After last October’s blog post, Daring Inspiration from Past and Present, the ILLUME team was inspired to share our own stories of daring. Here’s mine…
As a mother of two young children who has passed a certain milestone birthday, I keep hearing these three little words creeping up in my thoughts and even coming out of my mouth sometimes. Those three little words are: “I used to.” This isn’t something I ever thought I would say and I certainly don’t like thinking it, let alone hearing myself say it.
That’s precisely why, when my husband mentioned a possible boys snowboarding weekend in Colorado, I asked if I could tag along. You see, in another life, prior to having children, snowboarding is something we did fairly often (note that I didn’t say “used to”); travelling away from the Midwest to “real” mountains. But, with the demands of kids and jobs and life, it was something easy to let slip to the bottom of the priority list. Before I knew it, eight years had passed and I had only been out snowboarding two or three times. Snowboarding was getting dangerously close to becoming something, I used to do.
Leading up to the trip, I was a complete nervous wreck. I was constantly telling myself and others that I might just end up at the nearby outlet mall if it didn’t go well. But wait a second, I’m not someone who shops instead of getting outdoors to do something active! What’s going on here!? I must stop this! At the time, it seemed so daring I wasn’t sure I could really do it.
Turns out, it wasn’t so daring at all. My heart was racing as we got off the chair lift, ready to descend the mountain for the first time, but as soon as I started down, it was exhilarating, just like I remembered. It was pretty much just like riding a bike. I even kept up with the boys!
But like so much in life, you don’t know until you try. If I hadn’t taken what seemed like a dare I might have just let snowboarding slip into a list of things “I used to do”. Instead, I came home with renewed enthusiasm for getting myself and the kids out on the mountain. I even told them it would be okay if they decided to ski.
