A New Path Forward

A profound shift is happening. After a decade of leading Hike Like a Woman, I'm transforming this platform into something deeply personal yet universally resonant. During a coffee conversation with a young military friend facing trauma, her question struck me to my core: "How do I move forward after something horrific?" While hiking solo through Moab's desert trails, the answer crystallized—my experiences with breast cancer, military service, and rebuilding life after trauma could serve others in ways my hiking content alone never could.

The statistics are alarming. One in eight American women will face breast cancer, but for female veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, that risk skyrockets to one in four or five. My generation of veterans stands at the precipice of a potential reproductive cancer epidemic, yet these stories often remain untold. Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro became my north star after cancer treatment—a tangible goal that helped me reclaim my body and spirit when everything familiar had been stripped away. That journey taught me lessons too valuable to keep to myself.

Starting next week, this podcast transforms into The Rebecca Walsh Show, dedicated to cancer recovery, life after trauma, and finding purpose through life's most challenging terrains. I'll continue posting audio episodes every Tuesday, complemented by video content where I'll share stories from the forest. For those still seeking hiking and adventure content, Hike Like a Woman continues as a separate platform. If you've connected with my story, I invite you to join the community I'm building—whether through this podcast, my new YouTube channel, or the Kilimanjaro coaching Patreon. Sometimes our most difficult paths lead to our greatest purpose. Will you walk this new trail with me?

Learn more by visiting our website at https://www.hikelikeawoman.com

Chapters

• 0:27 Big announcement: Podcast transformation
• 0:52 Coffee conversation sparks reflection
• 1:49 Desert walks and personal realizations
• 4:32 Shifting focus to cancer recovery
• 6:30 New platforms and Kilimanjaro coaching
• 9:36 Future plans and gratitude

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

It's April 1st April Fool's Day and I have a big announcement and it's not an April Fool's joke, but this is actually going to be the very last episode of the Hike Like a Woman podcast as you know it. So let me rewind a little bit and tell you what's been going on the past couple years and then tell you about this big change that I'm making and why I'm really excited about. A few weeks ago, I was getting coffee with a friend who is going through something really hard, and this friend is 20 years younger than me, she's in the military and she's faced with this really big challenge. And we were. We were talking about what she's going through and she's faced with this really big challenge. And we were talking about what she's going through and she looked up at me and she said how do I move forward? How do I keep going after this horrific thing that I've experienced? How do I do it? How do I do it? And I looked at her and I didn't have a solution.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Right after our conversation, my family hopped in the car and we spring braked in Moab, utah, like I talked about last week, and on that trip my husband and my kids spent a ton of time mountain biking, and I just did a little bit of mountain biking. But while they were mountain biking, I just spent hours and hours walking on these beautiful trails across the desert with my dog, and I just deliberately wasn't thinking about hike like a woman and the next guided trip that we're going to offer and the next YouTube video that I'm going to produce, but I was thinking about how all of these life experiences that we have, that we collect these experiences, we collect these stories, and I feel like, as someone who has started Hike Like a Woman a decade ago and kind of branded myself as someone in the outdoor industry and in the outdoor community and with adventure travel, I feel like that's just a very small part of who I am, but it's the part that is most visible on the Internet visible on the internet. And I was thinking about my friend and I was thinking about another friend who was going through something kind of difficult too, and then a breast cancer friend who was also kind of going through something, something else. I thought, okay, I have this outdoor platform here at Hike Like a Woman, but there's so much more to me than hiking and I want to be able to share those other parts of my life, those other experiences, those other things that make me me in a way that can be helpful and kind and maybe help mentor someone through something that's really difficult and really challenging, whether it's something facing something in the military or transitioning out of the military, whether it's starting a small business and owning a small business, or even having a successful business and wanting to sell it to move on to something else. Maybe someone has just been diagnosed with breast cancer and they're thinking what just happened. Or someone who has just rung that bell at the cancer center and now they're trying to figure out life after cancer and trying to adapt to having a new body and the change of things that happen after you go through something really, really difficult. So that's a long way of saying I have decided to kind of change things around the Hike Like a Woman platform and the Hike Like a Woman brand.

