Episode 34: Dreamers Only
Dreams don’t just fall into our heads out of nowhere. They’re cultivated and built from passionate ideas. Big dreamers know that they don’t happen immediately—they require patience, self-compassion, and above all, the courage to pursue them, regardless of the odds.
Debbie credits her resilience to her childhood struggles in Catalonia and learned that sometimes, you have to travel to the other side of the world to discover what moves you the most.
For the Love of Climbing is brought to you by deuter USA, Gnarly Nutrition, Allez Outdoor, and presented by Patagonia.
Music by: Kakurenbo and Chad Crouch. A HUGE thank you to Chad Crouch for creating absolute magic, and to Peter Darmi for mixing this episode.
Cover photo by Kika MacFarlane.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
- This podcast is presented by Patagonia. Not bound by convention, Patagonia’s in business to save our home planet.
- This podcast is sponsored by deuter, one of the leading backpack brands that will help you hit the trails with confidence and comfort, but most importantly–your snacks.
deuter has a history of first ascents and alpine roots. Their head of product development even climbed Everest once, in jeans (hashtag not fake news.) deuter is known for fit, comfort, and ventilation. Founded in 1898, deuter believes in good fitting backpacks, so you can focus on way cooler things like puppies, pocket bacon, and gettin’ sendy, whether at the crag or in the alpine.
(FEMALE VOICE): Today we’re going to talk about “allez”. “Allez” means “come on!” in a way, or to encourage. Ok! We are done with the simple and normal uses of “allez”, now let’s cut to the chase:
(KATHY KARLO): Allez Outdoor Personal Care products are made by climbers for those who love the outdoors. Their rich and repairing ingredients for their skincare collection are inspired by desert landscapes, and their simple and recyclable packaging makes them eco-sustainable. Allez commits to protecting the open spaces that we love by partnering with the Access Fund and 1% for the Planet. That’s Allez Outdoor: “A-L-L-E-Z”). Allez Outdoor—made by climbers, for those who love the outdoors.
- This podcast gets support from Gnarly Nutrition, one of the leading protein supplements that tastes “whey” better than they need to, because they use quality natural ingredients. So, whether you’re a working mom who runs circles around your kids on weekends or an unprofessional climber trying to send that 5.13 in the gym, Gnarly Nutrition has all of your recovery needs.
The only question you need to ask yourself is: Are you a sucker for anything that tastes like chocolate ice cream? (Yeah, me neither.) Gnarly Nutrition is designed to enhance your progress—and taste like a milkshake, without all the crap.
- I’m gonna eat one of these croissants—
(DEBBIE CARRASQUER): You have to!
(KK): —‘cause they look so good!
(DC): No chocolate and chocolate.
(KK): Chocolate!
(DC): You can’t come to Reno and not have a Perenn croissant!
(KK): Ok, you can definitely go to Reno and not have a Perenn croissant, but you’re missing out. Reno’s kind of an interesting place. It was my first time visiting this summer and it was great. I got to see a few friends and catch up—I even hung out at the Riverwalk District. Kinda neat that you can kick it in nature at the heart of Reno’s downtown urban renaissance and then go grab a cortado like, five minutes away.
Mikey Schaefer said, and I quote, “Reno is what Portland was ten years ago.” I don’t wanna say that climbers are flocking to Reno, but there’s definitely a small, tight-knit community there with some pretty special people. Debbie is one of them. She’s so exceptional, out of like, thirty-five interviews—I bumped her up to this season because her story is remarkable. It needed to be told, and we hope you’ll listen and take something meaningful away from it. I definitely did.
This episode is not just a story about immigration. It’s a tiny glimpse of how broken the U.S. immigration system is, told through the lens of Debbie’s experience. It’s also about how when a system exists in shambles, it will leave tens of thousands of people living in constant fear that they have to prove that they belong.
It’s also about deep love, the loss that we feel when we experience that kind of love, and learning that an affinity for any place is rooted in community. And when you find belonging, what dreams may inevitably take shape.
(DC): I like that you have all the amenities, but it’s not as busy as the Bay. I mean, I come from the Bay. So, I was like, “I don’t wanna live in a city, but I also don’t wanna be in Bishop where I have to drive so far sometimes to get certain things and groceries and everything.” So, I’m like, something in between.
And then, my husband picked Reno ‘cause we have some friends that moved here from the Bay. But at the beginning, I was like “This is a mixture between San Francisco, Stockton, and Vegas.” And I was like, “I don’t know if I see myself here!”—‘cause all I was seeing is downtown. I was like, “I just don’t see myself here.”
