Butterfly in a Blizzard: A Pro Snowboarder's Raw Story of Motherhood and Survival

In this episode professional snowboarder Kimmy Fasani joins the Ski Moms to share her incredibly raw and honest journey of balancing elite athletic performance with motherhood and a breast cancer diagnosis. From her early days learning to ski at age 2 in Truckee to becoming a professional snowboarder in Mammoth Lakes, Kimmy opens up about the realities of maintaining a career in action sports while raising two young boys. She discusses her powerful documentary "Butterfly in a Blizzard," which chronicles eight years of her life including pregnancy, early motherhood, loss, and her breast cancer journey. Kimmy emphasizes the importance of breast cancer awareness, self-exams, and having supportive partners who advocate for your health. She also shares insights about meditation practices learned from her mother, the Benchetler Fasani Foundation she started with her husband, and her cookbook "The Mountain Baker." This conversation tackles the unglamorous realities of early motherhood, the pressure working mothers face, and how life's challenges can ultimately lead to deeper self-discovery and purpose.

Keep up with the latest from Kimmy:

Watch the Movie on Amazon Prime

Website: www.kimmyfasani.com/mystory

Instagram: @kimmyfasani

Facebook: www.facebook.com/people/Kimmy-Fasani/100046709361900/

Benchetler Fasani Foundation: www.bf-foundation.org/

Notable Quotes

On Motherhood Transformation: "Becoming a parent or a parent figure is a dynamic shift in anybody's life. And there's

Junior Lease appointments at Ski Haus are open! Book for each child 16 or under to get skis or a snowboard, boots, and bindings—plus a free Tenney season pass, Cranmore ticket & more. skihaus.com

This autumn, Ulster County is the perfect place for a family-friendly getaway.  Learn more at  visitulstercountyny.com/

Join us at the Snowbound Expo in Boston at the Menino Convention & Exhibition Center from November 14-16, 2025. Get your $5 day passes or $10 weekend tickets with code MOMTRENDS10 here.

Shop the Diamant Weekend Warrior Bag 2.0 at www.diamantskiing.com and use code SKIMOMS to save 10%

Invest in your season with this TSA Approved carry-on boot bag, it's a game changer and built to last. 

Transcript

Hey, ski moms. In this podcast, we are talking about breast cancer, and we want to remind you that Breast Cancer Awareness month is this October.

Breast cancer affects 1 in 8 women in the US and every year over 2 million women worldwide.

So please set a reminder to get your mammogram, tell your friends, and share your stories.

Now onto this terrific podcast.

The ski moms are thrilled to have Kami Fasani on the podcast today. So she's a professional snowboarder. So just so everyone knows, we are equal opportunity here at the Ski Moms Podcast.

She's from Mammoth Lakes, California. She's a proud mom of two boys,

a breast cancer survivor, advocate, and even a baker. But mostly she's just a creator. She's got like this creative energy that we love and we're so thrilled. So welcome. Kimmy.

Kimmy: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so honored.

Nicole: We would love to hear your a little bit of your origin story. That's usually where we start.

And it looks like you never skied. You just went right to snowboarding. Is that, is that how it all worked out?

Kimmy: Actually, my mom was an incredible ski ***. She was a nurse in Truckee, California. And when I turned 2, she taught me how to ski.

And from 2 until she surprised me with a snowboard when I was nine years old,

skiing was my primary. That's like how I learned the foundation of being on the mountain.

And she was really reluctant to get me on a snowboard because I had just kind of caught up to her on the mountain and been able to navigate more of the mountain.

But she also saw that I had a deep desire to try this new sport.

A lot of my friends were trying it. So I started snowboarding at 9 and kind of gave up skiing by the time I was 12.

Sarah: And we didn't mention yet that Kimmy has a movie that just came out called Butterfly and a Blizzard. And we both, Nicole and I both watched it recently.

And you can see all sorts of great old home videos of Kimmy in the back of her mom's car at the mountain, or it looked like probably one of your first times out on your snowboard at age 9.

So I think that's so fun because I feel like as you're talking through this,

I feel like I seen a lot of what goes along with it. So I just wanted to mention that because I don't think we had that in the intro.

Nicole: We're definitely going to deep dive into the. The movie, but it's almost as that your mom was prescient knowing that, oh, you know, she's going to need this footage someday. And just what a great thing to have, like, all of these formative memories,

because I don't think my parents were taking video.

