The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 20.3
KIMMY FASANI'S LIFE SENTENCE OF LIVING
Words: Annie Fast 2022-11-30 08:49:12
“When Kimmy and Chris [Benchetler] reached out and asked if I could help make a few photos to document and share their journey I was humbled, insecure and questioned whether I was the right person for the job.
Kimmy is so strong and inspiring to use what many could see as the beginning of the end to channel every ounce of their internal strength, and to have the courage to want to document and share their experience so that others don’t feel alone, creating community. That’s the beauty of our family—not just our family by blood. I’m talking about our family of snowboarders, surfers, skiers, climbers, etc. Reese, Kimmy’s dog, waited patiently next to Kimmy while we made these first few portraits only a few days after her surgery. My wife Jenna was right next to me the whole time, in our makeshift studio inside of Kimmy and Chris’ house. It was a heavy moment. But when Kimmy picked Reese up, the mood lightened. He was happy to be there with mom, you could see her face light up. Family is everything to Kimmy and that includes pets too.” Photo: Todd Glaser
It’s the weekend of Kimmy Fasani’s final radiation appointment, the last in a long 10 months of treatments that have included chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, followed by a series of daily radiation to save her life. I’m riding along with her from Oceanside, CA, to a meeting with her surgeon, Dr. Cheryl Olson, in San Diego where Kimmy is interviewing her for a documentary. She and her husband, pro skier Chris Benchetler, have been working on this movie project for the last five years. As Kimmy tells it, “Naively, we thought we were starting a movie about our pursuit as professional athletes going into parenthood.” Instead, the movie, titled Riding Our Future, has documented five of the most challenging years of their lives as new parents attempting to pursue their professions while raising two kids and encountering what Kimmy describes as a series of relentless tidal waves. As she says, “Every time we feel like we’re catching our breath, we’re held down again. And at some points, it has just become suffocating.” This take is so uncharacteristic of Kimmy whose success can in part be traced to her positivity, her unwillingness to dwell in the tough moments and her ability to expertly navigate them, learn from them and intentionally move past them to reconnect with her goals. So you know it’s been an extremely rough ride.
These tidal waves of challenges all started at the peak of Kimmy’s career. Following her standout part in Absinthe’s AfterForever in 2017, Kimmy earned all the accolades: TransWorld Snowboarding Rider of the Year, Snowboarder Rider of the Year and Video Part of the Year celebrating the culmination of a lifetime of progression and an enduring willingness to push past her comfort zone. Her part featured heavy AK backcountry lines, lofty natural features, and Kimmy stomping her signature double backflip—this time, as she says, “legit” and in the powder, alongside a heavy-hitting crew including Manuel Diaz, Brandon Cocard and Austen Sweetin.
Standing onstage, Kimmy dedicated her award to her mom, Judy, who couldn’t be with her that night. While the acknowledgement from the industry was huge for Kimmy, what meant even more was for her mom to know her daughter had achieved her dreams. Three weeks later Judy succumbed to cancer in Tahoe. Her mom’s passing was an impetus for Kimmy and Chris to start a family. Their son Koa was born in March 2018, and while momentarily away from the act of snowboarding, Kimmy took the opportunity to lean in on the snowboard industry in support of female riders as mothers, re-signing with Burton and introducing new language into her contract that has been shared far and wide within the industry since. This advocacy for women in snowboarding built on her already strong mentorship role through her Amusement Park and Amusement MTN gatherings.
Kimmy was ready to get right back into it in 2019, this time with Koa along for the ride, her winter highlighted by filming trips for Fire on the Mountain produced by Chris, and Burton trips including deep pow in Japan and, remarkably, a remote family trip sailing and splitboarding through the fjords of Svalbard, Norway. Koa, likely the youngest passenger ever aboard that adventure vessel, kept things interesting, taking his first steps onboard, sea legs and all.