And then, we started looking at places. And then, we found this place which is kind of outside from everything and forty-five minutes to any spot in Tahoe. Like, Donner Lake to paddleboard, climbing, bouldering—any time. And I’m like “Ay.” And there’s definitely a good climbing community. I feel welcome here.
(KK): Hey, a quick heads up. Episode thirty-four contains discussion about eating disorders.
- You’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast. This is not a climbing podcast. Well, sorta. This is a funny, sad, and somewhat uncomfortable podcast about choosing vulnerability and talking openly about our pain. This podcast is presented by Patagonia. Here’s the show.
(DC): My name is Debbie. I live in Reno at the moment. I moved three to four weeks ago. Before that, I was on a year-and-a-half-long trip across the U.S. I was rock climbing with my husband and we were living in a van.
And at the moment, I do some studying—I’m studying a Master’s in Coaching and Leadership. And at the same time, I’m doing some climbing coaching. It’s awesome. I’m having a lot of fun and it’s very rewarding to see other people’s growth and be part of that.
I think that somebody would describe me like: somebody that works hard for what I want, and when I put something in my head, I don’t stop until I get it. Somebody that cares for others and cares a lot about little details and how the things are done and said.
(KK): This is Debbie. She lives in Reno. Like, just freakin’ moved here and she already knows where the best chocolate croissants in town are. But before Reno, before van life with her husband—Debbie was entirely across the globe, and life was very different.
(DC): I’m from Spain. I’m from Catalonia—a place called Lleida. That’s between Barcelona and the Pyrenees. There’s amazing climbing but, little did I know about climbing. I wasn’t a climber, so I never knew until I was far away.
I am the youngest of four. And I was living in Catalonia and I had a pretty rough childhood, so I had to grow up faster than it was necessary. And I think I started putting myself into studies ‘cause I saw that as a way of maybe thriving and getting new opportunities that I couldn’t have. As much as I love Spain, it wasn’t a very thriving place for me.
I decided to study a lot and I got scholarships, and that allowed me to go to the UK for the first time to study English. And I feel like, for me, studying English, was a kind of a new opportunity to become someone different, and I decided to pursue a life in the UK. I started going there as a summer camp teacher. I would bring students from Spain for them to learn English as well, and it was very rewarding.
And then, right when I was about to move to the UK, then my sister got cancer. And then, my dad got cancer. And life happened, right? And I felt like I didn’t know what to do with my life anymore. I felt like it belonged to Spain, but at the same time, I felt like I needed to go somewhere else. I needed to find myself, and Spain wasn’t the place.
My dad encouraged me to just go with my dreams. And I kind of promised him that after a year, I would go back and have a trip with him. So, I went to the UK—to England. I became an au pair of two awesome little kids. And one month before I was about to go back, I got the most frightening call I could ever get. My dad passed away. My sister made it—she’s super strong.
But then, all of a sudden, I felt like I didn’t have any reason to go back. As much as I love my family and all my experiences, I always felt like I still had a mission. So, I stayed in the UK. And the father was a geography teacher and he had all those maps and routes in the mountains, and my host family by then showed me all of those maps.
And I felt like I might be able to. I felt so numb from my dad’s death and everything—I just felt like I was capable of anything. Nothing scared me anymore. So, I grabbed those maps and I just traveled. I traveled for days and weeks at a time. I went up into the mountains with zero experience. I just hiked for hours. It was the best place for me to grieve. And I will always remember the day, ‘cause a lot of people ask me when everything started—and I feel like that was the moment.
(KK): Some people go to the mountains and call it “adventure”. That’s not exactly what Debbie was looking for, but there was something about being there that felt healing. After losing her father, one day Debbie found herself hiking—for seven hours.
She didn’t know where she was going. It was foggy because—England. And all she had with her was an old GPS. The map told her that she was for sure at the top, but that information conflicted with what Debbie actually saw.
(DC): “Great, I see nothing! I’ve been hiking for seven hours and I don’t even know where I am!” So, I sat down and I meditated. And then, the wind just blew away all that fog. And then, I just saw a beautiful lake the shape of Australia—I will always remember. And then, I just saw that I just cross a very thin fin, kind of like a crest that I would have never done if I had sat on the cliff next to it, right?
And then, I was like, “Wow, I was so capable,”—just because I didn’t know what I was capable of! So, I sat down and I was like, “There’s no way anybody would have ever made it here ‘cause you do all that hiking to get here.” So, I’m like, “I’m so privileged! There’s nobody here.”
