How Breast Cancer Changed This Climber’s Approach to Scaling the World’s Tallest Mountains

has seen many summits in her lifetime. In 2016, she scaled Mount Everest, and two years later, she climbed K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth .

Whether you’re scaling literal or metaphorical mountains, there is wisdom to be gleaned from her experiences. I had the pleasure of speaking to Thompson about mountaineering, her experience with breast cancer, and how those two things informed one another in her journey through her life's own peaks and valleys.You were on Mount Rainier—your first big mountain—when you made it your mission to scale Mount Everest.

When I was diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of 2015, I had just decided to climb my first Himalayan peak, which was Manaslu in Nepal. Manaslu is the eighth-highest mountain in the world, and it was a big deal to me that year to be skilled enough and ready to climb it. I was getting my training plan together, studying the route, and getting connected with a team to climb with when I was diagnosed. And that diagnosis definitely gave me the motivation to still be able to climb that year.

It wasn’t until I went back the next year to help other women achieve their goals by going to K2 base camp, that I had this full-circle moment of saying thank you—not just for what that mountain gave me, which I think was perspective and the realization that I am enough, but also for what the mountain took away from me, relinquishing that need to be perfect or be everything or have the answer. I think I did get what I came for from K2, but it took me at least a year to really let it soak in.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

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