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Paddy: Let's do some word association.

Melissa: Oh, fun.

Paddy: All right.

Paddy: Here we

Melissa: I'm ready. I was, I thought you were gonna say math and I was gonna say no.

Paddy: Yeah. Long division. Okay. crampons.

Melissa: Sharp

Paddy: summit

Melissa: a place. Just a place.

Paddy: Rainier.

Melissa: Oh, home.

Paddy: Everest,

Melissa: Hmm. My soul's home.

Paddy: Ani, DiFranco

Melissa: Oh, my teacher.

Paddy: Sherpa

Melissa: I hate that I'm saying this cliche, but it's also true. humble.

Paddy: family.

Melissa: I mean, challenge was the idea that came to my mind, but also, , complicated.

Paddy: Mother.

Melissa: Um, earth. I think of Earth.

Paddy: Okay.

Melissa: Yeah.

Paddy: Marriage

Melissa: Uh, safety.

Paddy: love.

Melissa: Hmm. Home.

Paddy: Melissa.

Melissa: I, I mean, as crazy as it is, the word that just came into my mind was belong, which is really wild considering how much of my time I spent feeling like I don't belong.

Paddy: Ooh, this is gonna be so good.

MUSIC

PADDY INTRO VO:

 Picture this: A fox walks through the woods, minding its own business, when a metal snare snaps on [00:01:00] its leg. Barking in agony, the fox scratches and claws in any attempt to free itself and get to safety.

Would you demonize this fox for how it responded to being caught in the snare or how it freed itself? This is how trauma response and trauma cycles have been explained to me, the idea that hurt people hurt people. And it's at the center of a brand new memoir from mountaineer Melissa Arnot Reid.

PAUSE PAUSE

Melissa Arnot Reid's mountaineering resume is astounding. Full stop. She is the first American woman to summit and descend Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. She's summited Mount Everest 6 times in 9 attempts, the most of any American woman. She notched the First Ascent of Mustang Himal -moostang himAL-- in Nepal. She's climbed Mount Rainier in Washington more than 100 times, as an elite guide for the famed guide service RMI, Rainier Mountaineering, [00:02:00] Inc Expeditions. She climbed all 50 state high points in record time: 41 days, 16 hours ,and 10 minutes. Ooofff, there's more, like a lot more...but I'm running outta breath over here.

Melissa is an extremely gifted mountain athlete, but what truly fueled her mountain pursuits was a relentless emotional emptiness created from childhood abuse at the hands of her mother and predation from a teacher. Climbing the world's most dangerous peaks was a refuge, a way to prove her worth to herself, her family, and the world. But every summit and accolade only deepened her despair, which in turn created harmful behaviours, like seeking abusive relationships driven by deception, manipulation, and infidelity.

This is all detailed in Melissa's new memoir, Enough, a brutally honest self-investigation of traumatic events and the ripple effects they can have. It takes courage to trudge up and down knife-edge ridgelines for a living. But [00:03:00] it takes a different heft of guts to fully expose yourself—and every skeleton in your closet—to the world.

Melissa's life, both in terms of the severity of the abuse she suffered and her mountaineering accomplishments, are singular. But challenging yourself and taking a big swing at life is relatable. And I think everyone can connect with an ache for forgiveness, peace, and self acceptance. Honesty and compassion, after all, are very often the toughest peaks to summit. But after speaking with Melissa, I think the path there is a little easier.

MUSIC

Paddy: first things first, burnt toast. What's your last humbling and or hilarious moment outside,

Melissa: Because I have children, it happens multiple times a day. But my non children related experience I was just doing this short run on a trail that I do all the time. And I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden I was a hundred percent somewhere with no idea where I was and I was [00:04:00] looking around and just thinking like, it's amazing that you can go so many places and do so many things and consider yourself good at being in the outdoors and finding your way. So good that you call yourself a guide and then you can just completely lose your way on a random trail near your house.

Paddy: Did Did space out

Melissa: I think so. Yeah, I think I just like took a single track. Where I met was meant to stay on the road, it's happened to me one time in Nepal too, where I was walking and I was meant to take like a slight, right. And all of a sudden I ended up at almost the top of the Nang Pala, the Tibetan border.

Melissa: I started thinking like in the preceding hour, gosh, things looked different than I remember them looking. But I don't know, stuff changes. It doesn't, it really doesn't change. And so I do have a propensity for just getting, deeply internal and forgetting the landscape on which I walk.

Paddy: Did you like flip out Google Maps or like, Gaia or something? Yeah.

Melissa: Yeah, no, it worked out just fine. It just cut a half a mile off my run and I was happy at the end.

Paddy: it was a shorter run.

Melissa: It was a shortcut.

Paddy: Alright, let's get into it.