And as soon as I said that, then I heard somebody talking. I heard some whispering, people speaking. I was like, “Nobody was behind me. Nobody was ahead of me. How could anybody else be here with me right now?” So, I hiked down. And then, I looked to the cliff and then, I saw climbers. That was the first time in my life I saw climbers—living in Spain, yes. It was the first time.
And then, that was a reality check. I was like, “I thought the only way of getting here was walking. Now I see you can get here in many other ways.” I sat down, stared at them for more than an hour seeing what they were doing.
And the next thought that came to my mind was, “I’m going to be a rock climber. I don’t know how! I don’t know where, but I’m gonna be a rock climber.” And after that, I was like, “I’m not going back to Spain. I’m gonna go where the biggest mountains are. I don’t know where. Look at the map—and of course, I read about Yosemite.
(KK): Debbie looked at maps, she read all about El Capitan. She read about Tahoe. She found books on “how to be a climber”. And then, Debbie hatched a plan where she could move to the U.S. and become an au pair in the states. Debbie executed said plan, she joined a climbing gym, and thus, her new chapter began—and it all started with a hike.
(DC): When we are kids, we are used to being in nature. We are a part of nature. I feel like that was stripped out from me at a very young age. So, I never had that connection that I could remember, until then. I felt like those years were brought back to me.
I had the opportunity to connect with nature and, at the same time, to connect with myself and with my dad. I liked the connection that we had. He was a very important person in my life and was taken away. And I felt like I lost my dad—but I also lost part of myself. And with that, any opportunity to become who I wanted to be. And it’s kind of like, I was hearing myself. I was hearing him through my thoughts and that kind of helped me to continue.
We lived in a very small village. And we were four siblings—I was the youngest. Both of my parents had physical jobs starting very early in the morning, finishing very late at night. And we were definitely all neglected. My older sister had to pretty much take care of all of us and there was some abuse—neglect, abuse.
And then, I had some eating disorders that were blamed on me and it’s very different right now. Like, more measures are taken nowadays, but before—that’s it. You know, your parents work and you just accept that and thank them because they are working hard. And if you’re struggling through things, they are struggling through their things, too.
And I’ve become compassionate enough to understand that they did the best they could, given their situation. I’ve come a long way with that, but I will always look back and think, “What if none of this had happened to me?” Well, I look at it in a different point of view. If none of that had happened to me, I would not be here today, talking to you, so.
(KK): Yeah, our parents aren’t perfect. And recognizing that helped Debbie gain compassion for them. At a time when so much was being added to Debbie’s life, she was also in the process of leaving things behind, as well. One of those things was an eating disorder that Debbie had struggled with since she was a young girl.
(DC): I was around twelve years old. It lasted for around a decade, I would say. For me, it was the only way in my life to be in control of something. Everything falling apart, not having any role models, not having any discipline, any scheduling—nothing. No motivation at all, except just going to school and getting good grades
And I felt like I needed to have something in control, and the only thing I could control is the food that I put in my mouth. And the less I was eating, the less I was feeling, too. So—coping mechanism right there. And I was always afraid about talking about it ‘cause I felt like, if I don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist—it doesn’t affect me. Right? So, let’s not talk about it. Let’s eat fast and just move through the day.
When I started climbing, I understood the relationship between performing and having the right energy to perform. And if I wasn’t eating properly, I could not perform. I couldn’t be my best self. And for the first time, even if it sounds very obvious, I understood the relationship between feeling healthy, performing, having a good time, and eating.
So, I started becoming very interested about my diet. I actually became vegetarian. I didn’t do it very well because I did not eat more food, so, for the—
(LAUGHS)
—first year and a half of my climbing, I was also becoming a vegetarian and I lost a bunch of weight. I became very unhealthy, but that’s not what I wanted. So, for the first time, I felt like I was in control of what I wanted—and what I wanted is to be healthy and feel strong—and climb well.
So, I started reading a lot about it. I started doing a lot of research. I started trying different things. I started eating meat again to gain some more weight. And then, I met Gnarly also—the company. You know Gnarly?
(KK): Gnarly Nutrition is designed to enhance your progress—and taste like a milkshake, without all the crap.
(DC): And they also helped me a lot. I ensure that I get everything I need and now I’m vegetarian again—I’m doing right. I am eating the right amount of calories and I feel the best I’ve ever felt. I feel like I have a connection with my body and my mind. And I can’t perform, I can’t be myself if I don’t have fuel. And I think it’s a very healthy relationship and I’m in love with food right now. I just—it’s who I am.
(KK): Ok, thirty-ish second recap coming ‘atcha.