Speaker 1: 4:19

So now you are listening to an audio podcast where I just ramble about whatever's on my mind, but I'm going to go forward, starting next week, with a little more direction to what I'm going to be talking about here on the podcast, and on the podcast I am really going to be focused on rebuilding after cancer, on life after cancer, I learned that one in eight American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives, and if you are a female veteran who served in Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere else, your chances of getting breast cancer are even higher. It's about one in four or one in five. So my generation of veterans is about to see a huge epidemic with reproductive cancer and I just want to talk about breast cancer. I want to talk about life after breast cancer. I want to talk about my journey as I have recovered, or as I'm recovering from breast cancer treatment, talk about how climbing Mount Kilimanjaro really changed my life after cancer and how having a goal was so important to just starting to feel like myself again. So this is now going to transition from the Hike Like a Woman podcast to the Rebecca Walsh show and it's primarily going to talk about cancer. So I realized that if you're not interested in my cancer journey, or if you're not interested in you know all of those things like life after going through something traumatic and horrific, then feel free to unsubscribe. You are definitely not going to hurt my feelings because you're probably here for the outdoor and hiking content. So that's what's going on and I'm really excited about it. The other thing you should know is that I'm starting a new YouTube channel, the Rebecca Walsh Show.

Speaker 1: 6:25

So this podcast is going to be an audio podcast. I'm still going to try to put out a audio podcast episode every Tuesday morning and it's also going to be a video podcast. So I'm going to head out into the woods with my microphone once a week and I'm going to tell a cancer recovery story and I'm going to tell what I learned from that experience and hopefully we can start to share those experiences within the community. But it's going to be independent of Hike Like a Woman, because the whole thought behind it is not necessarily hiking and outdoors focused, although that has been a huge part of my healing. So that's what's going to happen with this podcast.

Speaker 1: 7:14

The other things that I'm going to do is I get a ton of questions about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I've produced a bunch of YouTube videos at Hike Like a Woman talking about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. That was a huge part of 2024 was getting to the summit of Ruhu Peak on Mount Kilimanjaro. So I have started a Patreon. So anyone, regardless of if they hike like a woman or not, uh, anyone who's interested in climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, specifically the seven day Machame route. I'm going to be doing some coaching over on our Patreon. I'm going to try to make as much of it free as possible, but some of it will be paid content and paid coaching all about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. So I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2024. I'm taking another group to climb Mount Kilimanjaro this August. In just six months we are headed back to Africa and then I have another Kilimanjaro climb for 2026 locked in. That's going to be a full moon summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. It's going to be the last week in September of 2026. So, as you can see, kilimanjaro was such an impactful thing in my life that I want other women to experience that same feeling. That I got mountain like Kilimanjaro with a group of supportive women is huge. So on Patreon, we are going to be 100% focused on Kilimanjaro.

Speaker 1: 9:06

Here on the podcast, we're going to be 100% focused on cancer and life after trauma and then over on our Hike Like a Woman channels. So hikelikewomancom, the Hike Like a Woman YouTube channel and the Hike Like a Woman social media channels. That's where you're going to continue to see information about outdoor clothing and gear, hiking and our guided trips and group adventures all over the world. You can also find me at Substack, just where I'm telling stories. That, my friends, is what's going on.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Once again, if you're here for the hiking and outdoor and adventure travel content, maybe just switch on over and to hike like a woman, because starting next week, this will be the Rebecca Walsh show and we will be focused on life after cancer. Thanks so much for hanging out with me. Thanks so much for being part of the Hike Like a Woman community. I just got off an amazing group call. Actually, I had four group calls yesterday with women who are headed to Costa Rica, utah, kilimanjaro and Patagonia with me this year, and it's so amazing that the internet has brought women together from all over the world to go on these epic adventures, and I'm just so amazed and so thankful for your support and your encouragement and I'm looking forward to what these changes are going to bring about. I will be back next week with the Rebecca Walsh.