Melissa: MUSIC IN THE [00:05:00] CLEAR FOR A BEAT

Paddy: I love the book so much. I felt such a kinship with it. Before we even get into anything, is anything off limits?

Melissa: No,

Paddy: How does that feel?

Melissa: Let's talk about it all

Melissa: so liberating. Honestly, and like what you just said is the entirety of why I wrote the book, is because I believe that we all share some of these experiences. There's people that will say, oh, I have nothing in common with this girl.

Melissa: And then they'll start reading my book. And I know that we share commonalities. 'cause I know my experience is, you know, fundamentally human. And that's, that's the thing. It doesn't matter what your background is you probably are gonna recognize something from your own life in it.

Melissa: PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: Inspired by your new book, you've called 2025, your Year of Enough, what does that mean to you?

Melissa: I think enough is this incredibly beautiful idea and word. 'cause it means so many different things , like Italian, like Basta enough, you know, can just be like stop too much. And then enough can be completion, it can be everything. , And for me enough is sort of this idea of, like my striving to get to a place of [00:06:00] non-striving where it is actually truly enough.

Melissa: But I also associate it with this idea of, ease

Paddy: PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: Before we talk about the big why that has fueled your mountaineering and guiding career, we need you, the expert to explain some things to us. Lug head, layman's. what's the difference between climbing Everest with and without oxygen? Can you put it into everyday terms? Like, is climbing with O2, sort of like walking uphill, dragging a washing machine behind you and climbing without O2 is like, you've got the washing machine plus a dryer and you're breathing through a clogged snorkel. Can you describe it

Melissa: love those. So easy to understand layman's terms you're using. Um, yeah. Somebody said to me early on in my quest, my curiosity to climb without oxygen, I asked them like, would you ever climb without oxygen? And they answered in such a simple way and said, oh God, no, I, I like to enjoy the climb.

Melissa: And that's the best way to [00:07:00] describe it. We misinterpret this idea that like taking away supplemental oxygen or adding supplemental oxygen changes the general challenge of movement. And that's not really what it is. oxygen. Keeps our brains happy. And when our brains are happy, we are more tolerant.

Melissa: And so when you become less tolerant, very, very, , small, annoying things become catastrophic. And so your tolerance for, you know, mentally dealing with any sort of discomfort just goes to like, near zero. Your tolerance for maintaining your motivation goes to near zero.

Paddy: One of the things in the book that really I think puts it into perspective is on your, fateful 2016, , attempt without, O2 you are getting, uh, higher and higher, closer and closer to the summit, and you make it to, , one of the final camps. And you say, we're gonna stop here and, get a, quick bite of some grub and, , drink some water and maybe change our socks.

Paddy: That'll take us three hours.

Melissa: Yeah. That's all we did. I mean, we [00:08:00] just climbed into this tent took my boots off, put new socks on, ate a few bites of dehydrated, mashed potatoes and pre-cooked bacon.

Melissa: I know. So weird. drank and then. Put my boots back on and headed out and that was three hours. And it wasn't like I was doing other stuff in there. You know, everything is so slow. You have to rest after doing the simplest thing I like to think of it in this really romantic way of like, oxygen, not just supplemental oxygen, but like the oxygen in the atmosphere gives us this anchor. And it allows us to be, and when you take that away, you kind of become like. amebic and time it's not a thing anymore. It's one of the first things that just evaporates because if you are not a thing, time isn't a thing. That's what, being high without oxygen on Everest sort of sounds like. I'm always I know it probably. Sounds like I'm like talking about a drug experience,

Paddy: so the world knows you, uh, I would say primarily because of your incredible feats on Everest, but you've also climbed some of the [00:09:00] most, , grueling, massive and dangerous mountains in the world, other than Everest, Aconcagua, Cotopaxi, Rainier, Kilimanjaro,

Melissa: Yeah. And other 8,000 meter peaks.

Paddy: and yeah, I mean,

Melissa: Lohtse and and, no, nobody

Paddy: dude, your, your resume is, I mean, you need like a paper towel roll to get all of it.

Melissa: Paddy, I gamed the system. I walk uphill in very pretty places and I convince people to pay me for that. Like, it's just

Paddy: Professional walker

Paddy: Can you describe your favorite mountains as if they were a person and your favorite expeditions, as if it were a relationship with that person?

Melissa: I think Rainier is a really good place to go to because it's been so transformative and so important. And so Rainier is this wise. Really, uh, loving but very stern and stoic sensei I, think we get each other and we understand each other, and then I kind of get like a cold shoulder occasionally where I get, you know, [00:10:00] to be reminded that I am the student for sure,

Melissa: I'm a person who likes to be in control of what I can be in control of and choosing to be in nature so much has been this really wonderful gift to sort of alleviate my need of being in control.