Kimmy: Yeah, I feel so lucky because I actually didn't know. I knew that she was always filming with, like, a big VHS camera, but I.

I didn't realize the extent of it until we went to make this movie, because when she had passed away,

I just had friends helping me box up all of her old vhs. So I actually never looked at any of the labels.

And once I had it digitized, I realized how much of a story she had actually captured of my youth.

Nicole: Looked like you started competing pretty young,

but at what point did you say, like, you know, traditional schooling, maybe? Not so much for me.

I'm really going to give this a go. Were you like, 15, 16, or were you like, further.

A little bit older and further along in your. Your education?

Kimmy: Yeah, so when I was going to high school,

I started taking even just one period off to go snowboarding. And then by the time I was 17, I actually made the plan to graduate early. So instead of graduating in June of my senior year, I graduated in January so that I could spend the season focused on competing and being in the mountains.

And that's kind of when I rewrote how I was going to go to college as well. It wasn't going to be something that was standard. It was going to be something that was adaptable to my winter season.

And I graduated early from high school and then ended up doing just summer and fall semesters for college.

Sarah: How old were you when you moved to Mammoth? Because I think in the movie you said that's like, where all the.

That was the hub, the mecca of all the snowboarding pros. And how old were you when you moved away?

Kimmy: Yeah, I moved to Mammoth when I turned 18. So after I graduated high school, I started community college that summer down, actually in Oceanside, California, at a small community college, and then moved to Mammoth in the fall,

and that was in 2002. So I've been here for a long time. And it was really the Mecca at that point of snowboarding. It had the best terrain parks, it had all the pros.

And it was just like this energy that was really the starting block for my career.

The way that I was meeting other pros and sponsors and just the influence that Mammoth had and still has on athletes today.

Sarah: And that's where you met your husband Chris, right? I love those old videos of him, like as a pirate. It's so fun to see. It's so cool you have all those videos.

Kimmy: Yeah, it's pretty special. I met Chris a year after I had moved here. His brother was actually a pro snowboarder. So I had known his brother and his dad had died.

Their dad had died and his brother is a little bit more reserved, so hadn't talked about it. And when I met Chris, that was kind of the first thing I asked was, hey, look, I also lost my father to cancer.

If you ever want to talk, I'm.

I'm here. And that's kind of what created this underlying bond between us.

Sarah: But going back to you deciding this is what you really wanted to pursue,

were you really,

as you're going down this path of becoming a pro, were you self taught? It doesn't look like you were a kid that, you know, your mom had you in all these special camps and was sending you off all over the world.

How did you, how did you get so good?

Kimmy: That's a great question. I think my mom really enabled me to have passion and pursue my passion.

She made this kind of boundary where if I really wanted something,

she wanted to see the effort. So it was me figuring out what contest I needed to go to. She would drive me there, she would make sure that I had everything.

But she really wanted to see me driving my passion towards this sport rather than making the commitment, seeing me love it and committing me to everything.

She wanted to see that I was committed. So she wanted to see my effort being put forward.

And I think that really helped guide me because I wanted to be.

I was pursuing it. You know, every contest that I did well,

I would learn something from that experience and be able to apply it to the next one. And at the end of the day, I think that's what helped me be progressive as well.

It wasn't somebody saying, you have to learn these three tricks. It was,

how much can I learn? And progression just became something that felt really addictive and inspiring because I was learning. I came from gymnastics and I had had some injuries, so that kept me away from the gym.

And I just learned how in a way, healing snowboarding could be being in the mountains and teaching my body to do things that I. That felt really challenging also felt really enabling.

Nicole: To me. It looks like more of being a professional snowboard is not necessarily going to competitions,

but it is more about creating these experiences that are captured on film and that can be both like video and, and stills.

Kimmy: Do I.

Nicole: Do I have that right?

Kimmy: In my younger career, I would compete. I competed in do tour and X Games and really had my sights set on like the Olympic dream.

And it was probably about 10 years into that where I was competing,

where I just wasn't getting much, much traction and I wasn't doing well in finals. So as hard as it is to admit, if you're not on the podium, you're really, you can be kind of overlooked as an athlete.

And I had some amazing team managers at the time that encouraged me to kind of step outside of the contest scene and start pursuing the video side,

which we say is like filming in the backcountry.

And essentially that's where I'm a marketing tool for these brands, where any footage that is captured of me can be used to help sell the products through any photos that are used,

help show how the product's used. In the mountains and in my own pursuit, it was just a different way of expressing myself in the mountains. I still had pressure and I still had to show up and I still had this incredible drive.

