Well, well, well. It’s been nearly a year since I sat down to write anything of substance outside of website copy, emails, project proposals, and social media posts. After publishing “Living on a Prayer” following the launch of Hiking Your Feelings in March 2024, I was depleted. Writing the book took a lot out of me, launching it nearly wrecked me, but there was one sliver of hope remaining: the audiobook.

In my publishing contract, the audiobook was originally included in the deliverables along with the paperback and e-book. I had big dreams for the audiobook in line with the paperback copy - I figured if this was part of my publishing contract, then I’d definitely get to go to an actual studio to record this thing with professional sound engineers. I had seen so many social media posts from friends who are authors and authors I wish I was friends with donning studio headphones and saddled up to a fancy microphone - I was ready to have my moment. I can’t sing to save my life, so outside of media interviews and the podcasts I’ve recorded or been a guest on, this dream of being in a recording studio with someone monitoring my every word was the last iteration of my Author Journey bubble that hadn’t been popped yet.

So you can imagine my disappointment (and eventually, delight) when the publisher released my audiobook rights back to me. The dream, as I knew it, would not be happening. But this time, instead of another Living on a Prayer episode, the slot machine cash-out noises started playing in my head. This was now my biggest royalty margin, and I would earn the money as it sells, not only twice per year with my royalty payments from the publisher. If I do this right, and if we get it in front of the right listeners, and if my first audiobook was listed as one of the Best Hiking Audiobooks on Audible, THIS could be the book that pays the bills.

Well, I should probably wait a bit to record it, of course. Wouldn’t want to get ahead of myself, record it before the paperback is released, and have it all come out at the same time, now would we?

Fast forward to April 2024. Barry was working a contract in Sequoia National Park, a contract that had us separated for three weeks - the longest we’ve been apart in fourteen years together. During that time, I went up to the Bay area to keep an eye on a friend’s house and furry friends for a bit. This is the same house where I wrote Hiking My Feelings (in a week), recorded my first audiobook, developed the Blaze Your Own Trail to Self-Love program, and have shared countless memories of love and laughter with its occupants and Barry. The neutral design palette and tasteful decoration makes it a cozy place that doesn’t distract me when I find my flow.

Unfortunately, a big empty house, separated from my person, while reading the words I’ve written about the hardest chapters of my life out loud was a recipe for disaster. I had grossly underestimated just how much Barry’s presence grounds me in times of celebration and struggle.

I set up in the basement with my own equipment. The lighting choices were dark AF with no lights on, or full-on stadium-style overhead lighting. This is annoying my sensory preferences, because what I want is warm, cozy lighting. The vibe of this book is more aligned to a conversation on a couch (or trail) with a friend, so sitting at a desk that faces a blank wall in this moody darkness was not the creative energy I was looking for.

I checked the settings required by the audiobook distributor and got to work. For Hiking My Feelings, I recorded five chapters before I listened to anything and luckily, it sounded incredible. This time, I listened to the first recording before proceeding. It sounded great, so I kept going. There’s one line in the book that was impossible to write and more impossible to read - a single sentence describing how I woke up one morning to a former colleague assaulting me. I almost cut it from the manuscript, it was that unnerving to put out there. I sat, staring at my manuscript and the open recording project, and sobbed.

I cried for every version of me who never felt safe to share these stories. I cried for 2017 Sydney, who, while watching an episode of The Bachelor with Barry, finally had an invitation to set down her traumapack, feel the weight lift from her shoulders, and share the heaviest item she was carrying with the person who chooses her every day. I cried for 2018 Sydney, cruising around Norway with her father, feeling the gush of relief as she recounted this story with him for the first time, only to be met with “your story is bullshit” and the impossible choices she had to make when she decided to go no contact with the people who brought her into this world. I cried for every survivor who stuck around after an event to share their story with me, and every survivor who exited as quickly as they could after I was done speaking. I cried for the dreams I lost because of not knowing how to navigate life after trauma, for the people I hurt with my defensiveness, and for every single moment of self-doubt and shame.