Melissa: Because I go in with this baseline understanding that I cannot control the mountains. I cannot control the weather, so it tunes me into what I can in a really different way. I think that's like the softness of the teacher is showing me how to, stay out of what is not mine and to work on what is.

Melissa: Doing something once is an experience. And doing it multiple times is perspective. And I deeply crave perspective in my life.

Melissa: And so the more you do it, the more perspectives you have. You have different experiences which give you different perspectives. And so

Paddy: I'm sorry, I'm laughing 'cause I, what's the perspective you've gained from Rainier? Because you have summited Rainier, I think if I have my count correct. 100 bajillion times.

Melissa: a bajillion times, correct? Yeah. I mean, what is so fascinating to me is that something that is so tangible like a mountain, that's a tangible thing. It's a thing we look at and [00:11:00] we see it and it's, you know, we have all these metaphors of solid as a mountain and blah, blah, blah, and it's like I've never experienced something that's more dynamic and changing and unpredictable and both knowable and unknowable.

Melissa: And I just think that that gives me this comfort that. I'm doing okay in life. You know that I'm not gonna figure it out and I'm not supposed to, 'cause it's gonna change. Whatever the it is, it's gonna change.

Melissa: PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: When it comes to elite athletes, we, the audience, hear a lot about the characteristics that have made them achieve seemingly impossible things. We hear about their leadership determination, grit, things like this.

Paddy: But these characteristics also have character defect. Twins. Let me Lemme give you an example here, being from Chicago as a kid, I grew up with the nineties bulls, so I always think of Michael Jordan as like the ultimate elite athlete. Best of the best, right? But his leadership and competitive drive that made him the goat also [00:12:00] bordered on tyranny and cruelty to his teammates.

Paddy: What are the characteristics that make an elite level mountaineer such as yourself? And then what are the bizarro, doppelganger character defects that accompany those characteristics?

Melissa: I think that if I am. Kind and generous about it. I would say, you know, tenacity, perseverance, , willingness, , adaptability for sure. And the flip side of that is like a deep sense of self hatred and a belief that you deserve to suffer.

Melissa: I think that there is often some unsettled interiority that causes you to want to take yourself out of , normal society and the flow of society.

Melissa: And that can be both. Healthy and really unhealthy. Probably all of us on some scale, desire in some moment or time in our life, exceptionality, so we try to create things that, help us believe in our own exceptionality. And that can be really toxic.

Paddy: You know, the book catalogs a lot of extreme moments, physical and [00:13:00] emotional but, it is not like a, Hey Melissa is the coolest thing since sliced bread type of memoir. It is very honest, it is very vulnerable. and so , what do you feel is more difficult?

Paddy: Summiting the world's tallest peaks, or publishing a memoir that exposes all of your long protected secrets.

Melissa: Summing Everest without. Supplemental oxygen and the path to being able to do that was far easier than the deep and honest self-reflection needed for me to sort of uncover why I was seeking to do this and then really be honest about it

Melissa: I believe that , the thing you're most afraid of, that you're most ashamed about, maybe that thing, if you can look at it and you can just not hide it in a dark space and hope it goes away and fixes itself. I actually think that that is harder than giving it to the world.

Melissa: I am a person who has had things happen to me that I didn't choose [00:14:00] that were bad.

Melissa: And I'm a person who has done bad things and neither of those two scenarios make me a bad person. But I've lived my whole life thinking I was, you know, my entire of my first memories are that I am bad. And to unwind that and get to a place where I can say bad thing, but not bad person. And that's sort of the power of putting it into the book and giving it to the world.

Paddy: I think what is so resonating about reading your book is that you don't protect yourself from criticism or critique. And you even have said that you are the worst character in the book. Why do you feel like that? And is that in a strange way, slightly empowering?

Melissa: Maybe my position on it has evolved a little bit that I think I'm the second worst character in the book. You know, I think, , an adult man who took advantage of me when I was a child, , is the worst character in the book. Pretty inarguably. But I do think that it's so essential to admit your own flaws and not just.

Melissa: Couching it inside of what [00:15:00] has happened to you as a reaction. Like, I reacted poorly. It's like, no, I made an active choice. I am spending so much time in my life and then on the pages of the book, reflecting on different relationships and different people and who and why they are where they are in the world.

Melissa: And so I owe it to myself and the reader to do the same for me. And the truth is, maybe you, this sounds familiar for you. Like you are far more critical of yourself than you are of anybody else. You know, you have far more,

Paddy: Yeah,

Melissa: far more to say about Paddy's behavior than you do about anybody else.

Paddy: You could say whatever you want about me. 'cause it's no worse than what I've said to myself in the mirror at 3:00 AM.