And it was so variable because every time you go out in the mountains, the landscape changes. Rather than showing up at a slopestyle contest or a half pipe contest where it's groomed perfectly,

you really have to be adaptable and you're having to see things through a different lens and creating the canvas that you imagine out of this beautiful mountain.

And I just loved that style of snowboarding and that freedom to be able to make those calls.

And so that's where I saw the most progression in my career was when I switched from contest riding into the backcountry.

Nicole: It's so much work. It is creating a little movie, you know, a cinema cinematic experience every time, because you have to, I'm sure you have to snowboard it once or twice.

You know, the particular place where you want to go, but you also want to leave it like untracked so it looks good. And then you got to picture, okay, the camera person's going to be there, so they're going to capture this particular angle.

And then you have to land. You know exactly what is in your brain on,

on film at the Exact timing. And you better hope that the camera person, you know, doesn't mess up or change their positioning. I so much appreciation for what goes into that.

Kimmy: Yeah, there's so many moving parts, and it looks so easy, and it looks so blissful, you know, but there's. There's so many things that have to go right for every shot to make the cut in the film.

And I think that that's, like, part of the challenge is there's a lot of pressure, but it's.

For me, I was able to channel that energy into visualization and preparedness. Every time I went out there, I would try to let go of the things that I couldn't control and focus on what I could.

You know, I could focus on my own abilities. And the tricks that were.

Felt like were set up for the style of jump I was hitting or the line that I was riding and everything else. I just had to kind of let go of and trust that I could do it.

And you're working with a team of people that are so highly experienced, and it creates this community,

which is this other undertone of why I love action sports in general. All sports, really.

Sarah: You.

Kimmy: You develop this community with the people that you're working with, and it's these experiences that are so invigorating.

And so every time you go out in the mountains, you almost speak a different language when you're with them, because they know you so well, they know your capabilities, they believe in you,

and vice versa. And you can't really micromanage people out there because you have to be so on it. So it's like, okay, this is the trick I'm doing. And then the camera person makes the choice on their angle, and you just work as a team and hope that you get the shot as smoothly and quickly as possible so that you can move on to the next option and the whole snowboarding.

Nicole: In a lot of ways, skiing ethos is that you're, you know, you're very chill and you're very, like, out in the mountains and, like, let's see how this goes and laid back.

But in actuality, to be successful in your career,

you also have to be kind of type A and a planner and somebody who's visualizing and who's mentally just so locked in to really be successful. It's a little bit misleading when we see these videos, we're like, wow, that looks so fun.

Kimmy: Yeah, it's like if every video could have a behind the scenes, you would see so many different elements of how each person works. And operates. And some people can really be on the whim, but at the, at the backbone of safety.

You know, there's so much education that has gone into each person's decision making in that moment.

And it's like you're at the highest caliber of schooling when you're out in the mountains, especially in the backcountry, where there's a lot of variables and avalanche conditions and things.

You have to just have so much knowledge and preparedness and then at times you have to kind of step away from, okay, I know all of these tools and now I have to focus on my skills and make sure that if the clouds are moving in, I'm taking advantage of that two hour blue sky to make this shot look good.

So, yeah, the variables can really change the efficiency. And that, I think, adds a whole different element because mountains are always changing. So you can have an idea of the terrain you wanna ride, but you have to wait for mother nature to kind of lay down that canvas a way that feels suitable for your writing style.

Nicole: And you've had two big physiological changes, actually three if you count so two children and then your breast cancer, your journey along that. So your body has literally been in a very dynamic state for the past,

let's say seven years.

But that doesn't seem to have phased you. I mean, I'm sure it's an additional challenge that the male speech snowboarders are never going to have to deal with. But was that,

was it more of the mental part? You know, you're sleep deprived, you're worried about your kids, or was it like the physical part of like, oh, God, my ligaments are looser.

What do you think was the bigger challenge of with your getting back to your professional level, caliber of boarding?

Kimmy: Yeah, great question. So I think when I became pregnant with my first son in 2017,

I was at the peak of my career. I had just won rider of the year. I'd just come off a really successful season up in Alaska where I was just riding big lines and I was feeling so confident.

And then my mom dies. And it kind of sends me into this spiral of reevaluating my desire to start a family and not waiting any longer,

considering I'd already lost my dad. So now I no longer have parents to help me. And I just realized I had put so much focus on my career when I had my first son, I had actually fought for my verbiage to change my contracts.

