Embark on an emotional rollercoaster with Amy as she recounts her journey of overcoming struggles and discovering self-love. From contemplating suicide to finding solace in nature, Amy's story is one of resilience and empowerment. Don't miss out on this powerful tale - hit subscribe to follow Amy's remarkable journey from darkness to light!
🥾 To learn more about Hike Like A Woman visit https://www.hikelikeawoman.com
🎤 To book me to speak at your event contact my team at hi@hikelikeawoman.com
🗻 To join me for an in-person adventure visit https://www.hikelikeawoman.com
🌍 We recommend World Nomads for travel insurance. To shop travel insurance through our affiliate links visit here: https://www.worldnomads.com/travel-insurance?utm_source=6442044&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Affiliate&utm_content=quick_quote
★ Buy rad HLAW swag here: https://hikelikeawoman.creator-spring.com/
Embark on an emotional rollercoaster with Amy as she recounts her journey of overcoming struggles and discovering self-love. From contemplating suicide to finding solace in nature, Amy's story is one of resilience and empowerment. Don't miss out on this powerful tale - hit subscribe to follow Amy's remarkable journey from darkness to light!
🥾 To learn more about Hike Like A Woman visit https://www.hikelikeawoman.com
🎤 To book me to speak at your event contact my team at hi@hikelikeawoman.com
🗻 To join me for an in-person adventure visit https://www.hikelikeawoman.com
🌍 We recommend World Nomads for travel insurance. To shop travel insurance through our affiliate links visit here: https://www.worldnomads.com/travel-insurance?utm_source=6442044&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Affiliate&utm_content=quick_quote
★ Buy rad HLAW swag here: https://hikelikeawoman.creator-spring.com/
Amy is so inspiring and I'm going to go ahead and let her share her story with you. I'm going to put a trigger warning before we dive into the show. She does talk about an attempt to end her life. Her story is inspirational. It's tragic, but it's also beautiful, and I hope you will continue listening. Please enjoy my conversation with Amy. Amy, you on your website, you wrote that you used to I have to look at it used to define yourself as a fat girl who could do for other people. Correct. Tell me what this means.
Speaker 2:So 2019, it was probably the lowest point of my life emotionally, mentally, physically, my family situation and teaching. This was pre-pandemic and kind of just coming to terms with who I was, what I stood for. But I was at a pretty low point and had made some plans to end my own life. The last time that I tried it, I swerved my car, changed my plans at the last hot minute and came home and called my doctor and said I need help. This is not okay. And so I got the help that I needed the medicine that I needed, the therapy referral that I needed, the referral for weight loss surgery, the weight loss management clinic that I realized at the time that I needed. I was at the highest weight I ever ever was, and so over the course of like that next year, taking the time to heal, to let medicine work in my brain, therapy, work with my heart and my head and literally working with doctors and therapists and things because it takes a good five months to get the approval for gastric bypass surgery, because they want to make sure you're a viable candidate and in that year I started taking on new things. That was the first time that I ever and I will, I promise I'm getting to your question. Uh, that was the first time I really discovered what the outdoors could do to a person's brain.
Speaker 2:That, um, my oldest daughter literally dragged me out of bed one day and said nope, you need to be by water. We're going to the Mississippi River. I'm like I don't want to drive three hours. I just I don't feel like sitting in a car. She's like you need to be by something bigger than you, you need to, you need to get out of it. So she dragged me to Lake Michigan instead, because we're only an hour away. Yeah, park that starts on a bluff overlooking the lake and if you're familiar with the Great Lakes, it feels like you're standing at the ocean and this little cedar rainforest I call it that kind of goes down all these steps and I just something tripped in my brain and I just took to how healing that was and how I was doing that for me, not for anybody else, but I was out there for me.