But just as things seemed to be getting back on track, another wave hit. Their first trip in the early winter of 2020 was underway, filming for the Burton One World movie in interior British Columbia. After the inaugural day of filming, Koa suddenly got sick and what followed was a harrowing evacuation to Vancouver where he was diagnosed with acute kidney failure, which could have been a potentially fatal diagnosis if Kimmy hadn’t acted so swiftly. This terrifying episode sidelined Kimmy for the rest of the winter as Koa slowly recovered in the hospital and then at home in Mammoth.
Cue the global pandemic and the universal life disruption that followed.
Koa’s baby brother Zeppelin was born in the spring of 2021. Come that fall, Kimmy was once again looking forward to the winter, but then the biggest wave of all hit: a diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer. This time she truly wondered if this was the one that was going to pull her under.
But before we move forward, let’s back up. An interview with the indomitable Kimmy has been on the books for a while. In fact, it’s long overdue. Kimmy’s career has spanned two decades, from her first year of competition in 2000 to filming parts with Standard Films, Runway Films, Absinthe, Burton and many others, to championing equality by mentoring the next generation of female riders and advocating for motherhood within the sport. Despite her nearly unparalleled presence in snowboarding and all she’s been going through outside of it, she found the time to share her story and in classic fashion did so humbly, with care and grace.
The Snowboarder’s Journal: Briefly tell us about your path to snowboarding, where you grew up riding and how you first understood the possibility of a pro career?
Kimmy Fasani: I grew up ski racing, my mom got me a snowboard when I was 9. After my ski races, I’d see a group of guys making fun little side hits and courses at Soda Springs in Tahoe. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that looks amazing.’ So one day my mom got me a lesson and it just totally clicked. I loved snowboarding because it was different from what my mom did. She was such a great skier; snowboarding gave me something that I could do that was different.
How did you start competing?
We had a hill behind our house. I built a jump with a bunch of my friends and landed a backflip and the guys were like, ‘You should start competing.’ So, I did. I ended up doing well in USASA events because I was the only girl, and then I went to Nationals and won. I was like, ‘Well, maybe it’s not just because I’m the only girl.’ Right away Burton started giving me products, when I was 15, and that just kind of reiterated that maybe I could do it. My mom was really supportive of allowing me to be passionate and she saw my drive and my commitment to it.
Had your dad already passed away by then?
Yeah, so my dad passed away in ’99 from cancer and I started competing in 2000. Snowboarding became a great distraction for me at that point; there was a group of people my age who had already made careers in skiing and snowboarding—C.R. Johnson, Sammy Luebke, Josh Feliciano—who were also already traveling for contests. I don’t think it was necessarily healthy because I was young and we were partying, but it gave me a healthy focus.
I was not a competitor—I just couldn’t thrive in that environment.
After you graduated from high school you decided to go to college. How did you fit that into your career?
My mom and I made a deal that if I was going to focus on snowboarding, I had to have a backup plan. So we drove around the western states to try to find a ski town that also had a college. Ultimately, I landed in Mammoth; they had a community college here. It was small, there were only four classrooms at the time and yet Mammoth was the mecca of snowboarding. I was taking full course loads in the summer and fall and then taking the winter off.
There was a photoshoot in Mammoth right during finals for my associate’s degree. And one of my team managers made a comment about how ‘school’s always going to be there, but your career is not.’ I felt pretty guilty about going to school and I ended up losing that sponsor—it was a reminder of how fragile our careers can be, and I was grateful my mom had already encouraged me to be multifaceted so that I wasn’t just relying on snowboarding.
I got done with my associate’s degree in 2004; that season I didn’t have any sponsors, so I enrolled in the University of Phoenix in 2005, which was an online program for working adults. I created a pretty lenient schedule. And at the same time, I signed with DC. It was almost like a Hail Mary. I was kind of stuck in the shadows on my first go-around with Burton because there were so many competitors, and I was not a competitor—I just couldn’t thrive in that environment. And I was going to school and working full time and I wasn’t making any money. So I didn’t know how to focus my attention, and then when everything was stripped away from me and I had to do it myself, and I had to really put my attention to snowboarding, I realized how much I loved it and how passionate I was and that ultimately brought me to DC and a whole other avenue of opportunity at that time.