I gathered up all the courage I could muster, read the Impossible Sentence, then every remaining word. When I saved the final files, I sat for a few moments to let it all sink in. Most notably, I was grateful to be done recording, and eager to hear what Barry thought whenever he sat down to edit it.

When Barry finally came back after the contract in Sequoia, we were off to the races for our Mental Health Awareness Month tour through Joshua Tree National Park, Zion National Park, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Moab, and Yosemite National Park. That tour was a Hail Mary when our original plans were scrapped mere months before the book launch, and for as frustrated as I was that there weren’t more people in attendance, I was thrilled that we had pulled it off on such a tight turnaround. Then we moved into Sequoia National Park for the summer season, where we had three of our Wilderness Wellness retreats on deck and big plans for how we could expand on the work we had been doing in the park for the past three years.

Then we got COVID. Barry doubled down and got COVID with a side of pneumonia. We were down for weeks.

Then the Coffee Pot fire started, bringing smoke into the park. Still not hiking.

Once we were feeling better after sickness and smoke, it was time to edit.

The only problem was, I messed up the settings when I recorded in April. And, there were rogue pops and clicks that had nothing to do with my mouth and everything to do with the connection between my mic and the computer or some kind of electrical interference. Now that I was in the van, in the dead silence on the edge of the Giant Forest, I could hear mechanical background noises that the house and nearby electronics were making in the recordings. There were weird warps on some of the words I was saying, and some sections where entire phrases or sentences would be garbled, as if I were recording underwater.

Knowing how disoriented I was after the recording in April, I was not looking forward to recording this again. Even though our summers in Sequoia are spent at 7,200 feet and are significantly cooler than triple-digit temperatures in Three Rivers and the Central Valley, by 11am, the van was an oven. Despite my general crankiness with the situation at hand, I was able to reframe this shit show - if it weren’t for Catalina, I wouldn’t be doing the work I’m doing now, which eventually landed me here, in a van that has great soundproofing, with all the equipment I need to record it myself. Sure, I didn’t get to have my “record your audiobook in the sound booth” moment that I had been dreaming of, but I did get to record it in the middle of the forest, with Barry present, which was way better, for so many reasons.

Somewhere, I found the motivation and I started recording again. I got the bulk of recording done before the Dark Sky Festival in September, which dovetailed into our end-of-season backpacking trip, and then we were on the road for our fall retreat and scouting season. I finished recording the final chapters here in the mountains east of San Diego, where we are based when we aren’t on the road. Barry had been editing the chapters in real time in Sequoia, so when he sat down to edit the chapters I had just completed, we had a teeeeny tiny problem. The settings he had used on the first batch of edits in Sequoia were missing, and now the audio wouldn’t match. In his workflow, he would edit out all the pops and breath sounds, apply audio settings to bring it up to spec for the distributor, then export. Unfortunately, he didn’t save a version of the edits before applying the settings, so now he was going to have to go back to my original recordings from Sequoia and start over entirely.

Did I mention that Barry has no prior experience in sound engineering and taught himself how to use Adobe Audition to edit my first audiobook? How impressive is that?!

So if April was round one, and Sequoia was round two, then this fresh start was his third pass at making these edits. This isn’t a task you can zone out on; you must be paying active attention to every single sound. Once he got the edits done, the proper settings applied, and exported the files, we uploaded them to the distributor for a tech check. The first round came back outside of the decibel parameters. So he went in, adjusted those settings, and we tried again. The files were still outside of the parameters, so Barry made another round of edits, and then we tried one more time.

GREAT SUCCESS!

Now that the files were out in the ether being distributed to a bazillion vendors that sell audiobooks, I started planning how to announce it. I went on social media and asked folks for their whackiest ideas to launch an audiobook. I went to sleep that night excited about the possibilities ahead - most notably, the opportunity to launch this in a way that was exciting, sustainable, and wouldn’t lead to a catastrophic meltdown a la 2024.

