Cat: I saw on your, just an aside, I've gotten really good at stalking people for these interviews, but I was looking at your profile on the Sportiva website. And are you still, so do you do graphic design from the road as well?

Brittany: I do. Yes, that is my main source of income. Professional climbing is my passion, but I also am really passionate about art, and you can't support yourself by just being an athlete unless you give up all of your time that you would be climbing to do events and other things.

And so I find the balance of still making my climbing a priority and not my climbing career by also having another job that I'm also really passionate about.

Cat: Yeah, I mean, it shows in your illustrations on Instagram. They're awesome. And I love the kind of parody on if you give a mouse a cookie, if you give a dirt bag a shower.

I'll have to send it to you Jeannie, if you haven't seen it. But anyway, yeah, it shows in your art that you're passionate about that too. And so I was curious if that was also more of a passion or if you do that for work as well.

So are you like a freelance artist then?

Brittany: No, I work for one company. I do occasional freelance work, but for the most part, I've worked for the same company since 2016. It's a company in Seattle that does math-based summer camps for girls in elementary school, designed to lessen the STEM gap for young girls and boost their confidence at the age when studies show that girls start to believe that math is for boys and art is for girls.

And so I don't work directly with the programs, but I really, it's a non-profit, and I really believe in their mission. And so I create content for their programs.

Cat: Yeah, I'm curious, what is the age that girls start thinking that, or like that society sort of makes girls think that those things are for boys?

Brittany: Kindergarten.

Cat: Wow, that's fascinating.

Brittany: It's as early as kindergarten.

Jeannie: Makes some sense. I mean, that kind of brings me to the, you just gave us like a micro version of going from being dragged outdoors on miserable hikes to becoming a professional climber. And I know you've talked about this, but you don't feel like you're gifted or special as a climber, that everything you've done is from just really digging in and hard work.

And I think I would be curious, I'm sure most of us would, as to how you go from going from miserable hikes to liking climbing and then becoming a professional. I mean, if you can give us a version of what that looks like.

Brittany: Well, I think the thing that like really clicked for me, and that really was the foundation of who I am now and my work ethic and my passion for pushing myself really came when I moved to Washington for college and I joined my school's climbing team. And it was just the first time it felt like anybody ever in my peer group ever really saw me. I didn't really like know who I was in school, like in high school.

I didn't have a lot of friends. I was just kind of a loner. And when I joined this climbing team, it was the first time I'd ever really like had a community of people who, I don't know, were good friends.

And that kind of like ignited such a deeper passion for climbing in me because my climbing was the thing that I was able to finally like connect with other people over. And of course, that also was the foundation of me putting too much of my self-worth into climbing, which has taken decades to sort through. But on the far more positive side, it was the first time that I just felt like I fit in and like I belonged.

And it was because of climbing. And the sort of atmosphere that was in was as a competitive climbing team. And I was already decent at climbing compared to the people I was around, just from having been doing it my whole life.

But I wasn't exceptional. I was just, I was one step ahead from the people that were just getting started. And just kind of being seen in that way and as a leader and as someone with experience, I just really doubled down on it.

And I had this coach, my friend Justin, who is really, really passionate about training and improving and working hard and competing and winning. And it was so infectious. And we became like best friends through our college.

And it just, I caught the bug from him so hard and started putting in the work and started to like have these dreams and visions of things that I could become and that I could do. If I worked hard for winning the circuit in the Northwest of all of the colleges and then like starting to enter larger competitions and it all just sort of built on itself as like the more that I dreamed that I could do, the more I was excited about putting in the work. And then the more I'd get results, then I'd start to wonder like, well, if this thing that I previously thought was like this crazy shoot for the moon type dream was actually quite attainable, like what else is there?

Like how much bigger should I go and how much like... And then that has just that became like this foundation of how I live my life and what has led me to being a professional climber is continuing to just ride that course of how much bigger can I go? And that has just always been the narrative.

And if you were to trace the story of everything I've ever done or accomplished, it's building off of the things before it of just always like... Always wanting more and wanting to answer the question of like, what am I capable of and what can I do? And how far can I push myself?

