As promised, here are more of my pre trip ponderings inspired by Vermont’s muddy roads. As I drove home on those potholed filled roads I could not help but think about the importance of a good foundation.

Each year when spring arises certain sections of Vermont’s dirt roads become almost impassable. Local road crews come by periodically and fill in the ruts and holes with gravel but within a day the holes and ruts are back. These sections of road deteriorate year after year in the same way. Over and over again the roads are patched up, only to break down again. It is not until the entire road is scraped down and given a new base that lasting improvement finally happens.

I connected this with the inner work I have done over these last years. I was not given a good foundation as a child. This led me to live a dissociated life, often falling apart when external stress occurred. I tried to patch what I could and made small repairs. This allowed me to live a life that looked fairly normal on the outside, while underneath I struggled to stay out of the mud of self hatred and suicidality.

After Mark left the way he did, I sunk into a seriously deep quagmire. The holes in my system appeared and threatened to suffocate me in the mud. Rather than giving in, I found a way to tear up my entire foundation. I went as deep inside as I could go, all the way back to the youngest, first dissociated parts of myself so that I could lay a new foundation.

Just as tearing up an entire road is messy and causes much inconvenience, tearing off the patches I had put over my scars caused much discomfort. I was not sure I would survive it. But I trusted my system and I went to these painful places while immersed in the beauty of nature on long, grueling hikes. To embark on this work I had to do the equivalent of shutting down the road. I had to put aside everything I had filled my holes with, including for a time all of the people who had helped me patch and fill them. I needed to lay myself bare without any outer expectations or projections of who I was in the present. I needed to distance for a while from everyone who knew me based on their experiences of certain parts of myself so that I could learn to see the other parts. In some ways this is like the need of a toddler and a teenager to distance from their parents in order to find their own personality separate from that which is projected onto them. As an example, if people expect you to dress or act a certain way it can be difficult to do it differently in their company.

In order to fully connect with myself, I needed to reconnect with my baby self who was left in pain when I was first abused in life. I needed to allow myself to be fully her. This was the core of me and I needed to give new birth to my baby self. And in order to do this I needed to shed for a time every vestige of who people thought I was as Mary the adult. I needed to find a way to connect the dissociated, mammalian part of my brain where the trauma was stored with the conscious part of my current life brain.

During this time I met many wonderful “road builders” in the guise of trail angels. These people did not know me and therefore were unable to reflect onto me who they thought I was based on only knowing certain parts. This allowed me to interact with them in new ways and allowed me to get a better sense of who I was inside. And the kindness of these angels helped me lay a much stronger foundation for this new me who was emerging from the muck of my past.

I have emerged in a new place and feel I have finally become the Mary Badass hikers saw in me years ago. And now I look forward to living as Mary Badass while I undertake two more national scenic trails. Thank you for taking this journey with me.