Michele’s Story: Find Your Own Trail

As you’re scrolling this page, please enjoy Life From The Summit’s theme song—the Summit Song. Specially written for Life From The Summit by the beautifully gifted pianist and composer, Janine DeLorenzo, the Summit Song magically captures Michele’s journey through life. Give it a listen and let the journey of this song inspire your next summit!

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.” — Edward Abbey

That about sums it up. Like you, my trails have been crooked, winding, lonesome, and dangerous (at times). But it wasn’t until 49 years down my crooked trail that I finally started seeing my most amazing views.

Most of my childhood I lived a trailer court along the banks of the Platte River in small town Nebraska. Right before I became a teenager, we moved to a non-mobile house that was across a dirt road from a corn field four miles outside of town. Life in rural Nebraska was simple . . . the trail—pretty flat and straight.

Then the trail became a little more crooked when my parents divorced my senior year in high school. I spent the next several years acting out, ignoring the trauma of being a child of divorce, and partying like every day was 1999.

But it didn’t stop me from being a straight-A student and the first person in my blue-collar family to go to college, let alone law school.

Then, the trail took a hairpin turn during my second year of law school when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Those three words—“you have cancer”—landed like even more of a brick in my chest than the words “we’re getting a divorce.” But, one very tricky surgery later to remove my thyroid and parathyroids while trying to preserve the vocal cords that I’d hoped to use as a lawyer, and the trail evened out again.

Tired of the flat, corn-lined Nebraska trail, I decided to bushwhack a new trail all the way to Washington, D.C. after law school. This added to my list of family firsts: first to move out of state and first to enroll in a Masters program (LL.M for Environmental Law). These were my equivalent of being the first to summit a mountain because trailer park girls from Nebraska don’t dare dream so big!

My trail during the LL.M program led me to an internship in the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the United States Department of Justice, where I was ultimately invited to interview for an attorney position. During my interview process, a high-ranking female attorney in the front office said to me, “You know, we really don’t hire people who haven’t gone to Ivy-league schools or been on law review or clerked for a federal judge.” To which I responded, “Well, that will be your loss.” Apparently my good work and the relationships I’d developed at ENRD were worth more than those pedigrees. I was hired.

I spent 20 years as an environmental litigator at DOJ, with a short three-year detour at a big D.C. law firm mid-way through my career. My trail as a federal government litigator was fairly well-worn . . . tons of all-nighters, high-profile litigation, discovery-intensive cases. Along that trail was a mountain of student loan debt, stress, sexism, burnout, heartbreak, tons of imposter syndrome . . . all the usual stuff that life on the lawyer trail has to offer.

But there also was a cancer-fueled determination to stay healthy. I took up running when I moved to D.C., starting with my first 5k in 1998. Several races and two marathons later, I transitioned `to triathlons. In November 2011, I completed my first Ironman in Arizona, with the support and love of my biggest cheerleader—my mom—yelling my name as I crossed the finish line to hear those four words from Mike Reilly: “You are an Ironman!”

Six months later, I heard two more words over the phone with my brother’s shaky voice at the other end: “Mom’s dead.” Our mom–my biggest champion–had died suddenly from a heart attack at the age of 58. She was working in her office, alone, just past midnight, when it happened.

At that point, it was like the trail dropped off a cliff, with no warning.

The fog had already been settling on my lawyer trail for a couple of years before my mom died. But when we lost her so abruptly, my trail became completely socked in with a dense fog. I couldn’t see anything in front of me, including the trail. I was hopelessly lost.

Over the next four years, the trail didn’t get any clearer. It was like I was wandering in a perpetual fog. No amount of success at work or on the race course (with two more Ironman’s under my belt in Lake Tahoe and Boulder) made me feel alive. I wasn’t only lost . . . I was dead inside.

The mountains of Colorado were calling to me when I was there for Ironman Boulder in 2015. So, I developed a game plan to transfer to ENRD’s Denver field office, uproot my life, and bushwhack a new trail to Colorado. In June 2016, I packed up my dog Winnie, said “see ya later” to my fabulous D.C. “framily,” and hit the road.

