Hi! Hope everybody is having a marvelous August. It’s flown by here. I’m looking forward to being back next week, but am popping on here to let you know I have a piece up on Medium today, Navigating by the Stars. It’s about the 1998 trip to Kilimanjaro that I took with my then-new-boyfriend Matt, and about the lessons that began to dawn on me as we climbed slowly to the summit. I’m still learning those lessons.
I hope you’ll click over and read my piece. I’d love to hear what you think.
Photo of the summit of Kilimanjaro taken from our campsite two nights before, June 1998.
Beautiful piece Lindsey! I am currently reading Debora Spar’s book Wonder Women and thinking about the “achievement path” (or “aim for perfection” as Spar refers to it) that I followed through the early part of my life. It never seemed like the wrong way then and in fact was invigorating to me, but motherhood and “real” adult life doesn’t seem to follow a clean path. Several unchartered paths have dictated my life over the last few years (third child, husband starting a new company, cross country move, my new job search) and I am finding myself more excited to navigate these paths than to have stayed status quo. I am embracing the flexibility that I believe is required to parent well and to respond to the curve balls life throws us. I am chasing new opportunities (or obstacles) with less stress and more energy, more childlike unabashed optimism – why wouldn’t this work out well? Maybe it’s Silicon Valley rubbing off on me, but when I see entrepreneurs dive into a dream, something positive comes out even if the result does’t look like the original idea. Risk is good and the learning is always valuable.
I loved Spar’s book and felt similarly inspired by it (though also a little depressed and challenged). I love to hear your optimism!! xoxox
Great article. My family just climbed Kilimanjaro. Your words took me right to the side of that frigid mountain. I wish I could learn how to better trust, go with the flow, and just follow the stars.
“Something unfurled inside of me as I imagined, for the first time, a life navigated by something less concrete than the map the world had presented me with.” So much in this idea. Beautifully expressed.
Heading over!