And I put a lot of pressure on myself to show back up in the mountains the way I had Prior to my children or my child at that time.

And I had an emergency C section that changed my abs, my. My core strength so dramatically. It took me about a year to find my core again where I felt like I was connected and I could make very quick movements in the mountains and trust my body.

And being a professional athlete, my body is my tool. And it has to be so aligned and communicating properly to be successful and safe.

And so I realized that that was probably my number one realization, is how much going through a pregnancy and having a C section could change my performance in the mountains, allowing myself time to heal.

I didn't really. I kind of came back into it because I was excited and motivated to show myself and my peers that I could do this.

And it was a challenge. You'll see as if you watch the movie Butterfly and a Blizzard, it's me relearning how to accept myself and have patience with myself and balance my desire and my career.

And I think back to back, having two children three years apart, and then going into breast cancer, There was so much change.

And when I. When it ended up getting back on snow after my diagnosis, I realized that my body had really changed pretty dynamically.

What I also realized was how powerful our minds are,

because my desire to get back on snow completely overrode the state of my body. And I was able to plug in to this energy source that gave me so much happiness that.

That almost fulfilled me and complimented my writing in so many ways. Not that it was the best decision, but it was right for me at that time. I had to change the conversation or the story that I had told myself.

You know, cancer wasn't gonna be the end of my career. I wanted to kind of take agency over my body and get back on the mountain.

So being able to trust myself and my mind at the end of this journey was really what I'm the most proud of, that I was able to overcome all of those dynamic changes to get back on snow and feel proud again of how I was riding.

Sarah: It's pretty incredible. And one of the things I loved is when your first son in the movies really little, and you're.

You're like, this isn't going to change us. This isn't going to change me. You know, I'm going to still be Kimmy hucking off cliffs and doing all this stuff, and you come in and he's crying, and you're still in your snow pants, your bib, and you're trying to lift up all the base layers to.

To breastfeed. Him. And it's like, you know, I could just, like, read your mind. Like, yeah, maybe things have changed a little bit. Like, the progression. Just talk about that.

How at first you were like,

I'm not changing.

And then clearly, things changed.

Kimmy: Becoming a parent or a parent figure is a dynamic shift in anybody's life.

And there's so much that we don't know before we start. And I thought that it was really interesting that no other woman in my line of work had maintained their career and balanced their motherhood journey from the beginning, like, from the time that they're.

They had their baby.

And when I fought for my verbiage, I was so clear, like, I'm not gonna do this the same as everybody else. I'm gonna. The baby's just gonna come along with us.

And I had this idea of how it was gonna be,

and maybe others can relate to that. It's like, we just don't know. And so as soon as the baby came along,

I started learning so much more about myself.

My own traumas, my own insecurities.

And I realized that my mind was just a little bit different. My mind had changed, and it was focused on the safety of my child,

which, in my case, can really separate you from your safety in that environment that I'm in in the mountains.

And that was a huge learning curve for me, was to be able to come back into my body and ground myself and know that my baby was safe and so was I and connect to the mountains the same way I could before.

But really, it took me that first two years with my first son to have any clarity on that process.

And so there was a lot of relearning as I learned about my body and the changes it was going through, and just almost what sleep deprivation can do and a little bit of anxiety being separated from my baby.

And it was just a huge learning curve. And I'm still learning every day, but I've become a lot more accepting that that's just part of the process of becoming a mother.

Nicole: So Kimberly released a movie this year called Butterfly in a Blizzard,

and Sarah and I have been referring to it a lot. It's available both on Apple and Amazon, I think, for streaming. Any anywhere else. Kimmy, or Are those the two?

Kimmy: Yeah, it's on about 15 other platforms. It's for rent and purchase, so if you type in Butterfly in a Blizzard, you should be able to find it on whichever streaming service you have.

Nicole: And it came out this year. It's about. It's an hour and 45min.minute documentary.

And I'll let you describe it, but I will just say it is definitely not your typical snow stoke movie.

Kimmy: Yeah, we started to film this movie almost eight years ago when I became pregnant with my first son because I was navigating a lot of contract changes and trying to rewrite how this entry into motherhood and balancing my career as a professional snowboarder would look.

My husband and I thought it was going to be a one or two year project showing the behind the scenes of what it takes to be professional athletes, balancing parenthood.