Melissa: Totally. And I just think like I can be a bit of a, like snarky, gossipy bee sometimes, on the pages of the book, it's not that, that's not that towards others or myself. It's this like really intense self-reflection and admission And one of the things that I had to get really honest about, and it's something that I've, I really have kept a secret for a long time, [00:16:00] was this, this guilt and shame, deep, deep shame that I felt about this relationship that I was in early in my guiding career. it was with a person who was advancing my career and was also.

Melissa: Terrorizing me on a personal level and destroying my belief in myself outside of my relationship with them, really in a, I believe a calculated way in hindsight. And I had felt so much guilt and shame over the years of the fact that I had made this choice to stay in this relationship that was harming me because I believed that it would advance me. I also was like simultaneously judging any other female who I knew who I saw doing that, you know?

Melissa: And I was like, Ugh, she's not a real climber. 'cause she's just here with her boyfriend. And that's like, well not that was me. I was there with my boyfriend, but I wanted to be taken seriously.

Paddy: Do you think this hurt that you carried from childhood through adulthood was the reason that you pursued the identity as an quote, outdoorsy [00:17:00] girl, Because you grew up in, in southern Colorado, near Durango, you described your childhood as not being, an outdoorsy kid. And then post-college 2004, you're like, guess what? I'm getting hired at RMI,

Melissa: Yeah,

Paddy: 2006 you are a lead guide at RMI. You pour yourself into this identity full throttle with everything that you have.

Paddy: Was it because. You needed it to protect yourself, or were you using it to cure this self-loathing, this, feeling of, a lack of lovability.

Melissa: I think that I was seeking something that gave me a sense of independent autonomy and climbing mountains was like irrefutably something that you had done if you did it, and so it couldn't be assigned to somebody else. and I had this really flawed belief system that I could achieve my way out of thinking that I was shitty, so I could absolve all my past sins if the public loved me because of my achievements. I wanted to be a leader. [00:18:00] I wanted to have accolades, I wanted people to believe in me. I wanted to rewrite this interior. Assignment of who I was because in internally I was, worthless, a liar.

Melissa: I would never amount to anything. I was a whore. I was, you know, somebody who, nobody wanted around. when I found the mountains, all that just disappeared. It just disappeared. My therapist later told me, she's like, you chose a set of career paths that are particularly well suited to your wounds, right?

Melissa: Your wounds like are assets in those spaces.

Paddy: How so?

Melissa: My ability to compartmentalize things and really deeply compartmentalize things.

Melissa: PAUSSE PAUSE PAUSE

Melissa: I talk about it in the book. I talk about this scene of this really early and incredibly kind relationship I had with a person who really introduced me to Mountain Guiding as a career. And he had this belief, I think that, you know, we would be able to like be guides together and it would just be this like incredible love story.

Melissa: And I knew that I didn't wanna be with him, and I also knew I [00:19:00] wanted to be a guide. And so I, I stayed with him to sort of get my foot in the door of guiding. And then I, in the most like, heartless way, broke up with him really low character behavior for sure. And I'll never forget it, I can see him sitting in his white, you know, 1997 Toyota Tacoma and him looking at me and I'm standing in the parking lot of the guide service.

Melissa: And he said , you think that, like, I'm pathetic. Because I'm hurt by this. I'm gonna be fine. It's gonna be you that's gonna have to carry this. And I remember like walking into the guide lounge and being like, okay, whatever. You don't know what you're talking about. And then I still think about it today.

Melissa: He was right. I hurt him for no reason. I didn't have to do that. But I also wasn't brave enough at that point, or, I wasn't healed enough, I should say, to see any other way out.

Paddy: Well, with that detachment and that compartmentalization, you know, you spent every season from 2008 to 2016 on Everest totaling one year of your life, which is extraordinary. [00:20:00] How much of that time did you spend on mountain thinking about the abuse from your childhood, thinking about your parents, or the woulda, should'a, coulda's in your life? Did your mind wander during time at camp, during slogs uphill, or were these things put inside of a box placed deep within the basement of your being and just shoved down at any time?

Melissa: I would describe it, I guess as hunger. That you only feed with really low quality food. You know? So if you've ever been a college freshman, you know what it's like to just feel hungry no matter what you eat, because what you're eating isn't satiating

Paddy: the emotional ramen noodles is

Melissa: it's the emotional ramen noodles. Yes. And so it's some, it's this feeling that's always with you.

Melissa: And even if you can make it go away for a little bit, you kind of still know it's there. And I was able to say, I'm not hungry. I don't have this thing 'cause look I'm eating.

Melissa: PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Melissa: my [00:21:00] internal monologue was this voice of, that my deservingness was conditional

Paddy: So where did that voice come from?