(STOPWATCH TICKING)
Debbie—left Spain, moved to the UK, lost her father but found healing in the mountains. Didn’t go back home, came to the U.S. instead as an au pair with the not-so-hidden agenda to figure out how to be a rock climber. She recognized bad coping mechanisms, worked through an eating disorder she’d had since she was twelve—and everything was peachy, right? Life in the U.S. was working out for Debbie. In fact, from an objective standpoint—things were pretty bombastic.
(DINGING)
(KK): Resiliency, for Debbie, is seeing hardships as new opportunities to become something better, without holding onto grudges or painful pasts. She sees it like a window that shows you where you are in the present, and now—you get to decide what you do with what life puts ahead of you.
(DC): It’s very interesting that you actually mention that ‘cause I feel like when you go through trauma, especially in your childhood—you live in a survival mode all the time. You are just all the time trying to survive. There’s no room for resting, ‘cause the danger is imminent—it’s anywhere.
So, you learn to behave like that on a normal basis. And if you don’t learn that sometimes, you have to just chill out and just live in the present, I feel like you carry that through other aspects of your life.
And ever since I moved to the U.S., I’ve been going through immigration—also, starting a new relationship, getting married, studying, and climbing and trying to do it all. And I feel like it’s not until now that I actually moved and I settled down that I can actually breathe and take it back to what it should have been from the beginning. If it wasn’t that many barriers to actually live in the U.S.
(KK): Like all things American, improving the immigration system has been a slooow process. Basically, U.S. immigration law is based on: reunification of family, admittance of those with valuable skills that benefit the economy, refugee and asylee protection, and promotion of diversity.
Here’s something sarcastic fun: the Diversity Visa Program was created by the Immigration Act of 1990 as a dedicated channel for countries with lower rates of immigration to the U.S. And then, He-Who-Shall-Never-Be-Named-On-This-Podcast’s administration implemented immigration bans that effectively shut down the program in 2020. It left roughly 43,000 lottery winners without visas. The Biden administration has since lifted those bans, but the Diversity Visa Program has resumed at a snail’s pace.
Anyway, there’s a lot of grounds to cover when it comes to immigration law. Like DACA and the dreamers and that the only significant difference between “asylees” and “refugees” is procedural. At the end of the transcript, we actually put together a pretty lengthy book list you can check out.
In absolute monster numbers, the U.S. has the highest immigration population clocking in at about, oh, 48.2 million. And even though actual millions of people have gone through some version of this process, most Americans actually know very little about it. Debbie sheds some light on the process through her lens of experience.
(DC): When I first moved to the U.S., I came as an au pair. So, there was nothing for me to worry about. There is an agency that takes care of everything. So, all you do is, you come to the country. You help with the kids. You live with the family, so you don’t worry about the food, you don’t worry about the house. You just take care of kids and you get a small stipend for little things, but no salary at all.
So, that was exactly what I was needing. I just wanted to go climb—live in a country where I could learn how to rock climb. I found a community, and that is when things get personal. You get attached. You feel like you finally belong. And there’s a sport that welcomes you, no matter what your background is. You go outside climbing on the weekends and you are a climber like anybody else is. It doesn’t matter where you come from.
And I never had that before so, I felt like it was a precious thing to have. I also met my best friend, who’s now my husband, Max. And we became inseparable. So, we started climbing every weekend—and we still do, right now. And I also joined a Meetup group.
That was my first climbing community. We’re all from different parts of the world. We are all on different visas and other people had their green card and we were climbing every weekend. We would get weeks at a time and our vacation was just spending time with ourselves—we are all family.
And after my first year being an au pair, I had to decide if I wanted to extend another year—or just move away. I originally wanted to stay just one year, ‘cause I wanted to continue traveling, learning, teaching English, doing all sorts of things. But then, I was like, “I kind of belong here. And maybe it’s time for me to stop escaping and going from one place to another place. Maybe I’ll take the shot.”
So, I accepted and I stayed a second year. And then, I started a relationship with Max. And then, I felt like, “Well, now this is serious. Now it’s getting to the end of the two years and maybe I should explore what can I do from here.”
(KK): It all came down to—either Max would move to Spain to be with Debbie, or Debbie would remain in the U.S., but there was no in-between. It was an all-or-nothing sorta deal. And even though the decision felt big, they made it together.
Their relationship mirrored a good climbing partnership—the best kind, actually. Where you have real and honest and sometimes tough conversations. And what Debbie and Max both decided was to live in the U.S. for one more year.
(DC): Little did I know that was a hard avenue. We had to literally speed up our relationship. And we missed the part in which you can just be yourself and go traveling, and maybe argue and just, you know, separate for a bit and go back to it and just have those moments where you get to know each other. You get to know your differences.
