Hypoxic Hiking & Other Lessons in Belonging

I feel like a broken record of women all over the world when I say: I have a terrible history of even acknowledging I have needs, let alone identify them, list them, then SHOCKINGLY put my needs on my calendar… but HUZZAH! Last Friday I was able to do just that! I actually reached out to my women’s social group I created, to ask if any other women would join me for a hike. I mean, shit… I moved to Asheville from Cincinnati, OH June of 2024 and I have not harnessed the power of these Blue Ridge Mountains, the reason I moved in the first place. I also have been shit at asking to be seen and supported since moving here. The fear of rejection is playing out in my mind constantly, like a horror movie on repeat and its amazing how moving to an area when you know no one, is the perfect stage for this nightmare.

I was blessed that two women wanted to join me. I struggle with being nervous going out alone in this new area, the underpinnings of fear from my grandmother’s murder, when I was just 15 years old.  There was a conflicting feeling of feeling safety from people wanting to go with me  and the simultaneous risk that when they spend time with me, I’ll be rejected for who I am and how I see the world.

It was a misty day, dreary, foreboding and rich, brooding, and emotional; which absolutely mimics my internal experience of the world.  Three of us set out on the Mountains to Sea Trail and with a pit in my stomach, and the need to ground in these mountains. It's amazing how being so out of shape you can’t breath helps you win the battle between mind and body. I couldn’t ignore the feeling of my lungs inverting because holy balls, that was straight the hell uphill and they were definitely more “hiking fit” than I was.       

But that’s what I was taught from a narcissistic Mother, right? COMPARISON.  How do you size up? Are you better or worse than them? Fit in at all costs even at the expense of your self acceptance because nothing is more important than your image. I look back laughing at that hike now because apparently not being able to breath walking uphill (both ways I know it, lol) tends to override my image managing skills because to my horror, less than half way up, I had to stop due to breathlessness. Oh the horror being “less than” fit!

And something brilliant happened in this struggle.  I got to learn so much from one strong brash, bold woman (who I called my audible book) while I was going painfully hypoxic.  The other woman was kind and cared about my experience and didn’t put me down for being “less than”. After that small break she kept checking in with my experience and I felt seen. Without putting myself out there, fitness shit show and all, how could I know women were this wise and kind and accepting?

This is what’s called beneficial stress (Hello, Dopamine!).  There was stress that led to a payoff.  Hypoxic Hiking = beautiful view. Putting yourself out there = feeling seen. Most of the people I talk with only know the toxic type of stress, the one that has you circling the drain, with no end in foreseeable sight. That’s how female relationships have felt like for me.  Toxic, deep, swirling, negative emotions that I always felt to blame for.  

Fortunately the hike was mostly downhill on the way back.  After the hike up, I felt more safety, which really means I felt like I belonged more. We can relearn the path back to each other and that all women or people will not reject us.  That if we track glimmers, or said differently “anti-triggers”, we can see people who actually do like us, care for us, pour into us.  When relationships have been a source of pain and trauma, we can get caught only tracking the people who hate us, missing those who love us and accept us just as we are.

Relationships heal.  Feminine Energy Heals.  Feminine Community supports people like me, who can always make the case we don’t belong. It amazing how one lung inverting hike, can take this out of shape wanna be hiker from not being sure I belonged at the table of female community, into knowing that in some way, I have my seat and my part to play in community. 

So do the damn thing.  Ask a friend to go to coffee.  Join a women’s connection event. Start a book club and sit back and track the glimmers.  The moment of acceptance. Care. Or even clarity of how you should have been treated better.  Women heal women.  I know it.