And that all quickly changed as you watch us become parents and navigate our own childhood traumas,

loss.

I end up going through breast cancer, we end up having a second child. There's so many layers to this film.

It's a story now that I really credit our cinematographer, Tyler Hamlet, who filmed absolutely every shot in this film except for the archive stuff.

And then a beautiful co director and editor, Rose Core, who was actually three months postpartum with her second baby when she started editing this movie.

And she brought this story of motherhood forward and really told it in a dynamic way, bringing in experts and psychologists to help us.

See me more as a case study.

And they can talk to what women and parents may experience as they go through their journey becoming parents.

And I'm proud of this film because we never expected to make what it is. And it's something that's very vulnerable and transparent and raw and real. But at the end of the day, I just hope that other people, when they watch it, they feel less alone,

more seen,

more supported through their own transformation in whatever capacity that is. It doesn't have to just be about parenthood. It's just, just evolving as a human and being honest with ourselves about what that transformation might look like.

Sarah: Well, watching it, I definitely was brought back to a lot of those very early days, like when you were, I think you were in Japan in a scene and you're just like,

I have not slept in 10 months. And you can just kind of.

I could feel it. I, I remember that feeling.

And then there's some scenes where you're definitely trying to be present with him and he's probably like 10 months old. And you're just like,

I'm. I don't have much left. You know, you kind of put your hands on your temples and I remember that because it's that and, and some of the experts talk about that, how we're, we're supposed to be just,

you know, motherhood and apple pie and it's all going to Be wonderful. But some of those moments you shared, like, I remembered those very much. It was very powerful.

Kimmy: It is that early motherhood journey. And, you know, now that my kids are 4 and 7,

so much has changed, but it still has its own dynamics. And it's such a beautiful process to really uncover ourselves. And this film being that it's that early stages,

I just. It would have been so nice even for me to see somebody else go through it, because then you don't have so much of this glossy image of what it's supposed to be.

And for me, I didn't have a mom. I didn't have a mom to talk to,

to go through this journey and just ask, like, is this what I did too? I'm so sorry. Or like, how can I,

how. How can I navigate this better having somebody else to talk to? And I realized the power of our community and the power of speaking up and the power of just sharing our stories because we don't know what other people have gone through if we don't talk about it.

Nicole: Yeah. And I think this movie would resonate with any working person who cares about their career.

I mean, that moment where Chris is going off to shoot his documentary and kind of like with an unknown return,

the assumption that you've got it,

it's gonna be fine. And you're trying to fit in your Alaska trip, which clearly means so much to you, that is your work. And you're just like, I have to get this one trip in.

And his schedule is just moving all around. He really shows up in the film as a dad in a lot of ways, but as a working mom, it just hit me so acutely.

And I'm watching it with my daughter and her eyes are getting wider and I was like, well, it's reality. And she's like, well, when's the perfect time to have a kid?

And I was like, there is no perfect time to have a kid.

You're just gonna have to have sacrifices that, that happen today. Like, we got to do this amazing five mile hike together. Would I trade that for all the suck that happened when you were little?

No. You just have to, you know, be.

Have more long term vision.

Kimmy: Yeah. And I think that that's something that I wish I would have had more of as my younger mom version is just the grace that every stage is so temporary and that it's really this give and take, you know, sacrifice to me feels like such a loss of something.

And at times through this film, I. I felt like I was sacrificing so Much.

And yet, at the same time,

I was giving so much to our child, and I.

That was part of the decision of having a child.

And you don't know the workload it's gonna take. You don't know how it's gonna transform you until you're in it. So this film really uncovers me in all of the things that I was learning about myself and our relationship.

And having a little bit more patience and grace for myself to go through that without feeling as big of a pressure, even though my desire was that quality time with our son was also imperative.

And I wouldn't change that for the world.

But it is. It's. It's like this giving that you don't realize can really kind of diminish your light for a little while if you let it and if you frame it that way.

And for me, I realized once I.

I saw the beauty in what I was doing in those moments that I wasn't on the mountain was actually the greatest gift to myself. Because sometimes for me, movement is my medicine, but it's also my distraction.

And mountains were such an escape for me away from my pain. And I had to really sit with myself and learn so much through those quiet moments. And just being present with my son taught me how to be a little bit slower and a little bit more centered.

And I didn't have to reach so far to find my happiness. Cause it was really always right in front of me.