No, we had to speed it up and just decide—are we doing this, all the way in, or are we just letting this opportunity go? How are we supposed to know if we’re gonna love each other after a year? How are we supposed to know if that’s gonna work or not? We have to take chances. We cannot go at the pace that a normal relationship goes. And we made a hard decision and we said, “Ok, let’s start a life together and see if we can surf the wave.”
(KK): Debbie and Max surf that wave, even though that wave felt a lot more like a riptide—after we come back.
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(LOR SABOURIN): What else am I doing?
(LAUGHS)
I’m making a film project right now.
Blake is a climbing partner of mine and one of my first friends in Flagstaff—someone that I’m really close to. And Blake, at one point, asked me to come over to the Tourist Home, which is a coffee shop in Flagstaff. And he was like, “So, I wanted to pitch a film idea to you,” and I was like, “Oh, yeah. Sure.”
And he’s like, “So I wanna make a film.”
And I was like, “About what?”
And he’s like, “About you!”
And I was like, “Oh…That’s interesting.”
And at the time, we thought it was gonna be this really small thing. I was like, “Oh he’s gonna make this ten-minute film about me rock climbing and that sounds cool.” And I kind of agreed to do it because I was kind of exploring what it would mean to be more open about my identity—especially in the climbing world. And I thought it could be a cool way to just be a little bit more visible and share that with other people.
And it’s turned into a big thing now—
(LAUGHS)
—it is not a ten-minute film. And I think that because there’s a really big exploration process with gender when you’re trans—that sometimes people will think that what you’re trying to communicate is who you are, when really you’re just communicating another aspect of what you are.
It sounds kind of out there, like nebulous, but it actually isn’t. It’s just like, everyone knows they have just a core human inside of them that doesn’t need anything else to define it.
(KK): Go to Patagonia.com/climbing, or visit the Patagonia YouTube channel to watch “They/Them”, streaming now.
(CROWD CHANTING): No more ICE! Abolish ICE! No more ICE!
(MAN #1): No more ICE! No more ICE!
(MAN #2): No more ICE! Abolish ICE!
(WOMAN): Shame on you!
(MAN #3): Fuck yeah.
(KK): ICE was created in 2003 as a part of the U.S. government’s response to 9/11 that included mass surveillance, racial profiling, and militarism. ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Congress pressured the Bush administration to create a department responsible for domestic security. As a result, ICE was positioned to treat immigrants as a security threat with one, singular focus: deportation.
Those who’ve been pushing for the dismantling of this agency condemn ICE for unreasonable search and seizure, inhumane conditions including overcrowding and inadequate medical care in detention centers, and especially for the separation of families. Yeah—parents and children (literal babies)—under the previous administration’s Zero Tolerance Policy.
Today, ICE has an annual budget upward of seven billion dollars—money that could be invested in reform, education, health care, infrastructure. The call to abolish ICE is only growing louder. Because whether we realize it or not, immigration has an impact on everyone in this country.
(DC): It was hard. I live in constant fear. I didn’t know really if I could be deported and if ICE would call at my door. I was uninformed, as well as scared. And we filled out forms—that’s what we did with most of our free time.
We would be filling out forms all the time and then, go climb during the weekends. Forget what we were going through and become climbers. Live in that bubble and just be one more—one more of them. We are a community. And then, when Sunday finishes—back to the reality.
I’m not a person—I’m an “alien”. That’s who I am. I have no status. I’m in a limbo. I’m not even a citizen, therefore they call me “alien”. So, every day telling yourself that you’re an “alien”. You have a number—you’re a number, and you might not have the right to stay here.
You might not have the right to love the person you love. And you’re just thinking, “Is this gonna last? Is this even worth trying?” I just wanted to be a climber. And I wanted to be with my best friend. But now, I have to go through all this—and he has to go through all this, ‘cause it’s not just me. It’s people that love me.
So, we went through the whole process and I consider myself well-educated. I went through the forms. I followed the instructions. I’m a rule follower. I got rejected. And I felt like a failure ‘cause the word “rejection” means you were not good enough for something.
And we got into arguments that you should not be having. You should be arguing about somebody spilling something in the car or that was a bad movie. You should not be arguing about not filling out forms, therefore you cannot be with the person that you love—or you cannot actually see who you can be as a climber in the country that you choose to be in.
We were lucky enough to have some money saved, so we paid for a lawyer. And the lawyer told us all the forms were fine. Sometimes, they just want that front letter saying that it’s serious—that there’s a lawyer ahead of it. And that made me feel bad. ‘Cause I thought, “How about all those couples that love each other as much as Max and I love each other that do not have the money or the means to pay for a lawyer to put a letter in front that says, ‘This is bona fide.’”