Speaker 2:And what a reset that could do so in that next year, when I really took to hiking, even tried kayaking, fell in the Tennessee river, but I tried it and I didn't think that my body could literally fit in a kayak at the time, so, like I never even tried that, and finding all these things that I could do for me, I really started evaluating why, if I'm doing this for me now, why didn't I do it before? What have I been doing before and why have I been doing it? I sat down and evaluated how I was spending my time, what kind of relationships were in my life, what did I think about myself and what was that dialogue feeding it. I ended up brainstorming so much that that was the first book that I wrote is a memoir of my own journey through that process and after surgery and figuring out in that next year I lost 135 pounds. I've kept it off since then and finding all of these activities.
Speaker 2:And how did I? How did I identify myself? And so that memoir is part memoir, part workbook for anybody else who's trying to rebrand themselves and figure out who it was. And so through that process I realized that for all those years I thought in my head whether it was true or not. I thought in my head there's no way somebody could love me for me. It must be because of what I'm doing for them. And so that comes back to that question of fat girl doing for others. I'm like there's no this, this is just this. Like there's no way that anybody actually loves me for me. It has to be what I'm doing for them, and and I part of it is because I noticed when I stopped doing some things for some people, the relationship was gone.
Speaker 1:I've come to terms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've come to terms with that now, but at the time I you know, back in 2019, I saw that as a weakness on my part. Now I recognize that is their issue. Yeah, mine, I don't serve on that committee anymore because it doesn't feed who I want to be and where I'm going with my goals. And suddenly I'm no longer friends with anybody on that committee. Like huh, I thought we were. We were actually friends, turns out we were just doing the work together. Good, got it Noted, thank you. And so that's a long way to get around to your question. But that's what I saw of myself, not in a way to shame myself or to make them feel bad. I don't call anybody out in that book. I just simply say like this is now what I've learned and that's okay because I need to move forward for me and I can't just sit and be upset about those relationships. That's just what I needed. Then I'm moving on. You know that's what I needed then I'm moving on.
Speaker 1:Not, you know, that's that's where that comes from. I have. I have three questions that came to my mind as you were talking. You say you were driving the car and you swerved at the last minute and you saved your own life. What, what if? If you're comfortable saying this and you might not be in, that's okay, but what? What caused you to swerve at?
Speaker 2:the last, my daughters and my sister.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I'm about to cry, like this is I was.
Speaker 2:I was planning I don't know if you want to include that I was planning to drive into a telephone pole. Um, I think I always I was planning I don't know if you want to include that I was planning to drive into a telephone pole. I think I always thought I'm like, knowing my luck, I'm going to hurt somebody else and I'll be fine, and that's that's the worst part of it all. But but it was the thought of my sister, and my daughters are going to have to clean up this mess and I don't want that for them more than I don't want this right now.
Speaker 1:And I. That's what caused me to swerve that swerve, though it feels like that swerve completely swerved your life.
Speaker 2:It did, because the first thing I did when I went home was call and leave a message for my doctor, because I knew if my, if my love for them was greater than than my love for myself, then I had to do the next thing. And the next thing wasn't just to sit home and be upset or make them feel guilty. I mean, they didn't really know at the time, but if I was going to take that step to help them, I had to take the next step to help them, and that next step was helping me. I'm so proud of you, thank you.
Speaker 1:I am too. Yeah, because you swerved and then you, and then you took the steps which are not easy steps to completely change your life and change especially how you felt about yourself.
Speaker 2:And I grew up in a church, in a community in a time in the 80s where, you know, therapy wasn't really talked about. I grew up in a situation where it was like God is all you need, you don't need other people. And then I wondered like well then why do we have other people around and why did God make other people? And huh, you know, but that wasn't talked about and like mental health wasn't talked about in the 80s, and my mom was just like you're fine, just smile more, you're fine. And so, yeah, so making that call to a doctor and say I need help and then for him to say you need therapy, medicine, this referral, I'm like, okay, whatever you say I need, yes, that's what we're going to do next and that's kind of what my brand, strong Girls Travel, is all about is doing the brave, intimidating thing. It doesn't have to mean solo travel, it doesn't have to mean climbing these things. Sometimes it just means swerving. Sometimes it just means calling your doctor and doing the brave, intimidating thing.