Melissa: I mean, I, it definitely came from my mother who was, not particularly well equipped to raise children. , Particularly me, you know, I was really precocious and independent and curious, and I was a high attention demand of a person who had none to share innately.

Melissa: And so I started out with this idea that my existence was a burden.

Paddy: Well then how then does that inform the way you navigate life later in life? Because Enough, right, is a catalog of brutal honesty,

Melissa: Bad choices.

Paddy: and there's a lot of bad choices, which you are incredibly honest about, and many in the scenes in the book describe in one way or another your use of external forces to cure an internal conflict, most notably in mountain pursuits and relationships in this way.

Paddy: Did your [00:22:00] mountain pursuits mirror at all what you sought in romantic relationships?

Melissa: The thing I was seeking in the mountains was this mother wound, right? Which is this deep need for unconditionality and to know that I am deserving of being, whether I get to the summit or not, that no achievement is gonna make me more worthy than just me being in existence.

Melissa: And then, I ended up at, at a really young age at, at 11 years old in a relationship. And I don't know how to say that exactly 'cause it doesn't feel right to say in a relationship.

Melissa: But I ended up in a relationship with an adult man who was a police officer and a teacher, and created a really confusing structure for me around physical relationships with men in power.

Melissa: I'm wanting validation and then I'm trying to pursue something in my physical relationships that is also pretty confusing. It's like a very bizarre form of acceptance you know, it's like a trap. I wanna be accepted, but I'm refusing to be known. And then I'm upset that I'm not accepted as I am because I refuse to show who I was.

Paddy: the cycle of like I'm gonna act in a terrible [00:23:00] way because I am terrible deep down.

Melissa: yes.

Paddy: It's like a, you know, a self devouring snake,

Melissa: Exactly. It is exactly that. And I'm gonna get in relationships where I can't be loved because I believe I'm unlovable, but it's me that's stopping myself from being loved. I'm gonna try to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen, which I know with almost complete certainty I'm not gonna be able to do, which is gonna reinforce to me that I am not good and that I'm not special and I'm not elite.

Melissa: And so I didn't choose something that was possible. I chose something that was nearly, not completely, but nearly impossible because I wanted to prove to myself that I was right.

Melissa: PADDY VO:

Melissa: More from Melissa Arnot Reid after the break.

Melissa: MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL

Paddy: On Mountain Jobs, the guiding industry especially has a long, dark and documented history of sexism and misogyny. enough Details, your experiences with this. At one point you wrote, my worth was in my body, not in my skills and knowledge. In those scenes, I was struck by the heft of this paradox that you're constantly [00:24:00] put in, You're looked down upon and thought to be inadequate because you're a woman while being oversexualized and expected to flirt while then being condemned for any slight flirtation or perception of flirtation. And while I was reading the book, I kept thinking about Gloria Steinem's idea that since the female form has been used as a tool for oppression, it should be harnessed as a tool for empowerment in that way where your physical pursuits, especially your goal, to summit without oxygen, a way to subvert the sexism and the structures of oppression within mountaineering.

Melissa: I think so on some level because I, I was. Two people at the same time. Ani d Franco, she has this line in one of her songs that says, , you can pay me for my beauty.

Melissa: I think it's only right 'cause I've been paying for it all of my life. And I'm like, yes. I'm like, that's right. And I remember, that being this anthem for me, while I simultaneously was like figuring out how to leverage that. [00:25:00] And so. You know, I, I recognized really early, I mean, really early at 11 years old, I recognized right, that like my attractiveness and my worth in my body could actually get me into spaces that had power . I had this idea come up really early in my career of like, you can either be the joke or you can tell the joke, and those are the only two options as a woman is you have to create safety for the men to know that you're one of them, but you're also not one of them.

Melissa: You're like fun and flirty and they can, make bets on who can sleep with you, which I heard about later. It was that there was like this long running Everest base camp bet of like, which one of this particular cadre of guides was gonna get to hook up with me and. It's, you know, to just know that it's like, it makes me feel a little less bad about the ways that I was weaponizing that power for myself.

Melissa: But I also feel conflicted about it, right? I had to kind of have this experience of interacting with using this tool that I have it can only unlock the door, you know? That's where is actually the [00:26:00] hardest thing. You have to prove that you belong in the room. And I still am trying to prove it.

Melissa: PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Melissa: Young women come to me and want advice and that's part of the book for me.

Melissa: If a, you know, 21-year-old guide is like, how do I make my career into what yours is? I wanna just like hold her and say like, I would never ask you to do what I did.

Melissa: You'll lose so much.

Paddy: so then, what is the advice and then what did you lose?

Melissa: Oh God. I mean, what's really hard about that answer is that I think that the misogyny and the patriarchy just is doing its thing. And to try to get there without making any compromise is so hard. I don't wanna say it's impossible because I want that not to be true.

