A Journey With Cerebral Palsy

It was years ago, when the goal came into mind. I had always enjoyed skiing in the winter. Getting out of the gray rainy days of the Seattle area. Driving up into the bright snow wasn’t only fun to ski, but the brightness of being in the snow helped my mood. Especially during a day with some sun, the reflection off the white snow, made the day feel bright as summer. When growing up, fear started becoming attached to the activity of skiing. I tried going up to the mountain and skiing with friends, but it was challenging to keep up. I was a perpetually beginning skier, who felt more comfortable on the Daisy chair. Friends could go up skiing a few times a year and seemingly head right to the intermediate slopes. They didn’t have any reason for taking a couple beginner runs to get warmed up. I tried for years to go up skiing with them, but the fear of my inability simply won out. They were getting better on slopes and stated skiing with the girls around the group. There became a feeling that there just wasn’t room for my inability. Cerebral palsy struck again, getting in the way of feeling included. The pain surrounding the mountain during my teens and twenties, was always something I wanted to repair. With my fear and wounded emotions, I didn’t know if healing could happen. 

The journey to heal the emotion surrounding skiing started a few years ago. I can feel the day like it was yesterday, when I began walking the path. There were a million emotions going throw my heart, as I committed to going up to the mountain, alone. It was something I had never attempted, before that trip. The closest I had come to trying skiing on my own was riding the ski bus during junior high school, which I was hoping to lead into skiing with friends. That experience turned into heartbreak and my first experiences of being “ditched” or left behind. My challenges of cerebral palsy, made it impossible for me to keep up, on the slopes. From there, I tried going up whenever the opportunity came around, but it seemed to always hurt my emotions, in some manner. As I got older, my passion for the excitement of skiing, didn’t leave. That morning I decided to try the mountain again, on my own. I awake earlier than necessary, wanting to be one of the first cars to arrive. As I drove the winding mountains roads, on that first trip, I tried concentrating on a graceful form of self-talk. There would be many obstacles after pulling into the parking lot at the resort. Mostly involving getting all of my ski gear on, without someone there to help. It was part of the challenge involved with starting the path of healing the wound. 

While I drove up the hill, I kept reminding myself over and over. If I couldn’t execute all the snapping and buckling, I would need for getting my gear on, it was okay. I could always learn from my first trip and try again. There was a determination inside for making skiing on my own, work. I planned on giving the trip up to the mountain many attempts before determining skiing alone wasn’t going to work out. I also reminded myself, as I drove, to take my time in working through the process of getting ready. The positive talking to myself along my drive, helped. Following my arrival, pulling into a spot relatively close to the lodge, I stood from the car, thinking and breathing slowly. I concentrated slowly on each of the steps involved with getting ready to go skiing. Getting into my ski boots, buckling my helmet, situating my goggles on my helmet, making sure I have everything needed from the car, getting my gloves securely on my hands, and zipping up my jacket. By the time, I had carried my skis up to the lodge, I had a feeling of pride, mixed with some overwhelming emotion. I had just completed a huge step, by managing the challenges of my disability. The next step required the commitment of purchasing a lift ticket to actually go skiing. On that first day, I didn’t think I would make it all the way to the ticket window. 

I spent the day skiing on the Daisy lift. The easiest of runs at the Stevens Pass ski area. Following the purchase of my ticket, my next fear was riding the chairlift on my own. I can take myself back to the lift line on that morning, experiencing the anxiety of loading the chair, solo. I remember there not being much of a line, as I skied up to the chair. Which, when thinking back on it today, might have been really helpful. As the time, I was given to let the anxious feelings set in, was minimal. There was only time for thinking about what I was doing, in preparing myself to load the lift. I can also remember being unfamiliar with where to sit on the actual chair. Finding myself gravitating to the inside section of the four-person seat. When the lift operator told me, to try siting in the middle of the long seat, it would provide better stability. So, I tried scooching over toward the middle before lowering the safety bar, to keep me securely in my seat. That first solo ride on the Daisy chair was the final step in my first day of skiing completely by myself. It was an accomplishment that would set in motion an entirely new aspect of my life. 