But I think it all really traces back to like that climbing team in college, just finding an identity through it. And then being seen for it and being appreciated for it. And that also like I became the coach of that team and I was able to sort of pass on these things to my peers.

And then that was really fulfilling and that became another source of like feeding into why I valued that sort of identity so much and that mindset. And that also has become a huge part that continued to feed into itself of like, other people around me reinforcing that like, oh, they see me with this work ethic and this vision, and then they adopt it too, and it kind of continues on. But, you know, like, I'm also a product of having absorbed that from other people along the way too. Like I didn't just wake up and was like, I'm a dreamer. It was all kind of just a long, you know, 25 year course of events really.

Jeannie: Yeah, no, that's interesting. I mean, I would love to hear a little bit about what it felt like on the team with the other women and how, how, you know, what kind of camaraderie there was or competition and the counterculture kind of connecting to that sense of community and sense of belonging, which is why I think a lot of us love climbing and appreciate it more than just the physical act of climbing. I mean, it's always been like that.

I would ask today, from your perspective, I'd love to know, you know, that question about sort of what it's like back then and also today climbing with women and having these peers and mentors or even protegees. But also, I'm really curious about the culture today in climbing because you were in the comp world and it's become so mainstream, right? And I just wonder, do people who are younger, do they find it to give them what you did or I think I found in others like a sense of belonging as someone who didn't really fit in to all the normal stuff, or I mean, or did it did the racing thing in the competitions and other sports and just was like, oh, you know, this still isn't my tribe.

So yeah, two big subjects there. But has that changed? Or do you think that climbing is still unique enough or small enough in our own way, you know, regions that people, you know, women especially can find that sense of belonging, that maybe didn't have it before?

Brittany: I think that's a hard question to answer in a generalized sense, because I think that is very unique to each individual, especially because not everyone is competitive by nature. I really am. And so it all worked out really well for me in terms of that path that I was on.

But plenty of people don't come from a background of competitive sports, or they do and they don't like it, or they do. And I think that has a strong ability to affect the way people enter into climbing or evolve their climbing. I think a lot of times if people find that they are in that competitive world, but then it doesn't really resonate with them, they find their way to the outdoors, and then they are able to engage with climbing at a much more individualistic level.

And I also like my experience in competition was at the collegiate level. I didn't really compete much as a kid, and I think that it looks really different now, the way that youth engage with competitive climbing, and that wasn't my world. I didn't do national events or anything on the level that kids do now or teenagers or just anyone young and so.

I don't really think that I could speak to that. But there were no kids climbing when I grew up. There were a handful of people.

I knew two people at my high school that climbed.

Jeannie: And you're in your 30s?

Brittany: Yeah, I'm 31.

Jeannie: I mean, that's surprising to me. I thought there were far more.

Brittany: Yeah, I'm from Colorado, the front range. Like, you would think. There were certainly one city away in Boulder, there were, you know, ABC was already a thing. And there were teams and stuff. But in my town, which is like a pretty big town, it had multiple climbing gyms at the time, I would enter competitions and I would be the only woman in my category. And I would enter the adult categories and I would enter the highest one.

I wouldn't even climb that well, but I would win because I'd be the only one. And then even in college, I would enter like the highest level and there would be like two other women. It was always the same two or three other women.

I'd see them at every event. We were always kind of like neck and neck.

Jeannie: Were there women on your team?

Brittany: Yes. The way that the Collegiate series was set up, the best way to win as a team, because you got points both individually and as a team, was to have people winning in every category. And so we would intentionally fill our team with men and women, equal amounts in every category from beginner to advanced to open.

So we very intentionally would seek out a specific demographic of having people in every category to both make the best community on our team, but also to win. But there were not really many people... People would get good really fast based on the way that we would train them, but there weren't people that came into it already climbing that hard, and just in the whole circuit, amongst maybe a dozen schools throughout the entire Northwest, from Washington to Idaho to Oregon, there were still even throughout the four years that I did that, there were still three of us in the same open finals every weekend.

Having that small community was really cool in a way because we became very close. I think it really fostered us banding together. But at the same time, you know, it was also rather lonely to look at the men's category and there'd be, you know, like a dozen people and we had like three.