And is this about when you and Chris met?
I met Chris in 2003. I was working at the Chart House and he was working at the ice cream store in Mammoth. Chris’ brother Peter and I competed in snowboarding together. I’d go in to see Peter at the ice cream store. One day Peter wasn’t there, and Chris was there. I had just learned that their dad had died, and Peter hadn’t said anything to me that whole summer. Chris was an open book and we immediately had a connection because we both had lost our dads to cancer and we were both pursuing similar careers.
How does yours and Chris’ relationship work with you both pursuing your careers as pro athletes?
Originally both of us were so passionate about being in the mountains. Looking back, I think it was peace of mind for dealing with losing family—we both have a mentality of compartmentalizing risk and fear. Even from the very beginning, we would be able to stand at the top of the jump line and it’s almost like you can look at each other and speak the same language without saying anything. We had that connection from the beginning where we could lift each other up when we needed it. So we would be dropping into a big jump, and I would be nervous and he could sense that and he would be like, ‘You’ve got this,’ and he would give me that extra boost to believe in myself. He really helped me channel my ability to focus and be present in the backcountry as well. I was so new and didn’t really understand how to see terrain coming from a competitive athlete perspective where the park is so groomed, whereas he has always been focused on the backcountry.
Chris was always my backbone for getting out in the backcountry early on. I had been so vocal for so long trying to get on crews growing up; I always rode with guys because there were very few women in Tahoe snowboarding. We would always go out on powder days and build jumps and have fun. And so that was always my experience and then the more established I got as a pro, the more segregated I became—I was only shooting with women and it just didn’t feel like that was the most natural place for me. So at a time when I was struggling to find a crew, Chris and the Nimbus [Independent] crew would bring me out with them. They’d give my footage to whatever outlet, whether Standard Films or for my segment in the TransWorld [Snowboarding] movie.
How was that transition from competition to backcountry? When did that happen and did you have role models for that transition?
It was maybe 2008. I was on DC and Leanne Pelosi was filming LaLa Land and I had come up to Whistler to do a park shoot where we had a heli following us—it was such an insane crew and I was like, ‘This is fucked up.’ Like, this helicopter is following us into these jumps—my mind was blown.
Leanne invited me to film that next spring for See What I See. She really motivated me. I dropped everything. That March I bought a snowmobile and drove to Canada not having a clue. I just got a snowmobile on the trailer and pulled into the parking lot next to Eric Jackson. I didn’t even know how to drive my snowmobile off my trailer and I’m like shooting rocks at his truck as I’m unloading. That was my introduction to backcountry. Leanne and [Jeff] Keenan were really a huge influence. Those experiences helped me realize that contests weren’t everything.
Then in 2010, I screwed up both my ankles that December, so I lost my invite for Dew Tour and X Games. Nick Olsen at DC was like, ‘Why don’t you just spend this season filming?’ So I ended up filming with the DC guys and then I had that major transition in 2011, when I spent a season with Devun [Walsh] and Iikka [Backstrom]. I never knew that women could shift to a backcountry career without being successful first in contests.
Those experiences helped me realize that contests weren’t everything.
You had success at contests early on, but you don’t see yourself as having been a successful competitor?
I feel like as soon as I started on the pro circuit, I choked. I couldn’t handle the pressure of somebody telling me to drop in, and I would make finals and then get last. I was such a scatterbrain. But once I got into the backcountry and I realized that I could land tricks right away, I understood that maybe there was a niche that I could fill, and that contests didn’t have to define my career even though that’s what I saw all my peers doing.
But you took one more stab at contests?
