I made it
When you're ready for something that's yours — this is here. ↓ a story from one of our coaches
It's how far?
I'm meeting strangers?
I have to poop where??
But she came anyway.
She was 57, with sore joints, and just enough fitness to get by, or so she thought. She didn't want to hold the group back. She didn't want to be the slow one. She didn't want to admit how much this meant to her.
The funny thing is, she was in shape. She was prepared. She didn't believe it yet.
What she really needed wasn't more training, gear, or guarantees. She needed to do it. To find out, on her own terms, who she was becoming.
She paddled. She camped. She pooped in the woods. She made the best friends she's had since grade 9. She laughed harder than she had in years. Had a Pop-Tart, pudding, made tortilla chips on a fire, and ate Tikka Masala with a spork.
And she remembered what it felt like to be excited to go outside again.
She slept in a tent and woke up in a foggy dreamscape. And one evening, she stood in silence under a wild Superior sunset, completely still, and just whispered: "I made it."
What she didn't tell the group, but told us later, was that this was the first thing she'd done entirely for herself in a long, long time. After a life event that had left her unmoored, she had made a quiet promise: not to go back to who she was, but to find out who she could be.
And that? That part made the rest of us pause.
Because this wasn't about kayaking. It wasn't about camping. It wasn't even about Lake Superior, beautiful as it is.
It was about rejecting the story she'd been told about herself. It was about shedding an old name, even if only silently. About stepping into a space that hadn't always felt built for her, and claiming it anyway. About saying yes to the version of herself that had always been there, waiting beneath the surface.
It was about realizing that a life full of experience doesn't make you fragile — it makes you powerful in ways you're not always allowed to believe.
And while she was quietly figuring that out… her coaches were watching in awe. And she had no idea.
I think about her often. There have been so many similar stories. She keeps me going. Not because of the distances paddled, but because of the distance she crossed inside herself.
It was a victory. A reclaimed narrative. A middle finger to the world's assumptions. And maybe to her own, too.