The next morning, I saw the book was available on Spotify. Welp, guess I don’t get to set the publication date. Apparently once I hit “submit” they start distributing, and now I’m at the mercy of their distribution timeline – up to 60 days for some platforms.

We went through the list of platforms where the book was being distributed and checked each one to see if it was up yet. It was slowly rolling out to platforms like Apple, Google, and Libro.fm – but no audible yet.

I haven’t been formally diagnosed with ADHD, nor do I have an official piece of paper indicating that I’m somewhere on the autism spectrum. I live with cPTSD, bouts of depression and anxiety, and it’s entirely possible that I’m entering perimenopause. But the thought spirals I found myself in completely exhausted any executive function I had remaining:

Should I announce now and say “yeah it’s not on the primary platform yet, but keep checking” and use the other additions as another excuse to share about the audiobook? Should I wait until it’s on audible? I’m pretty sure we have been shadow banned on Instagram for years at this point, is it worth writing a long caption for? I don’t know how to get out of my own way and just trust that “THE AUDIOBOOK IS HERE” is enough, so here I am, wanting to write the entire backstory because in my mind, you’ll like the book (read: me) more if you know that it wasn’t an easy process. Oh, and I haven’t sent an email to our community since we opened registration for Blaze Your Own Trail to Self-Love last week, the same day the fires started in LA. While we are safe from the fires here, we have been dealing with Santa Ana winds more than 70mph on and off since the fires started and have had our hands full helping out around the property. Is it insensitive for me to send an email about the audiobook before the fires die out? Do I need to rebrand this program in light of the fires?

After exhausting myself with that line of thinking, I gave up.

**From my heart to your ears: Hiking Your Feelings the audiobook is here!**

Listen now on Audible, Apple, Google, Barnes & Noble, Spotify and so many more as it makes its way to all the various platforms!
Whether you’re listening on a hike, during your commute, or curled up with a cup of tea, I hope this book feels like a conversation between friends—a reminder that you’re never alone.

listen now

TRAIL OF LIFE

There are a few things at play here; most notably how hard it can be to start something.

Now, we know starting something new can be scary, and that makes sense – it’s completely unknown to us. We have programs, tools, and resources to help our program participants and members of the community muster up the courage to embark on a new adventure. But the fact that I had done this before and was struggling as much as I was with this recording made me feel some type of way. You see, I built the foundation of the work we do centered around a question I asked myself before embarking on my second trek of the Trans-Catalina Trail in 2018;

What would be possible if the hike itself wasn’t the hard part?

Back then, I knew I had attempted the trail in 2016, and all signs were pointing to me being able to complete it in 2018. Sure, hiking and backpacking is physically difficult, but with all the unknowns out of the way and in a body that had been training extensively prior to the second hike (versus rolling off the couch and onto the trail in 2016), what was available to me when I was familiar enough with the trail to trust that I knew where I was going?

Well *gestures broadly* you have seen how that played out – reversing diabetes, two books, 500+ events around the US, 100+ podcast episodes recorded, notable media mentions, volunteering to conserve our most beautiful wild spaces with the community, and helping thousands of people around the world find community and healing in nature.

Revisiting things we’ve done before with the knowledge we currently carry is a powerful exercise, and for this audiobook project, in theory, I should have been over the moon. Despite having all these tools in my toolbox, a successful first audiobook under my belt, and the time, equipment, and capacity to do it again, I was stuck – frozen, really.

Can you relate?

Do you sometimes have a hard time getting motivated to do something you’ve done before? I know I have, and when the first attempt wasn’t as successful as I hoped it would be, it can be easy to get caught up in a negative loop that suggests “well, you tried before and it didn’t work out, why would you try again?” rather than, “alright! We’ve been here before, what did we learn last time and what is possible this time?”

