By Lindsay Carr
It has been about a week since I got back from my backpacking trip with Send It and I am still finding it hard to put into words how deeply impactful an experience the trip was for me. I was only very recently diagnosed with cancer, so in the midst of everything medically happening so fast, I have been undergoing a significant amount of internal change that has led to me trying to embrace the idea of “sending it” more often in all aspects of my life. This trip couldn’t have come at a more perfect and pivotal moment in my life.
I came into this trip wanting to make changes regarding how much I push myself and how much trust I put into my body amidst deep-seated feelings of my body having failed me or betrayed me, and backpacking for 22 miles with a group of people that I barely knew (but that quickly became my family) was exactly what I needed to knock my brain out of that “betrayal” rut that I was stuck in for so much of my life. If I had been asked a few years ago, or even a few months ago, if I had thought that I would have been physically and mentally capable of completing this trip, I would have laughed and said that I would never be ready for something like that.
This trip and the people on it have given me my feelings of strength, trust in my body, and confidence back… or maybe it has even given me those feelings in ways that I never even had to begin with.
I couldn’t possibly emphasize enough that these people and this challenge were exactly what I needed in order to move forward from my cancer experience and other physical health issues towards a more rich and fulfilling life, a life that will include many, many more adventures than I ever previously thought would be possible. It is not an understatement to say that this trip absolutely changed my life.