So basically, I come off that 2011 season; I have like mega-confidence because I just filmed with Devun and Iikka. I had been nominated for like four things—Stand Out Performance for doing the double backflip, Video Part of the Year… It was also a time of crazy transition because I left DC and went to Burton. So, with all that momentum, going into that 2012 season were the Olympic qualifiers. I hired a coach, Cody Rosenthal, who’s an amazing friend of mine, to help me get back into park riding and see if I could actually pull it together. And in early December, I drifted off a jump and did my ACL, MCL, PCL and broke my pelvis.
That was the ultimate reminder that I was not meant to do contests. I was only doing it because that’s what I felt like I should do. In 1999, there was a newspaper article that came out in Truckee that was like ‘USASA national gold medalist is eyeing up the Olympics.’ I just always thought the Olympics was my career.
So this major injury happened around the same time as you started Amusement Park at Mammoth? How did that come to be?
It was in 2011 and I was really excited to do the double backflip in the park—I’d done it in the backcountry and there were a lot of naysayers, which was fine. I wanted to build a jump so that I could do that trick in the park; I was still filming for Standard at the time and Mammoth was really supportive. I invited a handful of girls: Jamie Anderson, Erin Comstock, Raewyn Reid, Kristi Leskinen. And that was the kickoff concept; it was more of a fun shred that had no pressure. We were filming it, but it wasn’t designed to be competitive. It was so fun and really pushed me to progress my riding and I realized that it’d be amazing to provide this kind of platform for the rest of the industry because at the time all we had was Superpark. That was a great step for women’s snowboarding to find progression outside of contests.
I wanted there to be no pressure on this event, but I wanted to provide editorial and I wanted women to be able to come session together. In 2011, I had that event in Mammoth and then I had that injury and decided OK well now’s the time I’m a year off snow. So I built out Amusement Park as an actual event and Mammoth helped build a massive jump and an amazing roster of women showed up. I also had a Burton Girls ride day and a hundred women showed up for yoga.
From that point I just was like, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to make this a year-after-year event.’ It ran for five years and it was awesome. Then I got to a point where I wasn’t riding park anymore. It just wasn’t where I felt inspired. That’s why I decided to transition it into Amusement MTN, a backcountry event, because I felt like there was also a huge lack there.
I had been fighting so hard to get on crews and the biggest thing when joining a crew is your knowledge. It had taken me eight years to gain all this knowledge; I thought maybe I could expedite a handful of women’s learning curve to give them an edge to get out in the backcountry and be a reliable partner. And I wanted to get more young women educated in backcountry awareness. That way we could all really move this needle and be an asset. And you can’t always trust the crew that you’re with—you need to have your own knowledge.
Everybody that joined had to take an AIARE 1 avalanche course and then in the spring we would regroup and apply all the skills and pick out a face and then choose lines and we would have photographers and filmers. It’s a safe place for women to learn without feeling like they’re being judged.
You were busy planning Amusement MTN ahead of last winter. What else was going on in your life before you unexpectedly received your cancer diagnosis?
Chris’ brother and his family were in town because it was just about Thanksgiving. And I was just coming off being pregnant, so I hadn’t had a winter on my board. I had some complications with placenta previa, so they were adamant that I be mindful with activity. Zep was nine-and-a-half months. I was regaining my strength but really excited to get back on snow.
I had all these ideas of what we were going to do and getting ready. Being that the world was still shut down, we had just bought this cabin in Mammoth. We had been talking to Warren Miller [Entertainment] about doing a segment about life at the cabin, showcasing how we could be in Mammoth with both kids instead of traveling the world like we had with Koa. We decided to try to plant some roots and stay home—we were just hoping that it would snow. We had a lot of objectives around Mammoth that we wanted to tackle.
I’ve always been able to make a plan and execute the plan—when you’re diagnosed with cancer, you’re stripped of all of that.
You had some symptoms before you called your doctor, like inflammation in your body, clogged milk ducts, soreness, red marks, all confused by the fact that you were still breastfeeding. Tell me how you decided to call your doctor and how quickly you went from finding a lump to a diagnosis of breast cancer?
