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Chapter 1

For the first two decades of my life, I lived in Colorado, in a small town called Loveland, forty-six miles north of Denver.

My father was handsome, charismatic, and complicated. He was a practicing psychologist and a professor at Colorado State University. The education of his children was of paramount importance to him. If my brothers and I didn’t bring home A’s and B’s, we were in big trouble. That being said, he always encouraged us to pursue our dreams.

At home he was affectionate, playful, and loving, but when it came to our performance in school and athletics, he demanded excellence. He was filled with a fiery passion that at times was so intense, it was almost terrifying.

Nothing was “recreational” in our family; everything was a lesson in pushing past the limits and being the best we could possibly be. I remember one summer my father woke us up early for a family bike ride. The “ride” ended up involving a grueling vertical climb of three thousand feet at an altitude of almost eleven thousand feet. My youngest brother, Jeremy, must have been six or so, and he rode a bike without gears. I can still see him pedaling his little heart out to keep up, and my dad yelling and screaming like a banshee at him and the rest us to ride faster and push harder, and no complaining allowed. Many years later I asked my dad where his fervor came from. He paused; he had three grown kids who had far surpassed any expectations he could have dreamed of for them. At this point he was older, less fiery, and more introspective.

“It’s one of two things,” he told me. “In my life and my career, I have seen what the world can do to people, especially girls. I wanted to make sure you kids had the best possible shot.” He paused again. “Or, I saw you all as extensions of myself.”

From the other direction, my mother taught us compassion. She believed in being kind to every living thing and she led by example. My beautiful mother is the most gentle and loving person I have ever known. She is smart and competent, and instead of pushing us to conquer and win, she encouraged us to dream, and took it upon herself to nurture and facilitate those dreams. When I was very young, I loved costumes, so naturally Halloween was my favorite holiday. I would wait anxiously each year, laboring over who or what I would be that year. My fifth Halloween I couldn’t choose between a duck and a fairy. I told my mother I wanted to be a duck-fairy. My mother kept a straight face.

“Well then, duck-fairy you shall be.” She stayed up all night constructing the costume. I, of course, looked ridiculous but her nonjudgmental support of individuality inspired my brothers and me to live outside the box and forge our own paths. She fixed the cars, mowed the lawn, invented educational games, created treasure hunts, was on every PTA board, and still made sure she looked beautiful and had a drink in hand for my father when he got home from work.

My parents parented according to their strengths: my brothers and I were guided by their combined feminine and masculine energies. Their polarity molded us.

MY FAMILY WENT SKIING EVERY WEEKEND during my childhood. We would pile into the Wagoner and drive two hours to our one-bedroom condo in Keystone. No matter what the conditions were—blizzards, stomachaches, sixty below zero, we were always the first ones on the mountain. Jordan and I were talented, but my brother Jeremy was a prodigy. We all soon caught the attention of the head coach of the local mogul team and we began training and soon even competing.

During the summers, we spent our days water skiing, biking, running, hiking. My brothers played Pee Wee football, baseball, and basketball. I started competing in gymnastics and running 5K races. We were always moving, always training to go faster, be stronger, push harder. We didn’t resent any of it. It was what we knew.

At twelve, I was running a 5K when I felt a white-hot pain between my shoulder blades. After a unanimous first, second, and third opinion, I was scheduled for emergency spinal surgery. I had a rapid onset of scoliosis. My parents waited nervously during my seven-hour surgery while the doctors cut me open from neck to tailbone and carefully straightened my spine (which looked like an S and was curved at sixty-three degrees) by extracting bone from my hip, fusing the eleven curved vertebrae together, and fastening metal rods to the fused segment. Afterward, my doctor gently but firmly informed me that my competitive sports career was over. He droned on, telling me all the activities I could not do and how one can lead a very fulfilling and normal life, but I had stopped listening.

Quitting skiing was simply not an option. It was woven too tightly into the fabric of my family. I spent a year recovering. I was homeschooled and I had to spend most of the day in bed. I watched longingly as my family left every weekend without me, sitting in bed while they flew down the slopes or went out on the lake. I felt ashamed of my brace and my physical limitations. I felt like an outsider. I became even more determined to not let my surgery affect my life. I longed to feel a part of my family again; to feel the pride and hear the praise of my father, instead of the pity. With each lonely day I grew more and more determined to never again sit life out. As soon as the X-rays showed that my vertebrae had successfully fused, I was back on the mountain, skiing with a fierce determination, and by midseason I was winning in my age division. By then, my younger brother Jeremy had taken the freestyle skiing world by storm. He was ten years old and already dominating the sport. He was also exceptional in track and football. His coaches told my father they had never seen anyone as talented as Jeremy. He was our golden boy.

My brother Jordan was also a talented athlete, but his mind was his greatest attribute. He loved to learn. He loved to take things apart and figure out how to put them back together. He didn’t want to hear imaginary bedtime stories; he wanted to hear stories about real people in history. My mom had a new story every night for him, about great world leaders or visionary scientists, and she researched the facts and wove them into engaging tales.