Snowflakes, Motherhood, Resiliency.

A personal story on how snowboarding showed me just how strong I've become.

Hi there! I’m Hunter. I’m a mother of a two-year-old daughter, married to my British husband, and we live in Northwest Florida along the beautiful white, sandy beaches. I share about sacred & slow living as well as my own personal journey in being a mother and a creative. Make sure to subscribe to have my posts delivered directly to your inbox. I’m so glad you’re here.

The snowflakes fall in a steady stream outside the window as I walk towards the big brown door that feels almost too heavy to open. Inside, I sit down and reach for the all-too-familiar black boots I’ve come to know in my past 17 years as a snowboarder. I begin to lace up and can feel the heat engulfing my body as a result of wearing three layers of pants, two layers of sweaters, and my snow pants and jacket on top. I huff as I tug and pull, and as soon as the boots are on, I rush back through the heavy door and into the front yard. I let the snowflakes fall all over my face and feel the cold breeze cool me down.

My husband walks by and pauses, “I’m glad I chose a sport with fewer layers.”

He grew up playing football (or American soccer) and his beat-up knees keep him from trying to ski or snowboard himself. I cast him my best side eye and go back to counting the snowflakes on my jacket. After a few minutes, I head back inside, grab my snowboard, and go towards the mountain.

It’s a humbling experience, doing a sport after a four-year hiatus, having a baby, and turning 30. The simplicity of just showing up and “doing the thing” is gone, and instead, there’s a strategy involved. Can I sit this way? Can I get up this way? Can I lock my feet in this way?

I started snowboarding while on a trip with friends in Montana when I was 12 or 13 (I can’t remember exactly) and one of my best friends at the time challenged me to learn with him. I also definitely had a crush on him so that motivated me too. I told him I’d do it, but only if my mom came with us. So, while all the other adults and kids were learning how to ski, we spent our days falling on our butts over and over again until we figured out how to go down a hill with snow on a single board. My mom was 40 at the time. I was always so proud of her for taking the chance and learning with me, but I also gave her a hard time about it. “You’re not that old, you can do it!” I’d always tell her.

Now that I’m 30 and still a decade off from her even beginning to learn, I feel so much admiration and awe that she took on a sport in her midlife with such zest, always trailing after us kids. She never gave up, and I will never forget the year we spent five months in Colorado snowboarding almost every day, culminating in going down our first extreme black run together. My mom is a badass, and I know now how much work and determination that took.

Everything about doing a winter sport is hard. It’s just plain work. When I was 17, I’d complain about it all. Of course, I loved going down the runs and feeling the rush of the icy cold wind and my heart race as I went faster, faster, faster. But the unclipping and strapping back in for every run, the hiking and cold weather and snow in my pants too many times to count, the sore legs, and the exhaustion I felt at the end of every day? That part I wasn’t a fan of. I think everyone around me knew it too considering how much I’d complain about it all. But the mountain always called me back.

Cut to this time around, and it’s probably a thousand times worse. I’m out of shape, I feel like I’m just now getting out of the postpartum period two years later, and I’m four years older than the last time I snowboarded. Everything hurts. Everything is hard. But, this time there’s something different about it. There was a joy in the hard that I hadn’t experienced before. I was almost even grateful for the throbbing pain in my feet as my muscles fought to remember how to turn, and the burn that caused shaking in my thighs after only two runs. When I decided I was done for the day, there was only a smile on my face as I hauled my board back down the path that led from the ski runs to our house, and I collapsed with a deep sense of accomplishment I hadn’t felt before.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what the difference was, between all those years when I was younger and the version of me now, and the thought that came to mind was that through motherhood I have become resilient.

Growing up, I always thought of myself as weak physically. I have this memory of running one mile in high school health class getting the slowest time and feeling like a failure. When something got too hard physically, I’d just quit. I realize now that the feeling of failure through these experiences also bled into every other aspect of my life subconsciously. I never felt strong.

Then, I went through pregnancy where I threw up multiple times a day for 28 weeks straight. I birthed my child into this world with a second-degree tear and spent almost a year feeling the suture scar burn, and my pubic bone ache. I felt the physical pain of walking after birth. I pumped for 13 months to feed my child, and would wake up at 12am, 2am, 4am, and 6am around the clock to make sure my milk supply stayed up. When everything in my body wanted to give up, I chose to continue on and prove to myself just how damn strong I can be.

There is a resiliency that motherhood teaches you, and it became a gift I never knew I needed. I realize now that my own mother had that same experience when she was 40, barreling down a mountain after her 13-year-old daughter just to show her what she was capable of. I see it in myself now, wanting to prove to my own daughter that she can do anything she wants and that life is full of endless possibilities.

Snowboarding taught me that I had a fire within me I never knew, but motherhood taught me how to fan the flames.

Whether we’re going through a particularly tough day of parenting, experiencing suffering in some way, or doing something fun like snowboarding, I hope all mothers know that we wield magic through our veins and that our experience of literally birthing humans earthside is more powerful than we could ever imagine.

We’re resilient, us mothers. And I’m so proud of the woman I have become as a result.

Here’s to trying new things, here’s to returning to old things, and here’s to realizing that sometimes the most beautiful things come out of our hardest moments.

So I’ll lace up, I’ll throw all the layers back on, and I’ll take my snowboard back out, to try again, and to remind myself that I am, in fact, strong. I hope through seeing me doing something I love, even when it’s hard, that my daughter knows how strong and capable she is, too.