For those who don’t know bona fide, it’s that you have to prove that it’s real—that you entered the marriage loving each other and there’s not any financial [benefit] or any reasons that would make them think that it’s not real. My day-to-day life was just checking my phone daily to check if there were any updates. If you receive an update or a letter and you don’t respond within a week, the case is dismissed. So, you lose your money. You lose all the effort you put and your chances to reapply again.
So, I cannot leave the country. If I choose to do it, I might not be able to enter back. There’s no guarantees—with any administration, any president, really. And one of my dreams was to go to Squamish. Everybody was talking about climbing in Squamish, but guess what?
Squamish is in another country! I don’t know if I will be able to come back. So, I never went and I kept postponing and I didn’t go to visit my family. And I kept waiting—waiting for that status, day after day. Day after day. Climbing, having fun, and then remembering—I’m an “alien”. I’m still an alien.
And you go on with your life. You do your plans. You think about, “Where am I gonna move?” or “What do I wanna do with my life?” But in the back of your head, you feel like you’re not a citizen; you’re an immigrant. You’re half a person—you’re an “alien”. You have all those names that they put on you.
And I still go to stores sometimes and I feel like I struggle speaking or making myself understandable. I get nervous. And then, I feel some people are judging me. They have no patience or they tell me, “I don’t understand what you mean.”
And sometimes, you can’t help taking it personally. We all have low moments. And those comments sometimes just make you feel like you’re singled out and then marginalized. And then, you feel like, “I just wanna leave—I can’t leave. I’m trapped here.”
So, you have that feeling of sometimes wanting to escape, but you can’t really escape. So, I had a lot of those moments feeling like, you have to stay. You have to endure and just go with it. Yeah, so this has been a little bit of my life over the last five years.
(KK): In February of 2021, the Biden administration released an immigration overhaul package, setting a goal of legalizing 11 million people in the U.S. And within that proposal is the directive to replace the word “alien” with “noncitizen”.
Both “alien” and “illegal immigrant” are dehumanizing terms that inherently criminalize people as “wrong”, or “other”, as Debbie learned firsthand. But Debbie and Max remained patient, and hopeful, because—spoiler: good things are ahead.
(DC): And one day, we just got the news that I got accepted. And when I got the green card, I was like, “Ok. I’m gonna go visit my family.” So, my husband and I flew out to Spain and I gave my mom and my brother a surprise on their birthday—June twelfth. Spent two weeks there and then, we came back.
And then, they put the restrictions again. So, I think I was lucky enough to have that small window, ‘cause I don’t know when it’s gonna be there next time that I’ll be able to see my family—my family in Spain. Of course, now I have a big family here—big community. And I’m very thankful for that.
(KK): Debbie found a window where she could travel to Spain safely. And both she and her husband, as well as her family in Spain, were all vaccinated. And the restrictions that Debbie are referring to are COVID restrictions.
Two weeks was a small window after having waited so long to see her family in person, but Debbie also has a growing family back home in the States. The community that she’s nurturing here is helping show us what climbing can look like, and has the potential to become.
(DC): I feel like climbing was my first sport. I never did any hobbies or any activities. There was no room for that when you’re in survival mode. And climbing was the first time I told myself I could be good at something and I could be part of something. I could also help somebody go through challenges and I could try to help and mentor and coach other people through hardships that I’ve been through.
And climbing is a clear example that everybody encourages everybody. When your friend sends something, you’re happy for your friend. You don’t lose anything when somebody sends something or when somebody achieves something in climbing.
And it’s a community that wants to see you thrive. Hopefully, one day we will call it a very inclusive sport. I think we’re going in the right direction, but I’m really having a lot of hope that climbing can be even more inclusive.
(KK): Because of people like Debbie, the climbing community is becoming more inclusive. The impact of seeing people who look like you is that it paves the way for others. It makes climbing feel and become more accessible. Talking about our differences isn’t about further division—it’s just saying that differences are ok.
And as for Debbie? She’s come really far from her Meetup days. She even knows who Chris Sharma is!
(DC): When I first joined the meet-up, I don’t really know how I dared to do something like that, ‘cause I was always so self-aware of me having an accent or people maybe not understanding me.
I’ve never really been in a lot of social situations during my childhood, and being in a new country, speaking another language—I don’t really know. I’m thinking about it myself right now and I’m like, “How did I find climbers and I dared to go all the way to Berkeley?”
