Coastrek 2026: How hiking saved my life

At 40, my life looked fine on paper – and felt utterly unbearable on the inside. I was a working mum on the treadmill: school lunches, deadlines, bedtime stories, repeat. I had two children and one on the way. I was married. I was “coping.” But underneath the busyness was a deep, bone-heavy melancholy. I felt trapped, exhausted, and quietly miserable.

My husband was an alcoholic. Life at home was unpredictable and exhausting. I had become very good at managing everyone else’s needs while ignoring my own. Like so many women, I told myself this was just how midlife felt. I didn’t recognise myself anymore.

Then something wildly inconvenient, impractical, and completely life-altering happened. My best friend invited me to climb Mt Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere. I wasn’t a climber. Not even a hiker. Without overthinking, I said yes. That decision cracked my life wide open.

The mountain transformed me

Aconcagua didn’t care that I was a mum, a wife, or quietly falling apart. The mountain stripped everything back to basics. Breathe, step, breathe. It was brutally hard. I was completely out of my depth. We didn’t summit. By any traditional measure, the climb was a failure. But something extraordinary happened up there. I felt strong. Not “holding it all together” strong – but alive strong. I felt capable. Resilient. Brave. The mountain showed me there was life after 40. 

Coming home changed

Returning to Sydney, nothing looked the same. I couldn’t unfeel what I’d felt on that mountain. I couldn’t unknow that my body, my mind, and my spirit thrived when I challenged myself, breathed fresh air, and stood alongside another woman who had my back. I started hiking, started training, started inviting other women to join me. What began as a personal lifeline slowly became a vision: a way to help women reclaim their strength, confidence, and sense of possibility. That vision became Wild Women On Top.

Choosing the harder, truer path

I divorced my husband, became a single mum, raised three children on one income. None of it was easy. There were moments of fear, exhaustion, and doubt. But hiking had rewired me. It had taught me that hard things don’t break us – they build us. Every time life felt overwhelming, I went back to the trail, to the rhythm of walking, to the clarity that comes when you move your body through wild places. Step by step, I rebuilt my life. Not a perfect life – but a true one.

A different kind of success

Today, my life looks vastly different from the one I had at 40. I have built Coastrek, a women’s hiking business that has supported thousands of women to step into their strength. I have watched women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s do things they never thought possible. I have raised three incredible children on Sydney’s wild edges – teaching them that courage, resilience, and connection matter more than appearances or approval.

If you are reading this and feeling stuck, hear this: You don’t need to blow up your life overnight; You don’t need to have it all figured out; You just need to take the first step. Go outside. Walk somewhere wild. Let your body remind your mind what it is capable of. Hiking saved my life because it reminded me who I was.