Because, I found the ability to ski solo once, I wanted to prove to myself, it could be done, again. The following week I made another attempt at flying solo up to the slopes. My second attempt turned out to be just as successful and made me a little more comfortable. After about the third week of going up on my own, I decided an adjustment needed to be made, in order to sustain my skiing. At this point, trudging up the stairs from the parking lot was feeling too challenging to be sustained. It felt like it was going to lead me to throwing in the towel on becoming a skier. As I thought through possible solutions, because the accomplishment of skiing on my own was doing wonders for my mood and self-confidence. I came up with the idea of investigating whether Stevens Pass might have the availability of handicap parking. My hope was that the handicap parking would be in a location to avoid the stairs. Following some poking around on the internet, it turned out my suspicions were accurate. I found there to be a group of handicap parking spaces on the other side of the highway, connecting to the lodge level via a footbridge, which crossed back over the highway. Once, I found these spaces, and began using them to park. The entire process of skiing became easier to a point that feels unexplainable. For the remaining six weeks of the ski season of 2021-22, I skied once per week, sticking only to the beginner runs. 

With the positive outcome during that winter, I decided to attempt chasing down another ski related dream of mine. Armed with the knowledge of developing the courage to venture up to the mountain on my own. I decide to invest the money into buying a season pass for the winter of 2022-23. It was a risk of somewhere between five and six hundred dollars for the year. Meaning, if I could make it up skiing, somewhere between five and ten times, I could make up the money spent on the pass. The variation in trips had to do with the fact of only purchasing a pass for the Daisy chair during the 2021-22 ski season. The pass only allowing me to ski Daisy was somewhere between 50 and 60 dollars. However, if my skiing improved enough during my first year with a season pass, I would find myself on the intermediate level chairlifts, and the value of my season pass would be greater. But, I couldn’t guarantee I would become a better skier, or that I wouldn’t end up feeling too much anxiety, to continue skiing all season long. I was hoping my passion for skiing would have me start this season pass year with the same enthusiasm, I ended the previous season. I remember the excitement and anxiety of taking on the responsibility of fulfilling a dream.

As it turned out, my worry became unwarranted pretty quickly, during the ski season of 2022-23. I began the season like I had left off the previous year. Spending most of my time on the Daisy chair. Where I was skiing, the beginner runs on the mountain. My confidence in starting the ski slowly began to increase. I would spend my days skiing Daisy along with a couple of nights skiing trips. Then, the moment came to push my skill level on skis. It was a crowded day on the mountain, about half way through the ski season. Like most of my trips up to the mountain before that day. I got all geared up and ready to start my day of skiing. As had become habit I pushed off toward the Daisy chairlift, like all my ski days begin. When I rounded the corner to get my first look at the beginner chair, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The line was longer than I had ever seen. Winding its way back further than the gates that were set to contain the line. It looked as if the line wait would be longer than I wanted to experience. At that moment, I decided to take a risk, and change the course of regular events. I opted for the Brooks chair, where the line was almost nonexistent. I could feel the nervous energy running through my body as I headed for the chair. It was going to be my first attempts at skiing an intermediate run in a lot of years. But I had been feeling good about my ability in recent weeks and with the length of the line on Daisy, now felt like time for the challenge. 

The day ended up being a pretty big success. I did well in skiing my first intermediate runs in what feels like over five years. It does seem funny to think about the courage stemming from not wanting to wait in a ski lift line. The day was spent skiing four or five intermediate runs before heading back to the lodge. From that day forward I had added another skill to my tool kit of skiing. As the winter season of 2022-23 moved on, I spent less and less time on the Daisy chairlift. When the entire previous winter had been spent solely on skiing the beginner slopes of the mountain. Now I would be using the beginner area only to warm up in the morning, before heading off to more challenging terrain. At times, I would spend a little more time on the Daisy chair before heading off. But, most of the time, it was two or three runs to get my body in gear, before scooting over to the intermediate Brooks chairlift. This pattern seemed to carry me through for weeks. Still the challenge in the back of my mind was to begin my ski day without turning on the Daisy chair. I ultimately wanted to find the day when I would not ski any of the beginner runs. My hope was to find that day before the 2022-23 ski season would come to a close. 