Speaker 1:I, um, I'm a veteran and I I had a friend who was dealing with PTSD and and I and I took that friend and I drove him to the VA and to the mental health clinic and helped him get what he needed and it was a long struggle to come out of that dark, sad I don't want to be here anymore place. So, thank you, and you talked about kind of some people pleasing tendencies that you had. That may have contributed to how you were feeling about this. Have you been able to like overcome that? As a recovering people pleaser myself, what does your journey look like?
Speaker 2:Well, first, you say recovering and I feel like that's an everyday thing. Like every day I have to make a choice. Okay, good, so I'm not alone in that. Like it's a constant. It's a constant. I don't want to let people down. Well, right, and now that I've kind of rebranded myself and what I do with my time, and you know it's, I have to be careful. Even my husband says you know you're doing. Maybe you need to weigh what you're doing. And yes, it's a nonprofit and they've got a project and it's all good work and it's important work. But do you?
Speaker 2:have to do every little part, or do you have to spend this much time? Can you pick a day a week and just dedicate you know to that, rather than jumping on every? And it's. It's hard, so how, I don't know how I overcome. I make sure I keep talking. I can't keep stuff in my head because that's not always the safest space. My husband is a very amazing supporter of how I use my time these days. He's come a long way. We've come a long way because mental health wasn't something he knew how to talk about then either, and now he says I'm not making that mistake again. Let's talk about how you're spending your time. How is it fulfilling you? How is it helping you move forward?
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm so glad he's in your life, yeah, and has that perspective. Yes, yeah, you were a teacher and you're a writer. How has this kind of pivot in your life occurred? Yeah, pivot.
Speaker 2:That's a good word. I took on rebrand last year as my word.
Speaker 2:I think with a lot of those I say like passion-driven industry, so teaching, nursing, military, even right, it's, it's, it's a thing of like this is who I am, so that's what I'm going to go do. And the idea of the idea of not doing that anymore, I really struggle. I'm like, well then. Well, if I'm not a teacher, then what am I? Yes, my husband said he saw on the Walmart parking lot a license plate that says ex-teacher. And he's like it really is does become part of your identity when I'm retired.
Speaker 2:I am not putting ex-IT manager on my license plate. He's like it's a job. I'm like, yeah, these jobs that are callings, they turn into something else. So for a long time I tried to. I taught well, middle school and high school off and on for the last 22 years, but seventh grade for the last eight, and so over those last few years I taught all day and I was like I'm going to, I'm going to make this happen, I'm going to write these books. I had this idea back in 2019, 2020. But I had no creative energy left at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so then I would spend summers writing, editing, sending pitches to literary agents and publishers, and got nowhere. And then school would pick back up and it would fall off again and finally got to the point where, you know, I loved teaching Seventh, eighth, ninth grade is my sweet spot and I told my husband when I got this last job, I'm like this is it, I'm going to be here till I died. And then I told him I didn't think it would kill me this soon I have to. And I loved it until I didn't anymore and needed to get it. And so then it was pretty easy to make the change and say I'm not going to teach you, I'm going to do this full time. We're fortunate in my home that we're all we're this close to being empty nesters and we recently sold our house and we're in an apartment waiting to build. So financially we're like this is this is good timing, let's take the risk, let's, let's pursue this and see if we can make it happen.
Speaker 1:I, I, I love this because I try not to live my life in shoulds Like, oh, I should have done this, or I should have taken advantage of that opportunity, or I should have. You're not doing shoulds, You're saying I'm doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a 22-year-old daughter the one who pulled me out of bed. She's a seasonal worker and so she goes and works outside Glacier National Park for four months, then down by Grand Canyon and then up in upstate in the Adirondacks, and she's really good. She tells me all the time mom, don't should on yourself. Yeah, yeah, need or want. You need or want to do something. Should comes from somebody else's expectations of you and not from you, so I work hard to be reminded of that. So Strong Girls Travel.