So I’m standing looking in the mirror doing a self-breast exam with Chris standing next to me, and I feel my boob and I feel the lump. I was feeling under my arm and I felt a very noticeable pea-sized lump in my armpit. I remember looking at Chris and just having him feel it too. It was a Saturday and he was like, ‘You should call Dr. Kim,’ my OB/GYN. The next day I texted her some information. She didn’t like the sound of it and suggested I see this breast surgeon who comes to Bishop. So, Monday morning, I’m in there for a mammogram. And they ended up doing two mammograms. So that’s when my concerns really heightened because I knew that they were doing another to zoom into this area. As soon as I walked into the surgeon’s office, Dr. Olson, she just flat-out knew—she knew the second she looked at me.
This is a hard question, but what was your initial reaction to your diagnosis?
Fuck, fuck, like, I’m not. This isn’t me. I am so planned and organized. How did this fucking happen? I was shocked. I was terrified. I’ve been so close to watching people die, like losing my parents. I’m not scared of dying, but god, I have kids, like little kids and an amazing husband that I have to be here for. And when she diagnosed me, I thought that it was everywhere because of all that inflammation I was having. It all made sense. I was like, ‘It’s definitely in my back; it’s definitely in my bones.’ I just thought I was fucked. And I didn’t even know where to start or what to do. I remember walking out of that room and Chris was outside playing with Zep in front of the hospital. And I’m like teary and I tell him what’s going on. And I think both of us were just like, ‘What?’
Initially Kimmy didn’t talk about her diagnosis publicly. She says, “We were trying to collect all the pieces and figure out how we were possibly going to go through this and at what stage I was at. We knew there was this fine line of being at stage three and stage four. Stage three was survivable. Stage four was where we did not want to go.”
Her doctor explained in the interview that only 2.4% of breast cancers are inflammatory; this was one of the handful of cases she ever expects to see in her career. This cancer tends to show up in women at a younger age and spread more quickly than other types of cancer. Inflammatory means that it’s either been there awhile or it’s growing very, very fast, which meant it was critical to get her treatment started immediately.
Kimmy also reached out to fellow snowboarders Megan Pischke and Izzy Lalive. “They both shared, so candidly, their experiences [with breast cancer],” Kimmy says. “And they each had so much insight that I was simply able to follow the roadmap that my doctor gave me.” That’s when she shared her diagnosis on Instagram.
How did you come to settle into the mindset to share your cancer journey so openly on social media and what are you hoping to achieve by that?
Sharing is now a survival technique because it actually brings healing. I was so naive to breast cancer—I had been an advocate for Boarding for Breast Cancer for over a decade. I never thought it would be me. And I think that was my turning point in wanting to share this message. No matter if you’re healthy, young—cancer can hit any of us. And in sharing over the last five years, and having children, I’ve realized how helpful talking about things can be because we’re not alone—we all have our struggles and our ups and downs. Social media has painted such a fake picture of life and what it should look like, and I wanted to break down that stereotype of what this was going to look like.
I’ve realized through the filming of our movie how there’s layers, and one of the layers that I’ve really learned to peel back is that of vulnerability and being able to express myself. Then seeing the outpouring of support, not just from the industry, but also other breast cancer survivors and current patients, I feel like it helps to humanize it.
When you talk about your experience these past few months, you’ve been talking about it as a transformation. Can you elaborate on the transformative aspect of what you’ve been through?
I’ve always been able to make a plan and execute the plan, have a goal and achieve the goal—most of the time. Being an athlete, I visualize so much, and I usually can make those things a reality. But when you’re diagnosed with cancer, you’re stripped of all of that. Now I’m having to trust other people to make these very big decisions about my body and my health that I have no idea about. Cancer has always been a word that kills people in my life; it’s not something that you survive. So when they said that if I went through all these treatments, I’d most likely survive, I had to start looking at it as a life sentence of living instead of a death sentence.
