Zibby interviews renowned rock climber Beth Rodden about A LIGHT THROUGH THE CRACKS, an intense, breathtaking memoir about Beth's harrowing experience of being kidnapped at twenty years old on a climbing excursion in Kyrgyzstan, her journey through trauma, and her transformation into motherhood. Beth describes the challenge of revisiting her worst memories and shares how climbing helped her cope with the physical and mental trauma. She and Zibby also explore her relationship with fear, her recovery from various injuries, and how becoming a mother changed her perspective on life and climbing.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Beth. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss your memoir, A Light Through the Cracks, A Climber's Story. Congratulations. Congratulations.

Beth: Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. 

Zibby: I have to say, I have you to blame for being tired because I couldn't stop reading your book the other night and it scared me. Like, parts of it were scary in your story and I was so sort of agitated by it that I couldn't sleep. I was like, I can't believe this woman went through this.

I can't believe I feel like I just went through everything she went through. And I know this is only a small part of it. Of the big story, but still, your experience in Kazakhstan being kidnapped, I mean, oh my gosh, I just can't even believe it. So, well done, in the writing, for giving the reader the most, like, immediate visceral experience of this horrific thing.

Beth: Thank you. Yeah, it was, it was a hard part to write about, but cathartic in a way as well, to Try and go back and unpack a lot of those memories and those experiences and put them onto the page and try and kind of like Release them a little bit 

Zibby: So why don't you go back and tell listeners about that experience?

but about the whole book and you are like one of the most elite climbers in the on the planet. So congratulations for all of your success. I can't believe, I mean, I watched Free Solo, so I feel like I can talk about climbing. I feel like I know enough to discuss, but what you've done, I mean, I don't even know how you, I'm just so impressed with you on so many levels.

It's like amazing. Okay. So tell listeners about the book. 

Beth: Okay. The book is memoir of my life. It's obviously I'm a climber. I'm a professional climber. I've been a climber since I was in my early teens. And so that's all I've kind of known, but I feel like that's kind of the backdrop to like a coming of age story and a processing trauma and becoming a mother and yeah, just trying to be a human in life.

So the book covers a six day kidnapping that I went through with my boyfriend at the time and two of our friends and Kyrgyzstan, and then it kind of goes into how I buried that trauma. The climbing community back then was not really accepting or understanding of how to deal with trauma in a gentle, soft, compassionate way.

It was very much a, um, celebratory thing to skirt death in climbing back then. So I just dove back into climbing. And like you said, I was able to sort of push the sport forward for a The better part of a decade and really elevate my career and climbing, um, in ways I never thought, but that all started to crumble after about 10 years, I went through a divorce, I found love, I got remarried, we had a child and honestly, becoming a mom was sort of the biggest transformation that I went through.

It really was like this crystal clear reflection of, you know, You know, how I was living in the world and it inspired me, honestly, to go unpack all that trauma, uh, that happened 15 years earlier and, um, yeah, and, and continue on and see where I am today. 

Zibby: Gosh, I love how you, you end it with your mom bod, which is hilarious.

Which I'm sure, I'm sure is about most people would even want, but, uh, that's another theme that really courses through the book is food and what it meant to you to be truly hungry when you were in captivity, right, for six days and, you know, even the re jiggering of your digestive system once you got back and all of that and introducing food again.

But your lifetime history with, uh, how you felt about your body and food and climbing and deprivation and all of it. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

Beth: Absolutely. You know, I came into climbing when I was about 14 and I feel like I was this innocent kind of green kid that ate when she was hungry and didn't eat when she was hungry and didn't kind of differentiate between any types of food is good or bad or but the climbing community.

Was very much, even though it wasn't at the forefront of conversations everywhere, it was very prevalent that being thin was the way to success. So I'd have mentors and people I look up to say things just kind of, you know, subtly, like I would order bagels with cream cheese and they would say, you're not going to get up anything today, Rodney, after eating that, or they would say something like, you know, I lose five pounds before every competition and not in a malice way, I don't think, but more in a.

Like here's a tip kind of way. And so early on in climbing, I definitely developed a very disordered way of eating and how I, a relationship with food and very restrictive and very in control. And in Kyrgyzstan, that was kind of highlighted because we only had a bar or a half of an energy bar per day each.

