24d • 🥳 | Wins
Not GHL related but may encourage y'all none the less
In 1953, Edmund Hillary didn't start at the mountain. He started on a road out of Kathmandu, walking toward something he couldn't yet see. The trail to Base Camp took weeks. Swaying bridges, steep ridges, heavy loads through heat and rain and thin air. Progress was slow. Some days were strong. Others just wore a man down to the bone.
I know something about that kind of walk.
It took me twelve years to lose a hundred pounds. I didn't start at the peak of anything not confidence, not clarity. I started far from where I wanted to be, carrying more than just weight. There were habits to break. Discouragement that followed me like weather. Long stretches without direction or anybody beside me saying "Woodard's never quit!"
Some years I made real progress. Pounds falling away like supplies lightened on the trail. Other times I gained it back slipping down the same path I'd worked so hard to climb. That felt like failure. It felt like losing ground. But mountaineers don't climb Everest in one straight push. They move up, come back down, rest, and go again. That isn't defeat. That's just how hard mountains work.
Hillary faced the Khumbu Icefall, unstable and shifting, liable to swallow a man whole. I faced mine too. Doubt. Comparison. The quiet question that showed up at three in the morning: why am I even doing this? He had a team beside him. I often didn't. The terrain of everyday life; stress, kids, work, heart surgery, brutal divorce, stroke. Setbacks that rose up like ridges that never seemed to end.
But I kept walking. Twelve years is a long trek. It's blistered feet and heavy breathing and starting over more times than I can count. Yet step by step, even with detours and long descents back into old habits, I moved forward.
Losing a hundred pounds wasn't one victorious moment. It was thousands of small decisions made when I was tired and discouraged and not at all sure it was worth it. The real triumph wasn't the weight left behind on the trail.
It was finding out I could endure the climb and I am hard to kill.
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Not GHL related but may encourage y'all none the less
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