Through that, I had to make my mind think of positive ways of overcoming this. I’ve always been able to try to harness the good in most things, but the transformation really happened going through chemo. I was being given so many medicines and drugs that essentially kill your body. And at times, I felt like I was dying. And every time that I felt like myself again, I could feel this almost grounding sense, where I was never going to be the same as I was before. I was given so much time to just sit and be that I had to learn how to appreciate that empty space of just being with no distractions. I had to find a way to ground myself and think of it as a way to come out of it looking different and transforming like a butterfly from its cocoon.
So much of the journey was the real raw stripping away of everything—I just had to allow it all to go away and survive.
Having support makes the heaviness of the situation feel less heavy.
I’ve seen so many people coming together to support you. Can you talk about how they’ve been able to help you and Chris and the kids through this?
Man, because we don’t have that much family we’ve definitely had to rely on our friends. Chris and I both don’t typically ask for help, but people were asking how they could help when I was first diagnosed and we didn’t really know what to say. But then it became very clear that I was going to be doing treatment by myself and Chris was going to be taking care of the kids. And we were all over the place with childcare. So I was able to reach out to a network of all of our close friends from Kristi [Leskinen], Michelle [Parker], Cara [Williamson], Elena Hight, Sherry McConkey, Mercedes [Nicoll], Krissy [Fagan], Lindsay Salwasser, Claire Clelland—there’s been a huge umbrella of at least 20 to 30 people who’ve been able to spend dedicated time with me or with Chris, and the kids obviously. And that dedicated time has been so healing and made me feel like I had community even in some of the loneliest moments.
Beyond that, there have been some incredible people that have reached out. One that stands out is Pat and Chelsea Moore. And Danny Davis and Red Gerard, Ben Ferguson, these days people send very intentional texts. We’ve had such a vast network of people come forward that really made us feel like snowboarding and skiing isn’t really just a community, it’s family, and made this process a lot easier.
Having support makes the heaviness of the situation feel less heavy. I’ve had a community of people helping me and my family carry the weight of this process instead of feeling like we were doing it alone.
After your chemotherapy treatments, Donna Carpenter and Chris surprised you with a trip to Baldface Lodge. How did that trip benefit you physically and mentally?
That trip happened after my sixth round of chemo. I was the most tired, fatigued and burnt out I’d ever been and had so many limitations because of the treatments. I wasn’t really able to leave the house even to go snowboarding at Mammoth for groomers. I could do maybe three or four runs, but I was having digestive issues, so I really couldn’t be far from home. I had maybe gone snowboarding five times since the beginning of my diagnosis. And when Chris and Donna surprised me for that trip—I remember getting to Nelson and it was snowing. It was the beginning of April. It was a surreal world that I had been transplanted to, suddenly back into our element. Not only were we somewhere wintry, but we were traveling as a family. It felt like I had been teleported out of my whole diagnosis. It was like a temporary time capsule of perfection and magic, like the world came together at that one moment.
It snowed so much, we got pow and we were with the Burton Olympic team, with some of my favorite people and my family all together, and Jeff Pensiero did everything possible to make us comfortable. And that reconnection—I never realized how necessary plugging into your passion is until that moment. As soon as I was there, surrounded by those people, watching it snow, and strapped back into my snowboard, I felt like I had been plugged into a power source that I had been missing for years. I really hadn’t found myself back there since before having kids because of all the things that we had been through; I had not been able to completely detach from the world and the distractions around me and just simply be.
The mountains are so healing and being able to celebrate and be there with people that, sure, they know what’s going on, but it didn’t matter. It was like, ‘Let’s just go snowboard and forget all of that!’ And I felt like that was the most revitalizing, reenergizing trip I could have possibly gone on before surgery. It really showed me how depressed I was and how alone I felt. And I immediately just felt like I was myself again. I was able to let down my guard and just be in that space and feel the snow and go back into the flow state of embracing the moment. And everything else just faded away.
Being supported by my sponsors through this diagnosis has made this situation less stressful. And knowing that Burton was there to help me connect back to nature brought a sense of healing and familiarity that I desperately needed.
I also heard you’ve been back to doing physical therapy already. What challenges are you facing in getting your strength back?