So we were living on, you know, a hundred, maybe 200 calories each day for six days. So we were definitely very hungry. And when we came back, yeah, that, that cycle of trying to be restrictive and trying to be as light as possible definitely came back in full force. 

Zibby: Tell me more, and I know you wrote about it, and it was so impactful.

So, actually being starved, like, by somebody and not having access to food. What happens to your brain and your thoughts and your body, like, what is, what, physically and mentally, what is that really like? 

Beth: Well, we were stationary all day, and then, so we were hidden all day. And so, we had just hours and hours and hours to think and let your brain spin.

And mine would always spin to The hardest thoughts. And then also I think it was some sort of comforting thing that it would always spin to what I wanted to be eating. We were also freezing. So I always thought of hot food, but it also, it just made processing or redirecting thoughts very difficult because all you're focusing on is how hungry you are, which makes it a highlight, how scared you are.

And then as far as what happened to my body, since we were laying down, hidden all day, you could, I could slowly start to feel my ribs poke out, my hips poke out, my clothes that I wore for six days straight became looser and looser. And so it was just this sort of decline in how I was able to process things mentally and then my body just became skinnier and skinnier and skinnier.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. The scene with your mom, when, she was talking about did you need a therapist when you got home, right? She had offered you a therapist and she was like well I have a therapist and you're like well why do you need a therapist and she's like she has to like take this deep breath at the doorway and say you know, it's not easy knowing your child is, you know, at risk, more than at risk across the world.

You can't do anything about it, which of course is like everyone, every parent's nightmare. How much did your parents know? And how, if you were to do it again, you know, would you go right back and would you go right into therapy? Like, cause you didn't really. deal with it at first. Like, it was amazing. You just, like, went back to life.

And I'm sorry to dwell on this part of it. It's just so unique. 

Beth: Yeah, no, not at all. Yeah, I didn't go to therapy right away. And therapy, I feel like, was kind of a shameful thing in the climbing community back then. It kind of showed weakness is how people perceived it. And so, yes, if I were to do it all, if I had to go through something like that again, I think the, my therapist would be probably one of my first phone calls after calling my parents.

So I think it's an incredible tool if you're fortunate to be able to, um, afford it and have the means to go. And yes, I mean, my poor mom now being a mom, I just can't, I can't imagine, but at the time I was newly 20 and I just, I couldn't understand like why would you need this, mom? You didn't do anything.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. You also had a scene with your dad that was really powerful. I think, as a parent, I'm reading this both, from both perspectives, right? As the person this could happen to, and then the parents. But, you have this one scene where he says the wrong thing. He shows you a picture of your captor, and it just sets you off.

And he was like, I'm so sorry. And you had, you know, been communicating with him in such a positive way where you could say something like, Oh dad, like the mortar is loud. And because of his experience, he knew that feeling and you almost didn't have to say more, but then this one sort of misstep like sets the ground shaking.

Cause he was like the most reliable and steady. Tell me about that and how this whole thing affected your parents and you and your relationships. And if, and when it kind of, you felt that Like, back to baseline, if you will. 

Beth: Gosh, I don't know if I felt back to baseline for many years after that with my parents.

And not because they did anything, you know, wrong. Obviously, none of us had any training in this. None of us knew what to do if one of the family members got kidnapped or whatnot. But yeah, with my dad, it always felt like As a competitor early on, I had all these superstitions and my dad was always, and both parents, both my mommy and my dad were very good at like catering to those superstitions, like I needed to eat at the Olive Garden before a competition, I needed to rent our car from Hertz, and so they were always really good at that, and then when my dad misstepped a little bit, and obviously he would have no reason of, you know, Knowing how, how to walk this line by showing me a picture of, of a capture.

It just felt like such a break in the foundation of my understanding of how I could trust him and how he could help me along maybe, maybe too much as a crutch, you know, but I feel like once he was able, once we were able to actually even just talk later that conversation and he was able to say, Oh, I'm sorry, I had no idea.