Melissa: But I see current day women who. Are working so hard to be taken seriously in their craft and their trade and their love of the mountains, and being diminished into a sentence about the way they look or, the way they don't look, um, or, you know, vilified for any mistake that they make.

Melissa: And it's just [00:27:00] really hard to imagine how you could get there. Because it's, I don't know where the there is, right? If you are a woman in mountaineering, you're so innately not packaged, like what people believe a mountaineer is, that that's so distracting that your accomplishments kind of become secondary.

Melissa: what I've chosen to do, and this is the advice that I give, is. I think it's really important to pursue competence. If you are as competent as you can be and you get a role because somebody thinks you're cute, that's okay. You still are as competent as you can be, ? Versus applying for a job that you're, not prepared for and not skilled at and knowing that you're gonna get it because you're an outlier or whatever. I think of like Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner is a really good example. She's an Austrian mountaineer, the first woman to summit all 14, 8,000 meter peaks without oxygen.

Melissa: In the midst of her pursuit when she was climbing all these mountains, she was criticized because she was partly doing it with her husband, who people deemed a real mountaineer.

Melissa: And her accomplishments are not exceptional because she's a woman. They're just exceptional. We are not at a place where that is the way we [00:28:00] see mountaineering. If you don't wanna climb with only other female partners, then you are climbing with male partners. And that's tricky, right? It's like you need to, I don't even know what the right answer is.

Melissa: I wanna say like, you need to have like, you know, your male partner be not heterosexual. That would be helpful. Or you need, because like them being married isn't enough. Like that's not enough. Um, you know, and also like, I'm a person who played into this and so like, I created this environment as well for myself

Paddy: Is that what you lost?

Melissa: Yeah, that's what you lose.

Melissa: Like, I don't have, a clean history as it were, you know? I can't say everything I have achieved. I did under my own power. And to be very honest, that is the healing journey that I had to go on, which was understanding that doing it under my own power wasn't actually the flex I thought it was.

Melissa: I believed that if I didn't do it totally alone, then I was undeserving. And it's like actually that it's not it, that is not it at all. Like you need to be able to interact with help and collaborate. And this isn't meant to be a solo journey. Like we as humans, I believe were not meant to be in [00:29:00] total individuality and isolation.

Melissa: And yet I lived this life thinking like if I just do everything completely alone, then no one can take it away from me. And it's like, if you could do it alone, you would've a long time ago. So would everyone else, like so many things take luck and partnership in many ways.

Paddy: Are you taking what you have learned in the healing process and applying it to your mentee, mentorship, , relationships?

Melissa: I'm trying to create environments and opportunities where younger women or peers can be in. What I would consider to be like safe to learn and strive and achieve spaces. And that to me isn't, , gender exclusionary. So I'm try, I don't like lean in towards all women's groups or climbs.

Melissa: That's not my preference. I'd like to try to challenge people to be able to like, be in mixed gender groups and figure out how to interact there giving them the confidence and the belief that I see them, I believe in them. because I want to show the women coming after me and with me that there isn't a perfect way to do it. The sooner you can get to self-forgiveness for the inevitable [00:30:00] follies of your own, the quicker you will get to a place of wholeness.

Paddy: In the publishing of the book, in your role now as a mentor does it feel that the way you're interacting with the mountains is more significant than your achievements previously?

Melissa: You know what's funny about my achievements is that they were this centerpiece of, the thing I'm moving toward to prove to me that I'm enough. And yet they never meant anything to me. I mean, they, they meant the continued forward movement of my career in a really, like, tangible way of getting future jobs and what have you.

Melissa: But they didn't mean anything to my heart level. Like I've never once in any point in my life laid in bed at night and just said like. It's so amazing that you climbed Everest. You know, like it's just not the stuff. It's really just not the stuff.

Paddy: Has everybody seen my cool belt buckle? I got it at the top of Everest. It's pretty sweet.[00:31:00]

Melissa: Yeah. my relationship to those achievements has always been different. It's changed a lot. So initially it was this belief that I could achieve my way into belonging. And then it became sort of like the fun, the fun of life where it's like, no, it's just the stuff you get to do because you are deserving.

Melissa: You are a belonging person. And now you get to go have these really cool experiences and you get to go see the sun rise from just below the summit of Everest. And the, shadow is cast into the sky and it's higher than all the other mountains in the world. And you can see until the earth.

Melissa: Starts to curve. Please don't come from me flat earthers, but it's just like the most incredible, , experience in place. And that's all it is. Like, that's all it is. It doesn't make you a better than anybody person. It doesn't make you more deserving than anybody else. It doesn't make you any more knowing.