Going to Baldface showed me how strong I was. Even though I felt like I had disintegrated, mentally and physically, I was able to ride for three days in a row, and I wasn’t sore, I wasn’t tired, I realized that I still had that endurance.
I’m an active person and I thrive off moving my body, I feel more energized when I’m moving my body. So I was really eager to get back into a gym environment to have some foundational skills built back up in my body. I also knew that I was going to be back at square one after taking that big of a hiatus. Brad [Jones] at the B Project has been my guru for my body; he knows my body so well. I’ve worked with him since 2013. I was told that if I started a gym program, a really light gym program, it would help with the fatigue. It wasn’t until about the third week through my six weeks of radiation that I really started feeling tired. But I made this promise for myself and Chris. I figured if both of us dedicated six weeks to work with Brad and the trainers there, we would be going back to Mammoth mentally stronger and physically stronger, to go into our season feeling like we hadn’t lost all the time.
Originally my goals with Brad were breaking down scar tissue from the surgery. You’re not allowed to move your arms much after a double mastectomy. Then, because I had a full lymph node dissection as well, my right arm has been really sensitive. So I was working with him through range of motion. Then every time you go in for a radiation, it’s burning a layer of skin and creating scar tissue, so I started working with Brad on the table doing a lot of breaking down of the scar tissue, and then on the floor doing a little foundational workout where I was just starting to build back my strength and my endurance. And by the end, I was starting to do jumps. So I feel like impact is back. I wanted to be able to nurture my body in a way that would make me feel like I had given to myself, even though I was tired.
What have you learned from this that you want to share?
My biggest takeaway is to know your body and know when it’s changed. Having that baseline makes all the difference. And then knowing it’s OK to talk to the doctors. If one doctor says it’s not an issue, find one that gives you a more in-depth answer, or just following your intuition and really being aware of your body because ultimately that is what saved my life.
You’ve talked about getting to know your inner self in a new way. Who is the person coming out the other side of these 10 months of cancer treatment and into their 22nd season of snowboarding?
This Kimmy is just getting to know herself again. I’m most looking forward to being able to just be present in the mountains and enjoying the peacefulness without having to have a schedule. I want to be able to create space for myself to just be because I’ve learned how healthy and healing that can be. I’ve also learned how life is out of your control, and going with the flow, though it’s hard for me personally, is the only way to truly enjoy every day. I need to recalibrate and just spend some time alone in my own environment to reprioritize what that space looks like.
Has your perspective on your snowboarding career or snowboarding in general changed at all through this process?
One-hundred percent. I’ve always known that snowboarding meant a lot to me, now more than ever I know that it’s essential. I thrive being in the mountains, and the connection to snowboarding makes me feel so much happier, calmer and at peace. Coming out of something like this, I feel like connecting back to the things that you love is really important. I feel like it’s going to bring me back to life and really restore energy that I was missing before.
I can’t say I’m going to go film a video part. I still would love to go to Japan, I would love to spend some time in BC, I would love to go to Alaska, but without the pressure of what the results are going to be. Without the expectations of who I was five years ago. And that’s OK. I’m letting who I am now speak for itself, by being connected to those places that I’m still really driven to spend time in. And not trying to write it ahead of time because it was always me trying to say, ‘OK, this season…’ and then drowning again, ‘This season…’ and then getting pushed back down. So instead of holding expectations as to what it’s going to be, I’m trying to live more presently and just allow the pace of life to deliver.
This Kimmy is just getting to know herself again.
Kimmy finished her final radiation treatment in Oceanside, CA, on August 1. She packed up the kids and gassed it up the 395 to Mammoth early the next morning ready to reconnect with nature. Her first snowboard trip back took place in New Zealand this fall. The conditions weren’t the powder turns they were hoping for, but in true Kimmy fashion she found the upside. “We’d go out early as the sun was rising riding groomers with nobody else on the mountain. That trip for me was just trying to empty my body after everything that I’ve been through and allow space for when I came home to write a new chapter.”
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