It's OK to Ugly Cry.

As many of you know, I embarked on hiking the West Coast Trail, part of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve on Vancouver Island. I can say with certainty that it was perhaps THE most difficult adventure I have ever embarked upon.

I was prepared. My gear was appropriate, appropriately weighed, and carefully packed. My mental health was great. I had been training with a coach for many months (thanks Nick) and was regularly in the gym, doing my best to take care of my fitness.

What I was not fully prepared for was the lack of sleep after hiking all day. Or the fact that I wouldn’t be hungry, regardless of the number of calories I had burned. Or that, at the end of a full day of hiking, I would have to rush to put up my tent and cook dinner before it got dark, with very little time to rest before waking up and doing it all over again.

I was also not prepared for the intense noise of the sea. Nor was I prepared for the equally intense noise of other people snoring while I attempted to slumber peacefully in my cozy sleeping bag.

All of these things are perfectly natural, of course, but they also seem to be specifically designed to toy with one’s mental state. The excitement at the beginning and the confidence of the experienced hiker can be quickly chipped away by all of these little things.

It’s like some well-designed military torture method, except I signed up for this voluntarily.

Regularly on the trail, someone would inevitably say, “And whose idea was this anyway?”

I confess: it was mine.

The whole thing was my brainchild.

“Let’s go on a coastal hike,” I said.

“It will be fun,” I said.

“Let’s ask a couple of friends,” I said.

What I forgot to assess, and what we never really talked about, was that Parks Canada considers this a Type 3 adventure — extremely difficult and rugged wilderness.

Not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure.

With the wilderness slowly breaking down our spirits and the insane number of ladders we encountered (there are about 100) on Day 4, I had had enough.

I climbed partway up a ladder series, and let me tell you, these ladder series were absolutely no joke.

I started to cry.

I mean, I started to REALLY cry.

The only words I could get out between sobs were, “This is so hard.”

My friends agreed and understood that, yes, this was hard.

I said nothing else, turned around, and began climbing an insanely tall ladder, ugly-crying the entire way.

I mean, we’re talking full red eyes, runny nose, sobbing.

I’m pretty sure I soaked my friends and watered the foliage with my tears the whole way up.

My beautiful friends hung out at the bottom and held space for me. They didn’t offer words of encouragement like, “You’ve got this!” or “You’re almost there!” — things we had said to each other at previous ladders that were slippery, broken, or missing rungs.

Instead, they waited their turn and helped by doing nothing.

And it was exactly what I needed.

I got to the top of that ladder and was fine. Somehow, that giant, ugly cry was the release I needed.

I had acknowledged that what we were doing was hard. I had pushed through the hard. And now I was ready to push on.

A new voice had taken over in my head:

“I can do this. I have already done so much.”

And we continued on.

For another four days.

From that point on, the only tears were tears of joy, appreciation, and probably a little bit of disbelief that I had actually signed up for this in the first place.

The main point here is that it’s Ok to ugly cry, it’s not a bad thing, it’s not something to be embarrassed about. 

"We can’t always get what we want but we get what we need"

The Rolling Stones