My mental health and climbing

I owe my life to climbing, or at least my sanity. It saved me when I was struggling with and then recovering from a cult. It happened that yoga and climbing came simultaneously into my life. 

The Ukrainian Federation of Yoga is a self-proclaimed pretentious organization with all the sh*t of cults: secrecy, hierarchy, moral and sexual abuse, a charismatic, authoritarian leader, isolation of members, intense indoctrination, and an "us-vs-them" mentality. I wouldn’t call it extremely dangerous, like groups that end in mass suicides or sex trafficking, but there was at least one fatal incident during seminars, and lots of ruined families and damaged lives.

Only a decade after leaving, I’ve actually realized that it was a proper cult, although I did have some doubts after a year there. I just came across a Facebook post from one of the so-called ‘gurus’ I used to admire. I saw how stupid it was and how deeply manipulative. It was odious and nauseating.  

I am glad that I couldn’t get high or deep into it, and the only person I brought into it was my ex-husband. I reached out to him, and he seems okay, also staying in it since then. But many people, myself included, were deeply affected. 

It lasted 4 years. I lost my family and my circle of school friends, like it was all my decisions and my will, but it’s just how it works. I did lots of experimentation on myself and different practices. I ended up deeply depressed, I gained weight, I lost my periods, and I was literally going crazy.

I didn’t know what to do, but I kept seeking a connection. I’d go to everyone I knew, stay at their homes, behave weirdly. After a summer in Chernivtsy, I returned to Kharkiv and went to Vinnytsia, determined to live with Igor, with whom I spent just one weekend. I packed my backpack. It was huge for me. I threw some things out of it at the railway station in Kyiv. We met in Buky. I was so weak from all that craziness, but I still fought through some routes whenever I could use my relentlessness. 

After Vinnitsa I went back to Kharkiv, asked the so-called ‘guru’ what to do, but I was already fit enough to decline his advice, which actually contradicted everything said before.

I found another person who survived such a thing. It was just hearing: you are not alone. You are normal. It’s okay to look for your own way, even in a strange and messy way. And when I felt accepted, I immediately felt my connection with climbing. I went to my ‘mother gym’. I forgot to take money, but the bus driver didn’t mind me going for free. I couldn’t do half a dozen moves while traversing the vertical wall, but I was at home regaining my power and my mind. 

 

I am a fighter

 This weekend was homely and cozy. We climbed at our local facilities. First day, it was bouldering in our hard-core long-term-projecting boulder gym in Wiesen. The second day we climbed in Stange for the first time. It's a rather small wall for climbing mostly toprope. And I remembered why I love climbing routes so much. I can often really give it all on a go. It becomes a real fight and I like this state of mind the most.

I'm just a fighter, a f*cking fighter. 

That's all.

And we stocked up on firewood last week.

Val di Sadole, Ziano di Fiemme: first meeting

We discovered another interesting and actually much more kids-friendly boulder area in less than two hours of driving from us. It has two names: Val di Sadole or Ziano di Fiemme. There are two free guidebooks for the area: in German and Italian. It's more summer area, so we were freezing cold there and the session was very shot; however, the friction was excellent.

It is mostly bouldering on holes of different sizes. We stopped at the 3 and 4 boulders in the sector Malga. There were plenty of warming-up routes without an exact grade. We climbed a couple and decided that they were somewhat about 5b. 

Then it was 6a with a controversial and not-so-easy start. I did the start first but then fell. 

I tried another 6a several times, but then Kostya discovered in the guidebook new lines on boulder 4, which we'd missed and so I tried the start of nice 7a. Then I tried another 6a and it was time to hurry up to our van because of the school tomorrow. 

It was charming day after a night almost without sleeping. There were so many fellings inside me boiling. And I was angry and disappointed that I couldn't sleep before a day of bouldering outside. That I wouldn't be able to do anything and to enjoy our climbing day. But everything was put together and I did enjoyed the day. We even played with snow a little bit.

Once upon a time, I used to create chaos in my life on my own

There actually was a time I used to create chaos in my life on my own. And I was good at it. I am not alone now. I love climbing and I love my children and that increases the degree of chaos significantly. Every visit to a gym or a climbing area has become a quest. Our nearest gym isn't a modern venue but rather is a kind of Tyrolean keller with an astonishing mountain view. One has to be really psyched to train there. And I like it. I like its long-term projects and the loneliness of climbing alone, but now there are at least two of us in the gym every time I climb. 

Once upon a time during holidays, I came there with two kids being already tired and hungry, trying to calm them both down. At this point, it seems to me that I am not able to want anything. But once I start climbing I get that feeling that outweighs all efforts to get there. Even if in the end it is not so much of climbing. 

And it also happens that I can come early in the morning only with the baby who calmly plays or stays on the soft mat near a soft cube. And I have all time in the world for climbing but I am almost blacking out due to the lack of sleep. So I climb, a little bit, just to move around and get on going. Just to not injure myself, which is my priority.

Sometimes it feels like climbing. You leisurely have breakfast and get ready. Then you convince your primary schooler that today is your turn to have fun and you want to go to the gym. When you get there, he goes to the playground. The baby falls asleep for a while, and you climb your 6c project, which actually is a big deal in the gym with a year-long lasting route setting. 

The long story short, the focus is the key that helps navigate in this chaos. As well as, avoiding unnecessary pressure. I failed the last with the first baby. I felt like I had to train whenever I had a free minute. Then I felt like I didn’t want anything at all. Then I got tired, injured, sick and didn’t want anything even more. I drank a lot of coffee with treats to replenish my battery but it didn’t work. I need something more complicated and fulfilling in order to do so. Now I try to find my balance in a greater degree of chaos. And I’ve become better at it.