Sarah: I think it'll be so fun for when they're older and they can watch it and really appreciate all that you did.

Kimmy: Yeah, right.

Sarah: To make all of this happen. What does, like, ski, snowboard life look for your family now that the boys are a little older?

Kimmy: Yeah. It's been so fun to watch our kids navigate the mountain. They both ski.

And our oldest one just started snowboarding, and he also loves skateboarding, so it's just been fun to watch his love for spending time outside,

which is always really been our focus. It's like whatever they love, we want to encourage, but we want them to just love being out in nature because there's so much benefit to that.

And now watching them see clips of our life and parts of this movie, they. They understand our passion a little bit more. You know, they understand our desire to be in the mountains, and they understand that it brings us happiness.

And they also see that other sports can bring themselves happiness. So it's been really fun to watch them just become navigators of the mountains.

Nicole: What does the upcoming season look like for you?

Kimmy: Yeah. So this Coming season. My husband is actually releasing a film in October. So I'm kind of.

I've created a bit of space so that I can support us on that side where I can be with the kids while we're helping to share his film. It's called Mountains of the Moon.

And it's. It was all filmed at night for the past two years. So that was another huge undertaking, another kind of 2.0 of the version that was in this film.

And I actually need a knee replacement.

And so I'm trying to just give myself some space to enjoy the mountains at a different pace. I'm trying to focus more on mentorship and advocacy and taking myself out of the actual filming element of snowboarding and trying to find ways that I can usher in a new generation of riders into the backcountry because it takes so much time to get that learning curve kind of digested.

So,

yeah, that's kind of where my focus is now. Spending more time with my kids and more time giving back to the sport if I can.

Okay.

Nicole: That was something we were talking about on the trail this morning. My daughter and I were like, how do you get health insurance when you're a professional snowboarder and your husband's a professional?

It's not like you're, it's not like he's a dentist and you're getting insurance from his company. How does that work?

Kimmy: Yeah, you just have to find an insurance company that covers you. Thankfully, I've.

I have a great policy and it's just you're. You're self employed and you're self insured, and you just hope that the insurance company understands that this is my line of work and that.

Yeah, so we, we've just had to navigate all of that on our own and we have a family policy that covers all of us.

Sarah: Nicole had read online that you and your husband also started a foundation. So what is that?

Kimmy: Yeah, so when we, when I was diagnosed, we had actually already developed like a trust and we had written in there, if anything were to happen to us, that we would love somebody to start a foundation to give back to kids to help them get out into nature when they had been through hard things.

And then when I was diagnosed, my husband kind of realized that we had so many resources coming forward, so many people offering to help,

and we had great insurance and we,

we had such a great community. How could we pay it forward? So starting the foundation was a way for us to kind of pay forward our understanding of how hardship and loss can really derail Us mentally, physically.

And if there was a way we could bring people out into nature and help them rediscover their confidence and their.

Their quiet voice inside,

that was our goal. So we created the Ben Chettler Fasani foundation, which helps reconnect people who have been through hardship and loss to nature and creative arts.

And it's been really wonderful to kind of see how even though we're in our infancy, it's taken bloom and we've had so many people come forward and we've been able to serve our local community.

And it just feels so wholesome considering both Chris and I have lost a lot of people in our lives and also been through a lot of hard things.

And nature has always been that undertone that has reconnected us with ourselves.

Nicole: The movie is about mental health as well as your career for sure.

And there's definitely moments where I thought it was so beautiful. You're listening to a meditation that your mom had recorded to you. Has meditation always been a part of your,

your journey? It sounds like that was something you did with your mom from an early age.

Kimmy: Yeah, my mom introduced it to me, but I didn't really have a complete awareness around it. I went to India with my mom in 2008.

She was doing a silent meditation retreat which she had done a few of or a handful of while I was in high school.

And I started seeing inside that mental space of how life giving it was just to take a pause.

And then I navigated a few injuries early on in my career and had to do a lot of mental work to reconnect myself to my body and realize that accidents happen in the mountains and this one thing that could have ended my career wasn't going to happen again.

And that's where visualization.

I read so many self help books, I really started meditating and just trying to be centered within my body when I wasn't able to find movement.

And that practice has given me so much just to alleviate stress,

to alleviate worry. Meditation has been a way for me to really listen to myself in the moments that can kind of feel the most overwhelming. It's brought me into so much deeper, kind of like a sanctuary within myself where I know when I am in override, I can come to this space and pull myself back to the ground.