Speaker 2:How did you come up with national parks as the background for your books and why is that important and special to you?
Speaker 2:Um, so in 2021, when that oldest kid was her first stint out at her first yes, her first stint out at glacier national park, um, a friend of mine whose husband had just passed away, she and I are like we're gonna. We're gonna do a girl's trip, and so I took my other daughter, her two daughters and two girls who were they were all in the same friend group were like let's go out to montana and visit annie. And strong women can travel. We can do this, and I had recently moved out of the house because I thought that that needed to happen at the time. Well, it did need to happen at the time, um, so I'd recently moved out. She was recently widowed. We're like strong women can do this, and we named our little group chat strong women travel, and we caravaned out toacier, and so that's that's where the name ended up coming from was that, but we were we were sitting on a roadside wall in Glacier and I have this picture on my website, on my my author page.
Speaker 2:Actually we're sitting there and I was sitting there with a cup of coffee, just immersed in the mountains, and noticing how over here looked like sunrise, gorgeous morning, and over here looked like a storm was rolling in and and I've never felt so small in my entire life and like all of these problems that I thought I had. Mind you, this is summer of 2021. I just had my surgery in December of 2020. So I hadn't even I hadn't even healed yet. I was still figuring out what I could do, who I was, I hadn't written that memoir book, so it was all still floating around in this noggin.
Speaker 2:And I remember sitting out in Glacier on this roadside wall thinking I just all of the problems I think I had. They're just so small and I need to be in the moment and realize, like this huge thing that these girls and I just did by trekking across the country. I've never done a road trip like that without my husband or my dad. I always felt like girls can only do this if they're with a man and do it myself. And, um, and sitting on that wall. I thought I want I want every girl to realize like she could do things and it's not we can, we can, we can do it Like I want every little girl to like be here and it's not we can, we can, we can do it Like. I want every little girl to like be here and realize like how, how important it is to just get out there and figure out what you.
Speaker 2:So that's where the idea came from of like writing in national about national parks, and the strong women travel trip turned into strong girls travel children's books. Originally I was going gonna do state parks because I soon set a goal to adventure at all of our probably have like 72 state parks, recreational areas and forests in wisconsin. I want to adventure at all of them, um, in a year and a half. And so I did that and then I was gonna write books about it and I was like this is bigger than Wisconsin. Like who's going to buy these in Wisconsin? Who? Who cares about you know? So? So then it that's kind of where the idea came from and how it all morphed.
Speaker 1:You talk a little bit about imposter syndrome and talk to me about this because you're a teacher turned author. In your mind you're thinking is this going to work?
Speaker 2:I can't do this Right.
Speaker 1:Are people going to want to read my stories, mm-hmm. How have you dealt with imposter syndrome and do you still deal with it Every single day?
Speaker 2:And some days I feel I can beat it and some days I don't. But I've decided not to let that stop me from getting up the next day and seeing what kind of battle I'm going to have for the day. Yeah, there are days where I get up I'm like I should have, I shouldn't have quit teaching, I should have stayed there. And again, that's that should Right. And I'm like, nope, that's what other people say, other people, you're so good at it, you need to stay. And so then I think, yeah, I should have. They're right. Like, no, that's not my story anymore and I have a new story for myself.
Speaker 2:And some days I think who cares about these books? It's my first. One is at Indiana Dunes. Those of you on the west side of the Mississippi probably don't even know thing exists, these shifting sand dunes on Lake Michigan and with oak savannas growing out of them. Like we've got cool stuff over here and you know people think national parks. They jump to the big ones out west and um, and I've intentionally chosen to do the east side of the Mississippi parks first to bring awareness that direction. And uh, yeah, like who cares about Indiana? So I do that a lot.