I feel like that started to build the baseline, but honestly, I feel like I couldn't even admit it to myself and, and then even talk to my parents about Kyrgyzstan until 15 years later, it was just something that was, You know buried after that because I didn't know how to deal with it. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh And yet you surmount all these challenges which seem really superhuman So you have climbed the face of El Capitan like without ropes, basically 

Beth: Well, there's yeah, it's a weird.

It's a weird nuance in climbing. So Free soloing is without the ropes, and that's the movie everybody's seen with Alex. Free climbing means you use the ropes and all the gear for protection, but you're not allowed to grab them as, to help you up, if that makes sense. You're just allowed to use the, the rock to go climb up.

Zibby: How did you do that? I don't even understand how it's possible. 

Beth: Yeah, it's, it's just a lot of training, a lot of preparation, baby steps. You know, you don't just start climbing. And that's your first climb. You know, I had many, many years of climbing in the gym, many, many years of climbing outside and slowly working up to it.

So it's just, you know, a big puzzle and you just start whittling away at the pieces. 

Zibby: But you must have this different relationship with fear than most people, right? Like most people can't even, like, I can't even get up a ladder. I'm like scared of bunk beds, like, and you're scaling the biggest mountains in the world.

What do you do with your fear? Do you not feel it? Do you not have it? Or do you just know how to cope with it so much better? 

Beth: You know, honestly, I think at the peak of my career, I buried it. I, it was there. I was, I was not proud of it because I didn't think that most professional climbers should be scared.

But I had a way of dealing with it and bearing with it, bearing it. Sort of, again, a baby step mentality. I would sit there, I would kind of talk to myself and I'd say, okay, well, what are you afraid of? And I'd go through all the safety things that I had and, you know, this rope can hold a bus and. You're not, you don't weigh as much as the bus and you have all these points of safety.

And so I think it would just be this sort of methodical thing on how I would talk to myself about the fear, about the steps on how I was safe. And, but again, you know, the first time each year that I would go up on Al Cap or be 3000 feet in the air, it would be scary. And it would be this thing that I would slowly acclimate to. 

Zibby: Wow. Just beyond impressed. And also you had so many injuries along the way. Tell me about some of the climbing injuries and the ones sort of towards the end of your career. And now how has your body all of it? 

Beth: Yeah, I've, um, I've had my fair share of injuries and towards the end of my career, I feel like my body just kind of became unraveled a little bit and broke down, I think with all the compounding stress of burying Kyrgyzstan and a divorce and all that sort of thing. It just really added up and my body was the way that it manifested in injuries. So I've dozens and dozens of finger injuries. That's something that's really probably not common for most people because you don't think that you'll injure your fingers, but for climbing, that's one of our biggest tools and that's one of our biggest assets.

So, you know, little pieces of connective tissue would pop and tear in my fingers. I've injured my shoulders a bunch and had to have surgery and broken my ankles. But nowadays, I feel like I'm able to climb and yes, I get injuries along the way, but I don't feel like it's, um, as at the rapid pace that it once was.

Probably also because I'm less frantic to, you know, get up that sand hill. I'm not running up that sand hill anymore. I have a much calmer pace with, with climbing and with my body. 

Zibby: But you're still doing it. 

Beth: Yeah, absolutely. I did it yesterday. 

Zibby: So, oh my gosh. Wow. And how does being a mom play into all of it?

Beth: Gosh, being a mom was honestly, when I went through the biggest transformation, I think, I think climbing and being an athlete. Yeah. It's amazing, but it's a very selfish pursuit, you know, every day. It's just how can you make focus on you to push your desires forward. And so becoming a mom really slowed me down in that way.

I also had a really tough physical postpartum. So I really had to slow down and let my body heal and understand. This kind of new body that I was in that I had never heard about. I'd never experienced. I didn't understand how to let, let things like a prolapse heal. You know, I knew how to heal a finger injury, but I had no idea how to be able to stand upright, you know, without being in pain.

And nowadays I feel like it's also slowed me down in each day, right? I'm less frantic. I just try and go out and as much as you can enjoy a day out in the, in the woods with a young kid, it's also, you know, very sporadic and very frantic. It's um, yeah, it's been a pretty amazing thing, honestly, to see how I've been able to change just because as an athlete, I feel like I knew, I thought I had it all figured out, you know, like I was winning somehow in life and.