Here are some tips on how to climb with kids:

1. Keep the main focus, which should shrink to one thing, climbing a little bit and seeing how it goes.

2. Have a plan for what to do, especially for warming up. It’s tempting to skip this part, but you can also consider it as a part of training with some specific focus and some exercises. The key is to stay injury-free as best as you can. It’s easy to follow some structure when you get constantly distracted and your inner voice is overwhelmed with all the screams and cries from the outside.

3. It’s better to pack your things beforehand. It’s better to pack your things at all. You can climb without chalk because there are plenty of it on holds. You can climb even without your climbing shoes, turning it into the practice of arm-climbing or mastering your technique.

4. Don’t forget to pack snacks and toys for kids. It’s even more important. However, you can turn anything into a toy: a chalk bag, a climbing shoe, some training equipment etc.

5. You can go on with whatever you haven’t forgotten to pack. 

6. Choose a time when there is no one in the gym or cooperate with your friends or other parents. 

7. Don’t be upset when nothing is going according to your plan. Maybe you just need a little more rest. Don’t  push yourself, Actually, it is the time when we become stronger!

Katie Brown has run away

What ever happened to Katie Brown. One can find an answer to this question in her book Unreveled: A Climber's Journey Through Darkness and Back.

In short, she has run away from her demons (her mother and faith) and their dwelling place (climbing).

The book is really sincere. Yes, it is repetitive as our patterns truly are. It's hard to read, but it is also therapeutic. It illustrates double standards regarding women as well as the indifference of medics who never mentioned her apparent underweight as a possible cause of health problems.

The way out of that was tricky, but she is strong enough to cope with all that shit on her own.

Some quotes:

• My tongue refused to move and my mind was fuzzy with the confusion between what I wanted to say and what I felt like I should say and whether either of those things were the right thing to say.
• Onsighting was a world where I felt completely, wholly at home. It’s just see how far you can get before you fall, and give it your all. No do-overs.
• I didn’t like the feeling of wanting things. Wanting things meant dealing with the inevitability of loss, and I needed to shut that down before its tidal wave consumed me. It was safer to not want anything, to be more dead than alive.
• To go through life feeling like you belonged, rather than feeling like you were taking up space meant for someone else.
• ...see how far I could get before I fell—my usual approach to onsighting.

Rock Athlete by Ron Fawcett and Ed Douglas

 

This book is especially valuable for at least 2 reasons. First, there is so little data about Ron Fawcett on the internet or elsewhere, nevertheless he is a true climbing legend. Second, this book was awarded with the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 2010. And it’s about rock climbing, not about mountaineering. 

It is about the epoch era, when “heads were stronger than arms”. He became one of the first pro-climbers. Whilst it is hard nowadays, it was unimaginable back then. 

It’s about dedication and passion. It was unthinkable that they could live off climbing, but they gave it all without any expectations. It’s about self-drive. The story begins from the end (or almost the end) when an already very experienced author challenges himself with one hundred ‘Extreme’ routes climbed solo in a day just to push himself to the limits again. Just to feel where these limits were. Sometimes, it was a rush, sometimes, it was a disappointment, sometimes, it was an inner piece, and sometimes, it was satisfaction, tiredness, and peacefulness. Like all his climbing life… which had begun in

a farm and made a sudden turn to unknown, vertical, terranean. He became a climbing film star, a sponsored athlete, and a father, and he became… But the most interesting aren’t endpoints, but the way to them, his thoughts and feelings, doubts and triumphs about endless challenges, and he and his co-author managed to show it clearly and entertainingly. 

Taking into account the tiny bits of data that are available about Ron Fawcett, the book is worth reading for all climbing fans. We can learn a lot about commitment and courage from such people.

Quotes:

• 'Your favorite new routes are a bit like your kids; they don’t belong to you, but you want people to think well of them.'

• 'I'd do a couple of thousand press-ups before breakfast to keep in shape'

• 'Nothing else mattered beyond climbing. I was obsessed. Looking back, I don’t regret any of it.'

• 'If the weather was bad, we’d hole up in the Beck Hall Café. They were always kind to me there. I’d sit watching the rain, getting endless top-ups of hot water for my teapot. I think my record from the same bag stood at sixteen.'

• 'We knew that if you fell off there was a good chance you’d hit the ground.'

• 'Without access to modern climbing walls, it took longer to become strong. That saved me from overtraining injuries, which climbers would begin to suffer from as walls were built.'

• 'In those days, heads were stronger than arms.'  

More expiriences

Not last year was about quantity in climbing, neither was it about quality. It was more about searching own inner motivation and balance in training.

I climbed a little more than a half of the year, partly due to Kosty’s surgery, partly due my own illnesses and a new diagnosis. Eventually, I was climbing from May to October and also in January.

Nevertheless, this year had its memorable moments.

One of my favorite feelings in climbing is to climb, when it seems almost impossible. When nobody can think I might climb in this particular go. Not that as cannot I do it, because I can do all the movements, though, often not first try and not in long links. And, finally at the last go after a few days of climbing I do all the movements one by one.

Interestingly, in such way I climb hard routes (about 7b), but not the hardest ones for me. My high-graded routes vise versa felt relatively easy. Maybe, all the time and efforts I put in them make such feelings possible.

One more my memorable climb was at my last climbing day on Malta. The route goes from a big overhanging to a roof and finally to a vertical part. In the middle of the route, you find yourself climb upside down because of a bulge on the roof. The problem was even not about difficulty of the route, but about timing. It wouldn’t have been easy to come back to this route.

I like that all routes this year were different: endurance and bouldery, on slopers, pockets and tufas. And, they were at 3 different rock types: limestone, sandstone and granite.

Other new experiences include climbing in gyms of others countries and living on the rock with my project located nearby.

Not bad for such “bad” year. At least, there was time and place for climbing, and what one would do without it?