So that was interesting and I think that I still definitely experienced that same gap in a completely different realm today doing like very high level trad climbing outdoors. It's the same ratio. It's you know, me and a couple other women to hordes of men.

Jeannie: Yeah.

Brittany: And over, you know, 25 years that I've been climbing through switching to completely different disciplines, experiences the same.

Jeannie: It's funny, I think of today and Cat and I talked about this, like it feels like and we're not in your small world, but it feels so much bigger. It feels like, and Cat, you could speak this a little from your perspective, but that there are so many more women, you know, crushing hard, hard trad routes than there used to be. But ultimately, it sounds like it's still a really small pool.

I'll let Cat jump in, but I'd love to, I'd love to know how that feels for you in terms of, does it feel like a good competitiveness that you got, that you still band together with them and they, and you push each other and you feel camaraderie, or does it feel like you're all kind of now that sponsorships are so big and social media that you're sort of vying against them to, to kind of compete for that, for that attention in that world, you know, as a, as a means to, to living.

Cat: The only thing I'll add to that is my perspective that the amount of women climbing hard trad has grown a lot, probably comes from social media.

Brittany: I mean, my direct experience living in that world would be that, you know, maybe when I was a bit younger, there was one woman for every 10 men climbing hard, and maybe now there's 10 women for every 100 men climbing hard. Yeah, yeah, there's more, but the ratio is not that different. To kind of go back to the earlier question of what it's actually like, the camaraderie versus the competitiveness.

I'd say it's like a mix of a couple of different things that presents a lot of interesting challenges. Like I definitely have experienced this sort of mindset that I think I've read about in the context of like a more corporate setting of women's place as society kind of leads us to believe, which is that, you know, because historically, you know, say there's one woman for every ten men, we have this like conditioned belief that there's only room for one woman for every ten men, and it that's what we see. And so that's what we, you know, whether consciously or subconsciously can come to believe, there is like a competitiveness to vie for that one spot.

And that can like at times overrule the more productive nature of wanting to build each other up and right. Be like a team trying to change that and trying to be like, actually, you know, we're going to make room for five women for every five men, instead of this like ratio that we've always seen. And I have experienced both, I will say, which is difficult because by nature, I'm a really competitive person and I've worked incredibly hard over my entire life to not have that be a problematic toxic thing in my relationships with whoever, you know, non-gender specific.

It's just like a thing that is always the little devil on my shoulder, is always like, you've got to be the best, otherwise, like no one will value you. Just coming from, unfortunately, like where I've always found a sense of place being like a strong climber. And having people like value that, that competitiveness whispers in my ear all the time.

Jeannie: Yeah.

Brittany: But I've also had really incredible, wonderful experiences with building up the relationships with women in the outdoors and in climbing. Like, for example, I think one of the coolest things that's ever happened in my climbing career was, I was approached by a woman after I did a presentation a couple of years ago. And she just said she was really inspired by me and asked if we could climb together.

And I was kind of hurting for partners at the time. And so I said yes, even though she just wanted to learn to trad climb. We spent a season together.

And two years later, a couple of days ago, she did her first 5.14 on gear. She got the second female Ascent of Greenspit. Her name is Laura.

And the whole arc of our friendship and mentorship, and now she's going to be my rope gun soon. And just the whole arc of that, there was never any competitiveness. It was nothing but just both of us coming at it, being psyched and humble and passionate and creating something just unbelievable out of it.

And so I've seen both. I've felt really broken down by other women in the climbing community because of competing for a first female ascent or something. And I've also seen pure 100 percent support.

So there's kind of all of it still out there. And I think we're headed in the right direction for sure. But I think it would be very false to say that any of those issues are fully behind us as a sport.

Yeah, I mean, that's so the same trajectory of when I competed in other sports. I mean, it's the hardest thing with climbing. I think I sometimes feel for people in your position is that there's no finish line.

Jeannie: I mean, a single pitch goal is definitely easier to sort of feel like there's confines around it or boundaries. Right. And everybody's going forward and there's kind of some rules around it.

But obviously in other sports, it's just like there's a finish line. So you're there to compete, whereas climbing is like half the time you're there to compete and half the time you're there to just enjoy pushing yourself and having fun with your partners. And that's, I think that makes the whole world with women even trickier, because we aren't past that feeling of trying to be the big fish and small pond, especially with trying to find sponsorships.