Speaker 2:I fight it every single day the work. Oh, what's the name of? Do the Work is the name of the book. I can't remember the author. Oh, I'll look it up. Yeah, it's the same guy who wrote the Legend of Bagger Vance. Oh really, yeah, that's a fiction book. But he has a couple of books and his book, called Do the Work, is all about fighting imposter syndrome and it's so good and it's a quick read because some pages are literally only a sentence long and so, like I have done things where I literally open a book, open that book to a page and just leave it sitting on my desk while I work around it, so that my eyes keep walking past the page and reminding myself like, do the work? And how fear, um, resistance, that's the word. Resistance holds us, keeps us back, and how to fight that resistance. And very helpful book don't you feel?
Speaker 1:I? I kind of feel like every one of us here on the planet has something really special and really remarkable, but most of the time we can't even see what's so special or so remarkable because we're so busy telling ourselves I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not fit enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not, I don't have enough money. And I, I feel like you have done the work. You, you dove deep into your soul and you're doing it.
Speaker 2:I'm doing it. It doesn't mean I don't struggle, like yeah, I don't want to come across as like I figured it out, I know how to do it. I'm there. I'm there, I am just grateful for eyeliner and some, you know, and that's all I, that's all I can do. And there are other days my husband will come home and he's like how would you get done? And like this is it. You're looking at it. I'm on the couch with a book and my yarn and like that's just the end of the story today. But I think, having grace with ourselves too, and not letting one bad moment, one bad feeling, even one bad day, dictate the rest of it, you know of it, you know?
Speaker 2:Do you think that your experience as a teacher and as a mother, prepared you to give these books to the universe. Absolutely, the mom in me is completely inspired by my own kids and watching them overcome you name it and still work on overcoming. My youngest is a senior in high school and getting ready, you know, to graduate, and just watching them grow and change and how different they are has given me so many story ideas. I still will never understand how three children raised by the same two people, their whole lives, can be so different. So true, so true.
Speaker 1:I look at my children and it's the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll never understand Like any any kids in in any home, like you all were. How did you what? Um, yeah, and. And teaching has taught me to be humble, because you have to when you're with seventh graders. They are real quick to point out how you screwed up. Um and uh.
Speaker 2:And I've had to learn to be humble and to take criticism. And when I give my story to people, not everybody's going to love it, that's okay. And even hiring an editor the first time I hired an editor, I was talking to a coach that I hired at the time to help me through the self-publishing process and I'm like it's fine. Like I was an English teacher, I know what I'm doing. She goes trust me, you're going to want this and I'm so glad I did because it turned. The story took a total turn. The story published now is not the first story that I wrote and it's so much better because of my editor's work and even I even I paid extra for the line edits I'm like I don't need to. Grammar is what I did and I'm so glad I did because there were some like yeah, I've had to learn to be humble with it, with teaching and yeah this process and I think sometimes we're so close to our own project that it's hard to step away.
Speaker 1:But we can't. We can't see those, those things that are so glaring and so obvious to other people. Those things that are so glaring and so obvious to other people? Exactly yeah, humility is huge, like in any aspect in life. I I can't wait to read the books. I'm curious what? What kind of advice would you give to someone who may be thinking I need to make a change in my life, I need to rebrand, I need to pivot, I need to. Where I'm at right now is not, it's not being my true, authentic self, it's not sharing what. I feel like I'm compelled to share. What? What piece of advice would you give to someone who might be feeling the start of that, but but thinking like I can't do it Because it's really big?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and hard yeah. Um, looking back now, the best thing I did for myself, um, I was never a new year's resolution person, because as a teacher, the start of the year ends in September, not January. I lived my life in academic calendars, my whole life. So this 2024 was the first January. I was like, really, this is what this feels like. Huh, I could, I could get on board with this, or like jump on the solstice or something.