The day of heading directly to the Brooks chairlift did come before the end of the 2022-23 ski season. However, it took the building up of some courage before that happened. There were days during the season where I would chicken out. Where I would look over to the Brooks chair while riding on the Daisy chair. Pondering if I had the courage to ski over there and work on the more challenging terrain. I would say the days of finding the courage, following that first day when the lift line pushed me to Brooks, outweighed the days of sticking on the Daisy chair. But, Daisy chair has always been a source of comfort. Beginning this journey of getting back into skiing, I told myself that even if I never got skillful enough to move beyond the Daisy chair, I was still improving my challenges with cerebral palsy by simply skiing. Not to mention how much skiing seems to help my challenges with mental health, as well. There came a time during the end of the ski season when I wanted to end the debate inside my mind. When I didn’t want to ride the Daisy lift and ponder whether I felt good enough to ski over to the more challenging chairlift. The positive way in which the lodge area is set up means that if someone starts down the hill toward Brooks, they can’t change their mind, and get back to the Daisy chair. So, the courage only had to strike momentarily, before I would become too committed for turning back. Then, off to the Brooks chairlift I would ski, avoiding the debate inside my head. The final couple days of skiing during that first year of having a season pass, were spent skiing only the more challenging terrain.

Finding success and joy with my first year of having the season pass to ski, I chose to opt for trying it again, this past winter. The ski season for 2023-24 started off pretty slow. With the lack of snow in the early months and other things on my calendar, I didn’t truly get into my ski season until February. But, from the early days of February, I became engulfed in my ski season. Spending the next six weeks skiing twice per week. The snow seemed to begin falling in more abundance, as the season progressed. However, I found myself running into the same challenges from the previous ski seasons. Experiencing an apprehension with moving off the Daisy chair to ski more challenging terrain. The first few days of the ski season found me unable to venture past the beginner slopes. Not until I had a ski partner skiing with me, was I able to move over and ski the Brooks chair. I can still feel the anxiety during the first half of that first ride of the season, up the Brooks chairlift. I was experiencing some pretty serious apprehension. Something strange happened at about the halfway point of that first ride up the Brooks chairlift. All of the anxious feelings rushing through my body, disappeared. My mind seemed to calm and everything felt normal, again. Like a familiarity with the environment calmed all my nerves. From there, the rest of the day was spent on the intermediate runs, and the remainder of my ski season pretty much was, as well. 

Getting that first intermediate chairlift ride out of the way became awakening. From there, I started spending more and more of my ski days, skipping the Daisy chair, and heading right to the Brooks chair. This ski season also saw me branch out into attempting to ski off a third chairlift. The Skyline chair is one of the longest rides at Stevens pass and the entire ski down is on intermediate terrain. More challenging slopes than are off the Brooks chair and probably a third longer. I skied the new chair for me, only during one day, when I had a skiing partner with me, and the clouds ended up closing in quickly midmorning. Making it challenging to see when skiing the first portions, off the chair. But before moving back to the Brooks chair, because of the weather moving in at the top. I was able to ski, the even more challenging intermediate runs well, a few times down. Loading onto the Skyline chair felt like another anxious risk. A chair I hadn’t skied since I was in my late teens and it felt too challenging for me, then. I recall not wanting to go up again, back then, because of the difficulty at the top. During that first ride of this year, the chair stopped for a good few minute, adding to my already anxious stream of thought. But, once the chair starting turning again, my nerves calmed again, and the ride wasn’t bad. It was comfortable enough to load Skyline right away, after the first ski from top to bottom. The completion of another big step in skiing felt amazing. Showing my ability to continue improving my skiing skill.

The goal of becoming a season pass holder for Stevens has been an improvement. I think once my improvement stops as a skier, I will drop the pass. The measurement of getting better for me, has a lot to do with cerebral palsy improvement. Which, has to do with both getting better physically, but also mentally. One of my biggest hurdles with skiing has often been emotional. Trying to manage anxious feelings around most everything involved with a day of skiing. From the moment my car backs into its handicap parking space. I wonder about my ability to buckle my ski boots and snap the chin strap of my helmet into place. I think about the challenge of walking in my ski boots to the lodge carrying my skies and poles. While, also being concerned with carrying it all back, in my boots, after becoming tired during the ski day. I think about moving around the lodge with ease and hope to snap into my skis without the trouble of too much snow on the bottom of my boot. Then, I wish for the courage to ride the chairlifts with the least amount of anxiety possible. Though, I have found through the first couple of years with the season pass, the more time spent on chairlift, the less anxiety inducing it becomes. I would say the first two years I have spent consistently in the mountains have been a success. Making me a better skier, but even more importantly, a better person. With more faith in my ability to take on challenges, even with cerebral palsy, that I seem to spend years, shying away from. This summer will be spent trying to get stronger and into better shape. So, there can be even bigger improvements, when the snow comes back around.