And I worry about that. But it's also what we're doing with Broad Beta is just like trying to share all these individual stories so that we can all appreciate the complexities of it, but also all of us are trying to find that path toward supporting other women and like changing the world by making us all feel more empowered and standing up for ourselves in this patriarchal culture. And then I love that you're doing that.

I love that you admit like I'm really competitive and I'm going to be really competitive with these women on my goals. But I also want them to know I support them in the end and want to inspire other women to realize that these things aren't beyond us, you know, that we can set a goal that's like said, our dream that we never thought possible. And I think that's super inspiring to hear and to feel from you.

I mean, I love that sense of humility that you have while still being wickedly competitive and driven. And I I find it amazing like you're in North Dakota or the Dakotas, you know, being the only woman doesn't surprise me when you're out there climbing, as you mentioned, and it's pretty lonely. I think Moab and Squamish, there's definitely some, a handful or more of women, women crushing and working on pretty darn hard projects.

So it's got to be you've got a bit of a combination, but maybe you can talk a little bit more of this sense you have that I feel so inspired by, which is not my nature, which is to give that extra 20, 50 percent. You know, I always feel like it's really easy to take something if you're fairly talented to like 80 percent and get good at it and enjoy it and still push yourself. But that last 10, 20 percent, it's the hardest thing to dig into.

And I think you mentioned, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to five years down the road, realize you didn't take advantage of the peak of your climbing fitness and your and your abilities. And maybe there's different peaks. I like to think because I've certainly had one much later in my life than your age, and I'm super grateful for that.

And I do think that there are these other peaks we can have at different ages. But, you know, you love the outdoors and you are now in a year of being inside training, compromising your mental health because you can't you know, you've decided not to get outside as much, which fuels you. Yeah, maybe dive into a little bit of why you set that goal and where you where it came from and what it means to you.

Brittany: Certainly. Well, rather than talking about like my current specific goals, I'll talk more about just like that mindset in general, because I think like to circle back to something you said as we were kind of closing that previous topic about the fact that climbing has no finish line as being something that is challenging in terms of just in general. And that really kind of struck a chord with me, because that exact phrase of there is no finish line is like a fundamental part of how I think about what I want out of my climbing and the way I think about it and my life in general.

There's this quote by Todd Skinner, who's my biggest hero that says, keep dreaming, stay hungry, and remember that there is no finish line, which is like this thing that I've repeated to myself thousands of times. I think that is one of the most fascinating and beautiful things in climbing is the idea that no matter how far you go and how hard you try and how much you do, you'll never cross a finish line. And I think that is what keeps motivation really high is that there's always more, there's always something else.

And kind of like as I was saying earlier, when I was talking about how competitive climbing led to me, like always just being hungry to continue to improve, is just this kind of idea that you never reach any endpoint. But that just means that there's endless room for growth. And the more you put in, the more you'll get out, the more you try and grow and attack the biggest things you can possibly think of to go after.

Like the more, even if you don't accomplish them, the more you'll gain out of it, like a direct return on investment. And that has always really appealed to me, because the more that I've grown through climbing, the more I've seen how worth it it is. And the more I've felt like a better version of myself, the more I've felt capable of doing all of the things that I dream about.

And so it just continues to reinforce itself. I think over the course of my climbing career, that just like hunger to see what I'm made of, to see how far I can push myself has only grown, because I think like, well, I'm 31, I'm almost 32. And, you know, everyone is gonna push back against this because they want to be supportive and kind.

But like, you cannot deny the fact that there will come a point where you reach your peak and you are no longer capable of doing the same things that maybe you could earlier. And as I've entered my 30s, that sort of, I have a deep dread of that day coming. And like, you never know when that's gonna be.

And that sort of existential dread has only forced me to double down on this strong desire to cram as much growth and as much attacking the biggest goals I possibly can, you know, while it's the moment for it. Because I'm 31 now. At some point, you know, 5.14 is gonna be a hell of a lot harder.