I will always remember ringing that doorbell thinking—
(LAUGHS)
—“I hope they don’t kidnap me!” or “I hope this is not just a fake thing ‘cause I don’t really know where I am!” And it was very early in the morning ‘cause the climbers got up very early in the morning—I think it was like six a.m. or something. And I was like, “Oh my goodness. Nobody knows I’m here.”
But I will always remember, they opened the door and they were like, “Come on in! There’s breakfast.” And I was like, “What?” And there they were. Just like, climbers. Those individuals just sharing stories and getting ready to go to their climbing and I was like, “Oh my gosh. This feels pretty cool.”
And then, a new girl showed up and it was also her first Meetup—first climbing experience outside, and we started chatting. She was on a working visa and then, eventually would get a green card. And we were just chatting about climbing: “It’s my first time!”
“This is my first time, too!”
And then, we went to Pinnacles. And that was my first time. I started climbing and I just loved it. I remember just being curious about anchors, being curious about the names of everything. And there were people that knew more about it so, they were kind of telling us all that they knew.
And it was a community. Everybody was helping for the sake of helping. There was no benefit. We would not pay anybody at the end of the session. It was just—you love something and you wanna help other people to also fall in love with that sport.
And for me, that was—I wasn’t used to people just being nice to me for the sake of being nice. And yeah, ever since then, that Meetup group was my family. Every weekend, any holiday—Thanksgiving. Wherever. We would go climb outside. We just would all get together, get an Airbnb, and just go climb—Indian Creek—you name it. And that was my first big climbing community and my family.
After climbing that day, we went again to that house and we watched a climbing movie—Cliffhanger, I remember. And then, at the end of the movie, some of my friends told me, “So, where were you climbing when you were in Spain?” And again, in case—
(LAUGHS)
—it’s not clear yet: I wasn’t a climber when I was in Spain. And they’re like, “So, you don’t know anything about Sharma and Dani Andrada?” And I’m like, “Who?”
(LAUGHS)
So, I had to learn everything from scratch! I had to learn that some of the most amazing cliffs were in Spain and there’s a lot of strong climbers in Spain! And I was like, “Ok! It’s a long way to learn.” I just feel like sometimes, you have to go to the other side of the world to learn what moves you inside, even though you had it so close.
(KK): Curiosity is sorta the less examined secret sauce to a happy life. A 2019 study in the Journal of Personality found that happiness and curiosity are bidirectional. On days when we experience positive emotions, like happiness, we also tend to display more curiosity.
Maybe it’s something that inevitably recedes as we grow up. It’s been statistically proven that, on average, our openness to new experiences declines with age, and the majority of American adults spend less than twenty percent each day doing what they consider to be engaging, enjoyable, and meaningful.
It’s not that being curious is the end-all answer to how we find happiness. But staying curious lays the groundwork for an opportunity to experience joy. And that’s kinda special, right?
(DC): I feel like, when I was very little, I was always curious about things. And I already felt like the worst had happened to me, honestly, when I was a kid. I felt like I’ve seen bad things happen to me—I’ve seen bad things happen to people I love. And you don’t feel scared anymore. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. You get kind of numb. You’re not scared. You just wanna keep trying.
I felt like I’ve seen bad things happen to me—I’ve seen bad things happen to people I love. And you don’t feel scared anymore. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. You get kind of numb. You’re not scared. You just wanna keep trying.
You know, there’s something good out of everything that’s happening to you. You just gotta keep searching. You’ve already bumped into the bad things, and the good things are out there now for you. You just have to dare to try.
And being curious has allowed me to, not only know other people and know community, but knowing myself. It’s hard to get to know who you are when there are so many things happening around you, that you can’t really pause and ask yourself, “Who am I and who do I want to be?”
And, for most people, that happens when you’re a kid and you just get your own identity. But, for some people, for me, it didn’t happen until I was maybe twenty years old. And then, I asked myself who I wanted to be. It doesn’t matter what happened to me. It doesn’t matter how old I am until I did my first trip outside of my hometown. It’s here and now, and now I want to know who I can become.
So, I became curious. And through curiosity, I found identity. And I also found belonging. I found that I can belong somewhere that’s different from where I was raised—and that’s ok. That doesn’t mean I don’t love Catalonia—I love Catalonia with all my heart. I love my family with all my heart and all my friends in Spain. And I was curious enough to go farther and find new things and discover that you can find family everywhere you go.
And I was curious enough to go farther and find new things and discover that you can find family everywhere you go. It’s just a matter of being curious and searching and giving other people opportunities to get to know you. And when I started climbing, and I was climbing every weekend, I just felt like when I was a kid and couldn’t play with other kids or I was dealing with so much—I never had a childhood.