During my first couple of years, Colorado for me was what we call a “false summit” in the hiking world. You’re hiking up a grueling mountain and you see what you think is the summit. It gives you hope and stamina to keep going . . . it’s the allure of finally reaching a point where you can catch your breath. But then you get there, and realize that the real summit was obscured by the false summit. The real summit is still far away. And you can’t even enjoy the view from the false summit because you just desperately want this journey to be over.

That’s where I found myself in 2018. On a metaphorical false summit, sobbing in my dark closet, just wanting it to all be over. I didn’t care if I fell asleep that night and never woke up again. I wasn’t going to take my own life. I just didn’t care if I stuck around anymore. Moving to Colorado hadn’t cleared the fog for me. It exacerbated it. I loved being in Colorado so much—it showed me how much life there is to live. But, it actually made me keenly aware that my career as a lawyer was sucking the life out of me. So much so, that I couldn’t even enjoy my life outside of being a lawyer.

I was deeply unhappy. Overwhelmed. Stressed. Anxiety-ridden. Depressed. Drained. Dissatisfied.

I felt trapped by my choices and financial circumstances, including a mountain of student loan and credit card debt. 

And I believed that the only way to pay the bills and survive was to keep being a lawyer . . . because that’s all I knew how to do. It was the only thing I was trained to do. In my mind, the trail to being a lawyer was a one-way dead end.

Yet, everything inside me was screaming “this isn’t where I’m supposed to be.”

Fortunately, a few months later, I found two certified programs (coaching and mindfulness meditation) that were like trail signs emerging from the fog.

And so in 2019, I started bushwhacking another new trail. I developed a plan to quit my lawyer job and become a full-time entrepreneur by June 4, 2021.  For nearly two years, I worked full-time as a lawyer and part-time as a mindfulness meditation teacher and mindset coach.  

People thought I was crazy.  People always think you’re crazy when you tell them you’re going to climb to the top of a mountain that you can’t even see.

But I did it.

And how I did it—how I bushwhacked an entirely new trail—is what I want to share with you.

All of my trails have led me to this point. The point where I can now be the guide for everyone else who wants to climb up a mountain because the view from below just doesn’t do it for them anymore.

My mom’s dad—my Papa Norman—graduated from high school in a small Nebraska town sometime around 1943. Awhile back, I found the newspaper clipping about his high school graduating class. Their class motto was:

“Now we have reached the foothills. The mountains are in view.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

When I moved to Colorado, the actual and metaphorical mountains that I wanted to climb came into view. I see the mountains out my back door every day. And most days I wake up feeling alive and energized from the most amazing views—in more ways than one. (I say “most days” because I’m a human being. As human beings, we are meant to experience and allow for the full array of human emotions—even the heavy, difficult ones).

After 49 years, I finally took the most beautiful trail in the forest . . . my own. That trail is still crooked, still dangerous, and sometimes frightening. But I know that the transformative tools and practices I have learned will support me through whatever I encounter along the way.

I live in Colorado with my dog Winnie, and my life is filled with climbing 14,000-foot mountains, rock-climbing, hiking, road tripping, and creating a business that empowers people just like you to find your own trail . . . to create your own life from the summit.

I recognize and call out the white privilege that has been afforded to me my entire life, and the advantages I’ve had as a result. I also recognize and honor that the land on which I sit that is now known as the State of Colorado, is the unceded land of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute, and Ochethi Sakowin. I honor the enslaved African peoples brought to, held, and sold on this land; their descendants; and their continuing struggle for liberation. I also honor the Asian ancestors from whom the mindfulness meditation practices that have transformed my life have come. I commit wholeheartedly to using the advantages I have been given to benefit and empower others, and to uphold the commitments in my Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Statement.

When you’re ready to bushwhack your own trail so that your success can include more happiness and well-being, I’ll be your guide.