That is just never that far from my conscious mind. And it really motivates me to pack in all of these things that I am so passionate about. Because like time isn't going to wait for me to get around to deciding it's worth it to put in the work for something.

You know, I long since sort of adopted the acceptance that I'm never going to do everything that I want to do in life. There's just not enough time. And so I might as well fully commit to the things that I think matter most.

And for me, it's pushing myself as hard as I can for as long as I can and letting go of the rest. And that sort of led me to where I am now, trying harder and harder things. And even if I don't do them, like I still will have gone a lot farther than if I'd never started.

And that sort of makes it worth it to me. So I don't even remember what your original question was. I just kept talking, so.

Jeannie: Well, lest anyone else who's not 31 thinks that the peak means it's all over, I will round back in on what you said in the beginning.

Brittany: I knew you would, I knew everyone would.

Jeannie: No, no, I love it. I think I do think we should all be inspired by that, because it's really easy to let that time frame go. And if you have the passion and the desire and the physical ability to focus and you're psyched, don't lose that window.

But I think what you said about climbing, that was the segue from it not having a finish line is why we all love it. Because for me, 20 years later, I can still have these goals that I didn't think possible, and certainly not at a later age physically, and still try to go for them. And you can shift your climbing to all so many different aspects of it.

Like right now, you're focused on outdoor trad routes, and you used to be a comp climber, and I don't know, I think that's the beauty of this passion that we have is that it's communal, it's tribal, it's a sense of belonging, but it's also so diverse that once you're past this peak, there are still going to be other peaks.

Brittany: Oh, certainly.

Jeannie: You know, and so I think that's super fun to think about.

Brittany: The harder you work, the more of the peaks that you can climb in this short life is...

Jeannie: Yeah.

Cat: A while ago, Brittany, when you were starting to kind of tell us about the progression of your climbing, you really, you glossed over talking about your self-worth being in climbing. And, you know, I think that's something that I can really relate to. I'm sure Jeannie can relate to it, whether it's with climbing or ski mountaineering or whatever our sport is.

And I would just love to talk about that more. Like, is it detrimental to have our self-worth tied up in climbing? I mean, I think it's risky, right?

You get injured, then where does your self-worth lie? But you also sort of glossed over that you've been working on that and have maybe worked through that. So can you just talk more?

Brittany: Oh, no. I've not worked through it.

Cat: Okay. I mean, me neither, but...

Brittany: You know, you nailed it just now, because I have been dealing with a big injury for the last year, and it is why I've been forced to work on it. Just like with a lot of the kind of things I've been talking about, I think it's a bit of a double-edged sword in terms of having a bit of value and a lot of problems. And I also think it's a thing that regardless of your ability, like a lot of people experience, and maybe it doesn't come from climbing, maybe it comes from like whatever it is that you're the most invested in and that you most identify yourself as, as being like a source of self-worth, because it's how the world sees you and it's how you present yourself to the world.

And thus, that's how you receive feedback from the world, that external, you know, like rewards and motivation can dictate your internal ones. And that at least that was the case for me. And it's interesting, I see the same things that I have dealt with for my entire life.

Like I see it in younger people that I talk to. I've got a friend who's kind of really is like, I think he's like a 15 or 16 and has really like found himself through climbing and really like bloomed as a young adult through it over the last couple of years. But now it was like at the point where he's a good enough climber to start to like really, really care.

And then as a result, start to place all of his self-worth into his performance. So like, I think it's super relevant to a lot of people. And my sort of journey with it has been I didn't really know who I was.

I just hadn't figured it out yet. And as such, I didn't really receive a lot of that feedback from the world around me of like, you're doing good, like we see you, we appreciate you for who you are, because I didn't even know who I was. And so I was just sort of presenting this blob to the world up until the point where I found that climbing really gave me a sense of that.

And the more that I was like, I'm a climber, I'm a competitive climber, I'm a leader, I have this role, the more that I really took out by the reins and ran with it, the more I received this feedback from the world around me that was like, we see you, we value you, you belong here, you belong in this role, you fit, and so the more it became like, oh, finally, I have value to the world, that was then became this huge source of confidence for me in my late teenage, early 28 years, which was an incredible thing for me. I needed it, I really needed that confidence and that gave me the freedom to blossom into someone who just was able to go after the things I wanted in life because then I had this confidence. I think there's so much to gain from that, and there's so much empowerment that comes from climbing and that comes from valuing yourself and your accomplishments through it.