And now, when I was working during the weekdays, making my money. And then, during the weekends, going climbing outside. And it’s finally accepted to have some time and room to play and be silly and—it’s accepted! You know? I’m still an adult; I have a job and everything.
But I still deserve to have fun with my friends, no matter how old I am. I started climbing when I was twenty-seven years old. And hopefully, hopefully I’ll climb for many, many more years. And it’s never-ending fun and you can still have that even when you didn’t have a good childhood. And that’s—that’s magical.
(KK): Dreams don’t just fall into our heads out of nowhere. They’re cultivated and built from passionate ideas. And big dreamers know that they don’t happen immediately—they require patience, self-compassion, and above all, the courage to pursue them, regardless of the odds.
As I record this, Debbie is four weeks post-surgery. But if the entire U.S. immigration system can’t stop this woman, I reckon she’ll be back at it pretty soon. In the meantime, Debbie continues to live a happy, fulfilled, and curious life with her husband, Max as they scheme and dream up her future projects to come.
(DC): During Covid, we all had a lot of free time to think about what we wanna do next and everything. I’ve always loved teaching. I was a teacher for many years and I’ve done a lot of volunteering. And I like guiding people through struggles.
When I see people struggling, I see their strength. And sometimes, a strength that they cannot see in themselves. And I believe people can achieve so much—sometimes they just don’t dare or they are not ready or they are not asking the right questions.
And during Covid, I thought a lot about—what could be my contribution? Climbing was everything to me. It’s still everything to me. It has allowed me to have a new family. It has allowed me to push hard, push my limits, become healthy and help others. So, how could I give back to a community that has given me so much without asking anything—anything in exchange?
So, over the last few months, almost a year, I’ve been coaching climbers and non-climbers, as well, through climbing problems and non-climbing problems. ‘Cause I’ve gone through so much that I can actually see through the barriers. And I see that everybody can do that. If I can do that, everybody can do that—just with the right tools. So—fear of falling. Ok—really fear of falling or maybe fear of letting go of something? And either that in your life or outside of climbing, too. Right, it’s just like an avenue.
And I’ve realized that I’ve helped so many people and that’s just so rewarding at the end of the day. And I think everything that has happened to my life has led me to this point, and all these struggles are now allowing me to help other people through their struggles.
And that just sounds odd, but it just makes it so worth it. It makes it so worth it! I would go over again through everything that has happened to me if that means that that’s gonna help me to help so many other people.
And I have a lot of projects. It’s constant, right? Like, once you achieve one thing, you want another one. And I think that’s what makes life interesting—what makes climbing interesting. I’m trying to escape from climbing grades. I achieved a fair amount of grades that I was going after and as much as I wanna continue climbing stronger, I think I wanna discover new places.
I wanna get better at hiking, approaching. I wanna get better at connecting with people. I wanna get better at pushing hard but also knowing when it’s worth pushing hard and when it’s better to just stop and listen to your body and get that proper rest and proper fueling.
I want to live in the present more. I want to become able to actually stop and rest and get all those moments that have been stripped away from me because I was in survival mode. I want to become able to enjoy the time with my husband, just sitting on the couch and chatting, being with some friends at a barbecue and not worrying about someone opening up the door and taking me back to Spain!
I want to become able to help other people through coaching. I want to be able to show others their full potential and get home at the end of the day and feel like—yes. It all makes sense. I feel fulfilled. That’s who I want to be.
(KK): Even though I still have no idea what I’m doing—things are happening. And if you’d like to help out and support us, check out patreon.com where you can sponsor us for as little as one cup of bodega coffee. It really helps keep this podcast going, and for the record—we love bodega coffee. Special shout out to Peter Darmi because he makes this thing sound good.
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(DC): So, when I learned about climbing, it was in English. So, it’s not like the words you can literally translate them. Right? It’s like a jargon. So, when I went to Spain and we were climbing and I was speaking English with Max and then, people start using all these words like “regleta” and “empeine”. And I was like, “What the heck are they doing?” And all the words I knew were in English!
So, I had to speak in English because I didn’t know how to communicate with the climbers in Spanish. ‘Cause I would sound like, I don’t know. I was in between two languages. So, I had to do my homework later on and try to learn the words in Spanish. So, hopefully, next time I go to Spain, I can actually have Catalonian conversations with the other climbers.
(LAUGHS)
(KK): That’s so funny. That’s so good.
(BOTH LAUGH)
Beautiful, compelling, and poignant books about the immigration experience that we’d like to recommend:
