Hiking doesn’t just heal. Hiking prepares. Hiking teaches you that if you can just be strong moment after moment while suffering and sometimes scared, the payoff is coming. Relief is coming. When I spent 3 days back in the hospital shortly after brain surgery, they were the darkest days of my life. My personality was altered and I wasn’t sure I was me anymore… I felt like a shell of the woman I once was. I was in complete agony with pain from air trapped in the ventricles in my brain, a blood clot and fluid in my brain flowing again in places it had not reached in 13+ years. There were moments I was sure I was going blind as my vision was leaving me. Not to mention, the insane amount of fear I had to face leading up to the surgery. I was crying as the anesthesiologist broke down the biggest risks moments before putting me under and pleading “you have to bring me back to my little boy”. I wouldn’t be the person who could handle this without my hobby. I learned to be tough on these ...