Then becoming a professional climber, becoming a leader in a greater community, and someone that people look up to, it just is so deeply fulfilling and meaningful to me, and is everything I could have ever wanted from my climbing, to be that person and to be inspiring other people. But it does have this darker side, which is that I wonder sometimes like, well, if I didn't have climbing, how would people see me? Like, who, what would they think of me?

Who would I be? For the longest time, I didn't really have any answer to that. I was just, it was, it felt like not just that climbing was all that I was, but that climbing hard was all that I was.

I didn't really think that that many people saw me beyond that. And then I began to kind of, for all of this feeling of being seen, it became a feeling of being seen on a very superficial level, of just being seen as my list of accomplishments, and as my social media presence, or as the things I write or any of that. And unfortunately, it's been kind of reinforced in some scenarios.

I had an experience a year or two ago, where I was trying to date, and I was interacting with somebody off of an app, and they went on to say, oh, essentially they said they were surprised to see that I had a personality, and that I was more than just my climbing and my climbing accomplishments. And it caught me so deep to feel like that anyone was surprised that I was multi-dimensional as a person. And then it gets in my head to wonder if anybody actually does see me beyond that.

And if I'm hanging out with a group of friends and I'm the only person that's a professional climber in that group of friends and everyone else, just like climbing is a bit more of a hobby, or maybe they're as passionate, but they're not as good. It can then kind of be a little hard to fit in in that space that you would think I would fit in the most amongst other climbers, because in my head, I'm like, if I were just like an average climber, would these people care? Like would they still be my friends?

Cat: And therein lies the beauty of being a beginner climber, right? Like how you talked about your friend who's young and just getting really good, like that beautiful sort of honeymoon phase with climbing, where you find your people and you find your community and therefore start to identify with the sport. It's like this beautiful sort of interim before like, yeah, entering that deep, deep identity with the sport where you can kind of lose your multi-dimensionality.

Brittany: Yeah. And I think like, just to like, clarify like, all of the like, negative things from it are just my own intrusive thoughts. It's not in any way like, feedback that is coming at me, other than like, the occasional thing like that dating story.

But yeah, in my own journey through this, I have been really lucky to be surrounded by the right people to help me work through that. Just even just a few people, a few things that have been said to me over time, a passing sentence that changed everything. Like last summer, a friend of mine, the friend whose driveway I'm in right now, her name is Kaia, we were sharing a campsite in Squamish, and I was maybe lamenting about some of these things.

She said to me, well, for what it's worth, I didn't drive a thousand miles to camp with a professional climber. I did it to camp with you. I've been really lucky to have friends that have shown me that they do see me for more than that, and at the same time, it is still just a battle with my own insecurities and my own intrusive thoughts, and it's culminated in just over the last year, dealing with this injury that has really sucked, as injuries always do, but I think there's always so much to gain and to learn once you have a better perspective.

It's still a thing in motion. I have, over the last year, really been forced to extrapolate a lot of self-worth from climbing and find it in other things and become more multi-dimensional in how I value myself because of it. I would have loved to have not dealt with this and to have been able to not spend so much time doing rehab and recovery and dealing with anxiety related to it.

I think I will always, I think it is a thing I'll look back on as greatly valuable as forcing me to step away from having all of my identity be from climbing, especially because preceding that, I was on like a multi-year string of just like success and growing as a professional climber and getting more sponsors and getting more like podcasts and news articles and just like all of the stuff that was like everything I'd ever wanted for my climbing. And but as such, like digging myself deeper into that hole of being like, this is who you are. This is what you are.

Cat: Yeah, like there's no turning back now.

Brittany: Exactly. And so, yeah, like injury really, really like casts an unwelcome, but sometimes much needed light onto that, that self-worth identification situation. But to tell you what it was is that I have messed up the cartilage in my elbow from crack climbing and it's like originally it was caused by it when you like are in this thumbs down position, especially on an overhang and you take your arm from like way up here and you bring it down here, like above your head down to your waist, your radius and your ulna, the bones in your forearm cross over each other.