Melissa: So instead of me achieving, and then I get, it's like in the process I become, I become this person who is resilient, can handle challenge, can understand things differently, and then the mentorship is the same. I hope I give them a [00:32:00] lot, but I get so much from them because it becomes this really close relationship where we get to problem solve, life's greatest hurdles individually together. You have like a ally with you, , who's helping you problem solve both the route finding and the technical rope skills and the, thing that's bigger, that like existential ache that's in us all.

Paddy: For people who are wrestling with their own past traumas, their own hurt, would you say that big objectives, not necessarily climbing Mount Everest or the other, mostly insane peaks in the world, but some sort of relevant equivalent can be therapeutic? Not to say that it can replace actual therapy, but what is the tool that these pursuits add to the toolbox of emotional healing?

Melissa: One of the things that the mountains has done for me, and it's been quite a continuous, slow and really persistent process, is to give me the time and give me the correct environment where I can no longer distract myself from myself. There comes a moment [00:33:00] in some time of walking uphill slowly where I can't be distracted anymore. You know, like my playlist is done. the immediate danger that I'm having to assess is behind me. And it's just this toil. And I don't have the, uh, ability to put some distraction between me and that like we do in our lives. You know, we pick up our phone and we put it between us and our own self.

Melissa: So often we put social things, we put substances, we, we distract from ourselves. And I think that big objectives in nature give you this chance to whittle past that distraction and then get to be with yourself. And you find that it's really uncomfortable. But oftentimes big challenging things in nature are also uncomfortable.

Melissa: So it feels to me easier to be in mental discomfort when I'm in a little bit of physical discomfort. 'cause it, sort of like has this equilibrium to it where it's like, okay, discomfort is okay. Discomfort does not mean death. I can look at the darkest corners of myself and feel uncomfortable, but it doesn't equal death.

Melissa: it's not gonna. Be the end, you know, just like this really challenging physical thing I'm doing isn't death. It's just hard. It's [00:34:00] just hard. It's just uncomfortable and it's just temporary. And I think emotional challenge feels very permanent. It feels like it'll never stop. If we look at it, if we open Pandora's box, then we're in it forever.

Melissa: And the thing I can say that I have experienced, and I can only say this about myself, but I believe it's true for all of us, is it only stays forever when the lid is on the box. You know when you let it out, I can take the 360 degree view of my shame and my regret, and I can see it, I can acknowledge it, I can really dislike parts of it.

Melissa: I can wish it didn't exist, but I get this chance to look at it all the way around. And once I do,

Melissa: it dissipates

Paddy: well, it sounds to me like you've arrived at a place of acceptance. And, I used to believe that acceptance, I confused it with looking at your past and everything was okay, which is not true. Acceptance is acknowledgement without judgment. do you now look at your past and in your current relationships with your family and those around you, do you have acceptance about it?

Paddy: Have you [00:35:00] come to a level of peace about it?

Melissa: it Is hard to even know you have it because it's so subtle, like don't have perfection. I don't have a life free of challenges. I don't have no regrets. , but I do have. Ease. That acceptance side of it, it's a continuous process, I really wish I was less susceptible to, , external people's judgment that they want to like, write on my Instagram about me. And like,

Paddy: Don't we all?

Melissa: I like why is that? I'm like, why does, like Jane's opinion of how I'm sitting make me, so why do I have to think about that in the middle of the night?

Melissa: Um, but I, I do get a lot quicker, right? To a place of, uh, back to ease. Like the most powerful thing I did in this process of writing this book was to write the words on the page. And even if no one read the words, the book did, its work. Because I put my story outside of me and then I could start that process of acceptance. 'cause you, it is really hard to accept what you won't look at.

Paddy: Has that changed your relationship with your [00:36:00] family, specifically with your mother?

Melissa: After my mother read the book and we had a conversation about the book, it gave me this really deeply needed acceptance. And I have to also acknowledge that that acceptance didn't come via any sort of warm lovingness. My mother received the book by telling me , how much she disagreed with what I'd said and how, she only started calling me a liar when I started lying all the time.

Melissa: And she didn't know what a whore I was until she read my book. Um, and I, the acceptance came from realizing that there was nothing I was ever gonna do. You know, like I still was holding onto this like. Seed of conditionality that I could, if I do just the right thing, then I will be lovable to her. And I'd sort of un anchored from that in other areas of my life.

Melissa: But I was able to go through that really painful process of me sharing the book with her and her receiving it in that way and get to this like, incredibly liberated place of acceptance. While it's really sad that I'm not gonna ever have a close and [00:37:00] connected relationship with my birth mother, I feel very in a place of acceptance that that is the relationship we have.

Melissa: And once I can see that for what it is, I can actually do a lot of healing. 'cause I'm not trying to contort myself to change it or contort the situation to make it change. 'cause it's just not going to.