Sarah: Yeah, I think you said in the movie that when you were much younger, you know, maybe like nine or ten,

you didn't really understand you would sit there with your mom when she was meditating. But I'm thinking she was so ahead of her time before people talked about mindfulness. She was doing these retreats and practicing this.

It's kind of amazing because it wasn't really a mainstream thing then. And she's a single working mom, and she's finding the time also self care. It's kind of incredible.

Kimmy: Such a gift. And she had never shared her mantra with me until her last day.

And so that's why, I guess that was so special, because she shared what she had always been saying to herself with me. And it just had so much deeper of a meaning, especially in correlation to becoming a mom and just being able to, like,

have so much more awareness of all the things that she was juggling. The fact that she was able to dedicate that time to herself showed me that I needed to do that too.

Nicole: What a force of nature she seemed to be.

Kimmy: I know that she would love this film, and I know that for some reason, it was all meant to be, you know, this way.

The way it came together and the way that she was almost able to narrate this story,

I would have never imagined. So I'm extremely grateful for all that she had left and recorded for me.

Nicole: I mean, most moms don't have the capacity to have a documentary made of the early years to kind of process, you know, where they are and where they're going.

Do you have any advice now that your kids are sort of 4 and 7? They're much more independent or kind of like coming up for air a little bit. But for the.

The women who are in those days where they just, you know, it doesn't seem like there's enough hour. There's just not enough resources.

Is there maybe a book or some, you know, guideline that you could give them right now?

Kimmy: Gosh, it's so hard because every.

Every one of us is so different and needs a different way to navigate motherhood. I think, for me, if I would have really understood, which I don't think I could have understood at that time, that every stage is so temporary,

you know, by the time my first son was 15 months old,

I saw in a blink of an eye, like, how all of a sudden he was like a little human, and he was gonna be independent, and there was gonna be this space again for me to not be as busy.

And I think that really created the idea that having a second was possible.

Even though I knew it was gonna be hard and it would be another.

A huge learning curve to have now two little kids,

I realized that these stages are so temporary, and they're such a gift to be able to witness them grow,

having more patience with myself and my desires, knowing that that balance will come back. It's just going to feel different.

And not holding myself to the same standard that I was at before and having very clear boundaries and expectations, you know, of what was important and what was possible and having the community around me that could support me, whether that be childcare,

knowing that I didn't have to do it alone. And I wasn't alone because other people had navigated motherhood and parenthood and I could talk about my feelings and not feel like I had to be so quiet about them.

I think that would have really helped if I didn't feel like I was the only one struggling.

Sarah: One of the experts in the movie said something along the lines of,

yes, there's, there's a lot of pressure as a, as a new mom and balancing a career. But she said, but a lot of it is self imposed.

And I thought that was so interesting because it's kind of the realization that you're, you're pointing to here that like a lot of this we're putting on ourselves and we can be kinder and gentler and more patient with ourselves as well.

Kimmy: Yeah, exactly. And knowing like now at 4 and 7, my kids are both starting school this year and are like going to school school. And that time, it, it just goes by so quickly.

But it's so hard to understand that when the days are long, you know, and the years are short,

it's like you just feel like it's never going to end.

But then all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, you're at this stage and those sweet cuddly moments are, are changing and it's all for the better. And there's still going to be challenge that I, I'm learning.

But those formative years, you know, like the child doesn't have an a, a different understanding that you're separate from them like you are.

And it's just such a gift to be able to experience that. And so, yeah, having a little bit more patience with ourselves I think would help take the pressure off.

Nicole: I was watching the movie and then you would start talking about the breast cancer journey.

You found it through self exam through which is super important. We want to remind everybody that that's often how these are caught. We're all, everybody watching the movie is going to be like, oh no, she doesn't have time for this.

No, no, no, no, no.

Breast cancer never comes along when we think we have time for it. Is there anything about that, that you would want other women to know about. Did you kind of miss a signal early on?

Kimmy: Are you.

Nicole: I mean, we want to make sure we get the messaging out to be doing those exams, making sure that you're getting your mammograms and, and how's your recovery going also?

Kimmy: You know, I had had a lump in my breast for months,

about six months,

and I was just equating it to clogged milk ducts. I,

I really had put this veil on that I was not going to get cancer. I was an at.

I ate well.

You know, I watched both of my parents navigate cancer and I felt like I was living a different lifestyle than them.