I dislocated my elbow like a decade ago, so I've got some scar tissue in there and it kind of all got really irritated. And I thought it was tendinitis, so I treated it wrong and it got way worse to the point where I had to take about a year off from crack climbing. You know, I couldn't do the things I wanted to do.

I could only climb on very specific types of moves, specific angles at a really low volume for a very, very long time. It still is a thing that I'm dealing with now. Over a year later, I mean, that's like also the dark side of always pushing yourself as hard as you can.

Sometimes you push too hard and that becomes harder to know where that line is as you get older, which is what I'm experiencing now is that I can't sustain the same amount of intensity that I maybe could when I was younger. And so that's been fun.

Cat: Yeah, is it, well, I imagine with the project that you're working on now, that it's gotten quite a bit better, that the elbow situation has gotten quite a bit better.

Brittany: Yeah, I think it would be better if I weren't climbing at all, but I did spend, I mean, I spent the last six months trying to build up this injury so that I could try the thing I want to try without it being an issue. And it's still an issue. But if I had just not done any training or rehab, I wouldn't be able to try at all.

Cat: Well, I'm curious, Brittany. I mean, we just said a lot about multi-dimensionality and wanting people to remember that you're not just a professional climber. And I'm curious specifically, what do you want people to know about you and see about you that has nothing to do with being a professional climber?

Brittany: I mean, at the end of the day, the thing that I do really want to give to the world, maybe not to like my friends and my like really people that are really close to me, but like to the world in general is my general like work ethic and philosophy about, you know, seizing the day and believing that anything is possible and being willing to put in the work for it. And that is all in the context of climbing in my life, but also it is such a general thing that I think that I wish that I was seen more for that in just a sense of like this idea rather than like this idea only in the context of climbing. But then I think that on a day to day basis of just like, say you're spending time with someone and you value little traits about them, their sense of humor, their quirks, their things that annoy them, the things that make them shine.

I think that knowing people and loving them for all of the little things about them is just as important as valuing someone for their biggest and brightest moments and ideas. It's pretty easy to idolize your heroes for their biggest and brightest ideas because that's what sets them apart. That's what makes them stand out in a crowd.

But I think in an ideal world, you would also be loved and appreciated when you're blending into the crowd.

Cat: Or when you're failing or when you're less than perfect or when you're... For sure, yeah.

Jeannie: I gotta say, Brittany, like, I so appreciate all of what you're expanding on and expressing because we often hear in the climbing world or in the climbing realm, or I do, I don't know, just how climbing is such a selfish pursuit, you know? But you could say that about music and art and anything else, and it's certainly of anyone who gives so much of themselves to one thing like you are, but I do think, you know, that is where we learn more about the rest of who we are and what we can do in the world. And I love talking to you.

I love that so much of this is coming out that makes us think about climbing is more than just that selfish pursuit, you know, that it's, that if it's your passion, if it's what you really want to do, there's so much you can learn from and grow from and also just leave with the rest of us.

Brittany: I think that it is like a falsely negative thing to identify climbing as a selfish pursuit. And I think it's stigmatized, just the idea of selfishness is stigmatized as negative, when in reality, there is so much positive that comes from selfishness as well. Because if you are invested in yourself and you put all this work into your selfish pursuits, you're building yourself up into the best version of yourself that then in turn has the most to give.

If I didn't invest in the things that I'm selfish about, like my own time, I would be a shitty version of myself and I wouldn't really have that much to offer. It makes me sad to hear when people experience guilt over investing their time into things they consider selfish pursuits, because just like one of the key principles of leadership is that you cannot take care of others unless you take care of yourself first. And you know, it's like when you're on an airplane, and you're not supposed to put the ventilation mask over someone else until you do it to yourself first.

So I think that we shouldn't really think of it as a negative thing.

Cat: I'm smiling because this hits so close to home for me as a nurse. When I first started in my nursing career, I was like this altruistic, starry eyed little nurse that was like, I'm not going to take lunch breaks. I'm going to bend over backwards to make every patient and family and coworker happy.

Brittany: How long did it take before you burned out?