Paddy: One significant part of your life that isn't covered in the book is your journey into parenthood.

Melissa: Yeah,

Paddy: So, what mountain lessons are you applying to your parenting style? Are you doing for your children? What you wish that you were given as a child?

Melissa: I Want to be. The internal voice of my children that tells them that they are enough. I want my children to describe me to somebody else later of all the myriad of flawed ways they're gonna describe me.

Melissa: I want them to describe me as consistent. And I think I do a really good job of that. I think I show up for them whether I'm upset or busy or chaotic , I wanna be consistent so that they know what they can expect. That's sort of the wound I'm parenting with, [00:38:00] right? Is that I want them to feel. You know, innately enough, and that my love is truly not conditional. There's nothing they will ever do that will change my love for them.

Melissa: PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Melissa: I started this, um, this journal and it's just letters to my daughter. And anytime I'm sitting there, I just open it and I jot down a little note to her.

Melissa: . And I was looking back at the letters to my daughter right before her birth. And one of the things that I wished for her was that she would be resilient.

Melissa: And I reminded her and me in this letter that resilience doesn't come from comfort. And so I'm not wishing you a life free of discomfort. I'm wishing you a life where you can handle the discomforts that are inevitably going to come. And I think about that's what my journey in the mountains so much has taught me is not how to, prevent all of the things that don't feel good, but how to, lean into the ones that are there to teach us

Melissa: PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: There's an idea in outdoor challenges that the mountain really never changes us.

Paddy: It just shows us who we truly are. So with that in [00:39:00] mind, after all of your time in and on the world's most famous mountains, who are you Truly?

Melissa: I am a person who is deserving and I am truly enough. And I think that. I didn't have to go to the summit of Everest. You know, I didn't have to go through all of that to be enough. I just already was and so are you and so are the listeners.

Melissa: the mountain is both.. a mirror and a teacher. Right. It's gonna show you just who you are and also who you can be.

Melissa: MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

Paddy: It is time for the final ramble, one piece of gear you cannot live without.

Melissa: Okay. So if you. know me at all. You know that I'm rarely seen without a headband buff sort of fashion item, but it really is my, like, always have it, it's my first aid. I can turn it into a compression bandage, I can turn it into, you know, a snot rag for my children. And you know, I never have to brush my hair,

Paddy: Nice, nice. Best outdoor snack.

Melissa: Oh my gosh. Okay. So I'm [00:40:00] so into kids snacks at the moment, like goldfish are delicious. I'm sorry. They just are.

Paddy: delicious.

Melissa: I know. And like I'd love it for the organic non GMO goldfish to be as good, but they're not, they're just not.

Paddy: What is your hottest outdoor hot take?

Melissa: You don't need all the stuff to do all the stuff

Paddy: , Is this an Everest thing? Because Ben Ayers said the same thing.

Melissa: oh, you know, I do. I think because you just see, especially working in Nepal, you see what people can get away, not get away with, but thrive while like wearing flip flops and, you know, jeans. Also it actually comes from this idea of like, I, you know, I've been rocking the fast glasses lately with all my trail running.

Melissa: 'cause I'm a trail runner now and I've got my fast glasses and I went to LA and like four different people asked me if I was going skiing.

Paddy: Oh, just like hardcore blades, like big old

Melissa: Yeah. I mean, not even really, I don't, I think they were just normal, like our atmosphere, fast glasses. But in the city atmosphere, people are like, oh, you must be a skier.

Melissa: And then I was like, well, what am I doing? Like, I [00:41:00] don't

Paddy: It's kind of like , the Dolly Parton thing, you know, like the bigger the hair, the closer to God, the bigger the shades, the closer to God. That's what I gotta

Melissa: Yeah. I I love that. Yeah.

Melissa: MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

Paddy: OUTRO VO:

Paddy: Melissa Arnot Reid is a mountaineer, mountain guide, speaker, and author. She is also the first American woman to summit and descend Mount Everest without suplemental oxygen. Follow her adventurin' on Instagram at Melissa Arnot. And her brand new memoir, Enough, is available at Melissa Arnot Dot Com. Go get it, right now, it is SOOOO great.

Paddy: Also, you lovely audience members you, we want to hear about the desires of your earholes. So email us guest nominations and your thoughts to �����ԹϺ��� Podcast At �����ԹϺ��� Inc Dot Com. We are, afterall, making this show for you and your noggin antennas...those are your ears.

Paddy: The �����ԹϺ��� Podcast is hosted and produced by me, Paddy O'Connell. But [00:42:00] you can call me PaddyO. Storytelling support provided by Micah "Snowboarders Give Me Low Back Pain" Abrams. Music and Sound Design by Robbie Carver. And booking and research by Maren Larsen.

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