And it never really even crossed my mind, as I said in the movie.

And I think that was my biggest. It was like this halo, you know, that I thought that I was immune because of the lifestyle I was living.

And I had been an advocate and an ambassador with boarding for breast cancer for years.

And that's like a local nonprofit that really focuses on education. And when I was in my teenage years, they had a table set up at a snowboarding event where I got to feel what breast cancer might feel like in a, in a fake breast.

And that ultimately helped in my diagnosis because I knew to do self checks and I would always push on this little bump in my breast,

but I just didn't feel like. It felt like what I expected.

And it wasn't really until I felt a rock hard nodule in my lymph nodes under my arm that that the alarm went off in my head of, oh no.

And my husband,

I just would like to say he was actually the one that made me call the doctor.

So I still had this like protective halo on that,

oh no, no, no, like this isn't urgent.

And he was like, no, no, this isn't right. You need to call. And so I think that that's another huge takeaway,

you know, knowing our bodies, doing these self exams so that we can be prepared when there is a change.

Number one,

because that saved me. I was able to see that something changed and that it wasn't right. And that's why I called the doctor.

Number two, if we do have a partner,

having them know our bodies enough to be an advocate with us because sometimes, especially in the fogginess of early motherhood, you know, I was just overriding it and I was making up excuses when I could have been more proactive because when I went in, I was already stage 3,

had a 7 x 7 cm tumor and it was in my lymph nodes. So. And it was already in my skin. It was inflammatory breast cancer. So I waited too long.

And thankfully my treatment was.

I. It went great. I'm cancer free. I've been cancer free for three years.

But it was too close, you know, it was too close in my naivety.

I should have been so much more proactive with that warning sign.

Nicole: Well, we are very thrilled that your recovery is going well, and we will continue to, you know, follow along with your journey. But we can't let you go without talking about your book.

Kimmy: Yeah. So the Mountain Baker came about because one of my girlfriends owned organic bakery here in Mammoth Lakes,

and my husband and I were part owners in it. And I love cooking, I love hosting people,

and she is a phenomenal baker. So we decided to combine forces for this book.

And it's some of my favorite recipes from childhood that I share.

Some of my early morning snacks for the trail, like the Alpine Start muffin, which is super adaptable. It's really hearty. But I can pack one in my backpack in the morning and know that it will kind of satiate me for an early morning adventure.

And there's so many things as simple as trail mix or sweet potato fries or like, zucchini lasagna, my mom's chili or my mom's beef stew. There's. It's just. It brought up so many little glimmers from my childhood and sharing these stories.

The book is so well done. My friend took all the photos,

and it was really a fun journey to be able to share my lens of the mountains through what I eat.

And same with her. You know, being able to talk about this book was made completely at high altitude. And then we tested everything at sea level, which most books are tested at sea level, and then told how to adapt it for high altitude.

We did the opposite. We felt like there was enough people living in mountains that always mess up their recipes because it just doesn't translate well. So we wanted to make a book at altitude,

and then hopefully it translates well at sea level. But, yeah, it was a really fun journey to be able to make and kind of put my fingers into something else.

Sarah: I feel like I remember Nicole and I trying to bake something at Copper Mountain one Thanksgiving, and it didn't go well. I don't think we had the understanding that things were very different at altitude.

So we could have probably used this book for some tips because I think we had some fails that got Thanksgiving.

So we always love to end with,

you know, after you've had a wonderful boarding and skiing day with your family.

How do you all like to apres ski?

Kimmy: For my family usually we'll come off the hill and we'll have some kind of hot chocolate and we'll probably, if it's a nice powdery day, we'll go sledding because having boys,

their energy is just always high elevated and so even if we spend the time on the mountain, they'll always want to come back and like play outside and just have a snowball bite, snowball fight or something.

And then at the very end of that we'll warm up in a hot tub or have a a movie night or a little game evening where we put out some board games and just have some connection time because we find that the time that we get with the kids on the mountain is so valuable and so precious and we see them kind of open up.

So having kind of some more quiet time at home where we can talk about the experience on the mountain makes it feel revitalizing. I don't know, it's. It's been really fun to watch them navigate the mountain.

Nicole: Kimmy, thank you so much for all of your insight and for sharing your story. It's such a beautiful film.

It's such a powerful story about becoming a mom and finding yourself.

And just thank you for sharing this really intimate part of your life with us.

Kimmy: Of course. Thank you so much for having me on and for watching the film.