright, we’re doing this now. Let’s go. I’m ready to assist in this journey.”

I went back home and I was just sitting in that apartment. I was like, I feel so restricted here. I can’t grow past these walls right here. And I immediately scheduled a plane ticket. I flew back to California and, honestly, I wasted no time. Once I got home, I put my stuff down, and I went straight to go buy a mic. And I started recording, and then I started putting music out. And that was just the biggest transformation of my life. Especially waking up that next morning after I had recorded, and even though it wasn’t good and it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t great at all, but the fact that I did it, it just caused this ripple effect in the universe.

I feel like I remembered who I was and what I was here to do, like the mission my spirit came here to do and fulfill. And even though I’m really scared while I’m doing it, I’m literally so scared every moment, but I’m still doing it. That’s just been my biggest accomplishment because after that I’ve just felt fulfilled in every other area of my life. So, it’s just made me really happy.

Some advice I would give to anyone going through something similar is to be really patient with yourself. Be really kind and gentle, because you need that more than you think, and you shouldn’t be your own enemy at this time. You should be your biggest cheerleader. You should be the one showing up for yourself the most. Just showing up for yourself in small ways every day. It doesn’t have to be a giant morning routine, it’s just doing one thing that’s gonna make you feel good and being like, At least I got that done today.

Action is the biggest step of the whole process, because you have to go out and try and do things and use your hands, use your voice, do it all.

Sabrina Shay Pigg sings and raps under the name Sedusa in Sacramento, California. She moonlights in social media marketing in the beauty industry for a company that focuses on curly hair.

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