But it's amazing. It's opened my eyes to another way to, to walk through this life in many different ways. 

Zibby: Well, I was so pleased to see that your sponsors stuck with you when you decided to sort of shift and that telling women's stories, women athletes, aging, not aging, but, you know, transitioning through different parts of their career is so important.

And how do we do that for women and, and how does the community support them? And it seems like you have felt very supported throughout, which is wonderful. 

Beth: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, climbing and sports in general have traditionally not been there to support women through pregnancy and becoming a mom. It seemed like sort of the unspoken time when you bowed out or you accomplished everything and you retired or.

You know, took a different role and you know, that wasn't my experience. That was my biggest fear, but my sponsors stuck with me and we've really been able to develop a different path in, in being a professional climber and, you know, making climbing more equitable, talking about ways to, to keep climbers and keep athletes relevant and impacting the community.

So yeah, it's been a pretty eyeopening experience. 

Zibby: Well, some people feel that writing a book is like climbing a mountain, which you have now done both. And I'm sure that in comparison to what you normally do, the book writing itself was a piece of cake, but maybe that's not true. How was that experience for you?

Beth: Absolutely not a piece of cake. It was very hard, very long and arduous. I couldn't have done it without Eva and Mark, the two people that really helped me. And, but I do think it was. Kind of like a big climbing project or whatnot in that, you know There's all these pieces that you want to put together to make the final Thing and and that was pretty cool to see how it was done Had similarities, but honestly, I found it way more difficult.

I don't know how all of you that are actual authors and writers, uh, do it. It's, it's a amazing experience. It's fascinating, but yeah, I think I'm much more apt to climbing rather than. 

Zibby: In the book, you were really disappointed when you went on the Today Show back when you were 20, and Katie Couric wasn't there that day.

Did you ever get a chance to talk to her? 

Beth: I've never met Katie, no. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Okay. I will. I'm going to try to put you in touch. Not like we're BFFs or anything, but I write for Katie Couric Media, so let me see if there's any way. 

Beth: Oh, thank you. Yeah, that was, uh, that was a big, a big letdown, but it was, uh, it was all good.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. So what now? Looking forward. You're going to continue climbing? Are you going to write anymore? Are there new interests? Like, how are you, what are you thinking about for the next couple years of your life? 

Beth: I hope I can keep climbing as long as my body allows. It just feels good to me. You know, it's like yoga or something.

It just feels right. And then as far as writing goes, I don't, um, I think this is, this is the book. This is the book. Yeah. I can't, I don't foresee me, um, yeah. Pursuing or, undertaking another big, big writing project. But you know, you never know in life. 

Zibby: Yeah. You never know. Do you have advice both for, well, really for anyone who's trying to get through anything?

Because I feel like your resilience is off the charts. So how, how can you impart that wisdom to others? 

Beth: I think the thing that I try and think about with anything is just the baby step mentality. You know, I think I can get really overwhelmed by seeing everything in front of me. And. Not understanding how to get from the start to the finish, but then if you, I can break it down.

I feel like that happened in captivity when we were held hostage. It's like, obviously you didn't know when the end was, but if you can just get through this minute and this hour that, you know, that works. Same with a big climb, you know, if I think about it as this whole big thing, it doesn't. It's a bit overwhelming, and so I just try and break it down, or with anything, honestly, just baby step it out.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Are there books that you've read since that have helped you, or helped even for the climbing part or the mothering part or the hostage part or any of it? Has, has there been a book or two or whatever that have helped you? It's been really helpful for you. 

Beth: I really love Glennon Doyle's books. I feel like it's just amazing to show the human part of humans.

And I feel like that was really instrumental to see, oh yeah, we're not machines. You know, we're just, we're humans and we do our best. So, her books I absolutely love. 

Zibby: Amazing. Great. Beth, thank you so much. Wow. What a story. It like really got into my bones. You know, I just felt it and that's a gift to be able to do that in writing.

And again, what you've survived is superhuman and it's amazing. 

Beth: Well, thank you. 

Zibby: I'm really glad I learned your story. 

Beth: Thank you so much for having me. I really do appreciate it. 

Zibby: Okay. Congrats.