Speaker 2:But, um, looking back now, the absolute best thing I did for myself was I sat down. Happened to be January 2nd or something, it doesn't matter, but I sat down. Happened to be January 2nd or something, it doesn't matter. But I sat down and I wrote out okay, a year from now, this is what I want my life to look like. And then I made that big picture like this is what I would love, right, this is what I want it to look like.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, now, in order to make this happen, what do I have to do in the meantime? And then I broke that down to smaller, like, well, I'm going to have to look into this, I'm going to have to, you know, inquire about this, I'm gonna have to sign up for this, and like the logistics of what I had to do, yeah, and then, um, I even then I went you can do that. And you can stop right there and like what do I need to do and do this? Do the work that we need to to meet the goals, right, yeah, I'm a bit neurotic list maker, and so I broke it down even smaller and I bought a planner that works in 30 day chunks, and so every 30 days I have a different goal.
Speaker 1:And then are you grabbing your commit 30 right now. We're kindred spirits here. I'm the same way.
Speaker 2:Yes. So I had my 30 day goals and then every Saturday morning or Sunday of the calendar, I look at my week and look back at my goals and say, okay, this is what I need to get done this month. How, what time am I going to build in this week to make it happen? And, you know, break it down as small as as you want to, as you need to, but looking forward to a year. And then it was interesting because this last I just did that at the beginning of 23, knowing that I was getting ready to leave teaching. And then at the beginning of this year, I look back at that and I was like, oh so, all of these, I wanted it to look different. And it looked different not totally like I thought it would in January of 23. I had written down like other options I could do for work. None of those ended up happening because an opportunity popped up in August I never would have seen coming.
Speaker 1:You're right. It's funny how the universe works like that Exactly.
Speaker 2:And it's always going to be something in a scenario you don't think of, but I think, looking forward to say, okay, a year from now or six months from now, whatever, I want my life to look like this, great. Now, what do I actually have to do to make that happen? And then doing it and holding yourself accountable, doing it. You have to do the work, yes, and if it's a little step, that's fine. Steps are meant to be little. I mean, no baby starts running a marathon, right, like we have to take little steps first and it's okay and it's scary to take little steps.
Speaker 1:But I think every time we take a little step we gain the courage to take another little step or a bigger step. Yes, I love that you said that, because it's it's it's scary to take the step, but when you take the first step, it becomes easier to take the second step. Exactly, yeah, that's so beautiful, amy, it's been so fun talking to you. Where can we get your books and where can we find you online?
Speaker 2:So Strong Girls Travel stronggirlstravelcom. Or, by the same, strong Girls Travel on Facebook, instagram, tiktok. I'm working on a Pinterest right now putting some boards together for like hiking ideas and national park travel ideas and putting that together. Now, um, books are on amazon. You can also link them through or they're linked through my website, but, um, most of the books are on amazon. So strong girls travel. Aj's adventures at indiana dunes is the first in the children's book series and that one is out last november. The second one is aj's plans at mammoth cave in kentucky. Oh, so that one's coming out in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:I'm going to make my boys read them.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I was at an event last weekend and I've had lots of we'll say older women walk by and say, oh, I don't have any girls in the family, just boys. And I said, well, boys can learn, girls can be strong too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think maybe boys need to know that more than girls, and especially early right. Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's literature that is needed for our children, so yeah, yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 2:Hopefully the books spur more interest in the parks, because I didn't mention this, but we actually don't have a character pictured in the story. Um, partly because by default I would write, I would have drawn a little white girl and I want anybody to be able to read and imagine themselves at the park. So my illustrator actually took my photos from the park and turned them into artwork for the book, so that the park is showcased as illustrations in the book and not a little character. So the story is told through AJ's eyes, through her perspective, but the pictures are all Parker.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining me today. If you want to learn more about Hike Like a Woman, and if you want to check out our adventure trips, if you want to learn more about our YouTube channel or just hang out with us on the podcast, be sure to like and subscribe. This is Rebecca signing out. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time.