I also heard you’ve been back to doing physical therapy already. What chal-lenges 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 en-ergized 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 22 nd 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. This Kimmy is just getting to know hself again. 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. KIMMY FINISHED her final radiation treatment in Oceanside, CA, on August 1. She packed up the kids and gassed it up the 395 to Mam-moth 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 fash-ion 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 al-low space for when I came home to write a new chapter.” 082 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 20.3: Page 82
