Looking back at 2017

Way back in 2016 I responded to a post on a Facebook page asking for normal people with interesting challenges in 2017 to feature on a series of episodes for the Tough Girl Podcast.

I’ve never really been one to put myself forward for anything like that. So despite being a huge fan of the podcast I dismissed the post at first, thinking no one would be interested in what I was doing with my novice mountaineering adventures. Never mind the fact I’ve always been a super private person so sharing my life like this was a huge deal for me.

Then I realised that I was saying to myself all those negative things, the things Sarah had written in her post “I’d love to do that, but, I can’t, or my challenge isn’t interesting enough, isn’t big enough, I’m not a tough girl, there’s nothing special about me, why would anyone want to follow my journey? What if I fail?”

So I decided to share…

And it snowballed from there. Over a year on, six podcast interviews completed, one talk hosted, ten trips to the Alps, hundreds of hours of overtime and plenty of ups and downs later, it’s all come to a close as the last podcast is now live.

Being on this podcast and meeting so many of the Tough Girl Tribe has genuinely changed my life. It’s given me new friends, opened up new opportunities, forced me to step outside my comfort zone and shown me just how important it is to share our stories.

No matter how rubbish the year felt in the end, it’s incredible to listen back to these episodes and realise just how many amazing things I did last year – from starting the year off on Kilimajaro and ice climbing for the first time to climbing all over the Chamonix valley and climbing my first 7a indoors.

You can listen to the last episode of the Tough Girl Podcast 7 Women 7 Challenges series below, and if you fancy listening to me ramble on for hours then the full series is also below. Thanks Sarah for including me on this, it’s been a blast!

The final episode…