I mean, just think of all the aspects of being human that we repeat throughout our lifetimes: we fall in love, get our hearts broken, get back out there. We go for our dream job, land it, leave that job, only to try again with our next role. We set an intention or resolution at the beginning of the year, succeed or burn out in that, only to do it all again the following January.

But what do we do when we’ve done something with great success before, and feel terrified to repeat that process? What is happening? Are we scared of success? Are we scared of being seen? Are we trying to protect ourselves from the disappointment of what might not even happen? Is it all of the above? Is it something else entirely?

My answers to those questions and your answers to those questions may be radically different, but much like how we’ve all survived our worst days and are still here to talk about it, if we’re asking the questions, we’re moving in the right direction.

MINDFUL MILES

When you find yourself staring down the starting line of a new opportunity, take a few moments to reflect on these questions:

Have I done this before? If so, make a list of what went well, what you could improve, and how you would improve it. Reminding yourself of what you’ve already achieved, your capacity to reflect on it, and the opportunity to improve this time is a powerful first step to getting the thing done.
What is my intention for doing this? Sometimes, when we feel stuck, it has less to do with our capacity to do the damn thing, and more to do with our motivations for doing it. Add in neurodivergence, demand avoidance, varying levels of executive function, trauma, chronic illness, the state of late-stage capitalism and the world at large – there are a lot of things competing for our time and attention. Get clear on your intention and the “why” behind the “what” and see how your energy shifts.
What do I need to feel comfortable getting started? Sometimes when I sit down to write, I have to make website edits, check emails, send invoices, and text a friend before my mind is “clear” to write. It’s all part of the process now, but I used to hold myself hostage, berating myself for not being able to simply sit down and let the words flow. What do you need to get started? How long has it been since you last ate? Have you been outside today? Do you need a nap? How about a hug?

NEXT STEPS

I mentioned that not having Barry around when I was attempting my first recording in April was difficult for me. I’ve also hinted at neurodivergence being part of this. Over the past few years, four of the women closest to me have been diagnosed with ADHD or Autism. These women are also in their late-30’s to early 50’s and have lived an entire life wondering why they feel like they’re living life on Hard Mode for decades. As I hear more about their experiences after diagnosis, and as I get more familiar with the symptoms related with each, I feel this warm sensation of remembering wash over me. The same way I remembered that the last time I felt as good as I did on that TCT trek in 2018 was before my assault. It’s a knowing of sorts. Sometimes, I get full-body goosebumps when they discover that what they previously thought was a personality flaw is actually a symptom of their neurodivergence.

I haven’t been diagnosed yet, but the more I learn, the more I want to pursue it. Over the past seven years, I’ve been looking at my life through the lens of trauma, wondering why I was still feeling like life was on Hard Mode if I’ve addressed the things I’ve endured. If I look at the audiobook project through the lens of neurodivergence, I see:

Barry not being around = I don’t have my body double, so it’s harder for me to get motivated and I don’t have someone to offer physical comfort in the form of a hug or cuddle, so it takes longer for me to self-soothe and regulate when I get activated.
My exhausting thought spirals = executive dysfunction. I’m so lost in the loop, I can’t make choices.
The way I snap whenever I’m writing and a noise interrupts me, or the lights aren’t right, or my tag is itchy, or I’m tracking several different conversations around me but unable to focus on the one I’m having = sensory sensitivities

All of which is to ask, through which lenses are you looking at your life? If you’ve been pursuing healing in the lens of trauma and feel like you’ve already unpacked your traumapack and there’s nothing left to discover – is it possible that this is something else entirely? Do your symptoms overlap with those of a mental disorder or physical disease? If you’ve done some deep inner work to navigate difficult chapters of your life and have come to terms or made peace with what you’ve endured, is it possible that you’re white-knuckling these stories because they’re familiar and comfortable? If so, what would it feel like to let them go to make room for what’s next? With the space you’ve created, what do you hope fills it up? What kinds of stories do you want to tell now that you’ve transformed that pain into power?

LISTEN to hiking your feelings NOW!