Through Me, As Me: Mt. Kilimanjaro Led Me to Perfect Peace

PART ONE  ·  THE JOURNEY BEGINS

Some Moments Divide Your Life Into Before and After

There are moments in life that become permanent markers. They divide your life into before and after, quietly redefining who you are without ever asking for permission. Some people experience those moments at the birth of a child, in the loss of someone they love, or standing at an altar promising forever. Others find them in places they never expected. For me, that place was more than nineteen thousand feet above sea level on the tallest freestanding mountain in the world: Mount Kilimanjaro. And everything it asked of me, everything it stripped away and everything it gave back, changed me in ways I am still learning to articulate.

When people ask what it was like to climb Kilimanjaro, they usually expect me to talk about the breathtaking views, the physical endurance, or the pride of standing on the Roof of Africa. Those things were certainly part of the experience, and I will never minimize them. But they were not the greatest gift the mountain gave me. The greatest gift was something harder to explain and far more valuable. Somewhere between the thin air, the endless switchbacks, and the kind of silence that only exists at high altitude, I discovered a level of peace I had spent years searching for. Not the peace that comes when everything goes according to plan, but the peace that remains even when life looks nothing like you imagined it would.

Several years ago I began a much deeper journey than any mountain could ever offer. I became fascinated with understanding the human mind, our emotional patterns, and why we continue repeating behaviors that no longer serve us. As a coach I had spent years helping others navigate change, but I kept coming back to the same truth: real transformation always begins within. During that season of study and self discovery, I was introduced to what became one of the greatest anchors of my life, the four levels of consciousness. Things happen to you, for you, through you, and ultimately as you. I had studied those four levels. I had taught them. I believed I understood them in the way you understand something intellectually before life decides to make it real. What I did not know was that Mount Kilimanjaro was about to bring every single one of them to life in ways no classroom, book, or coaching session ever could.

Preparing for this expedition was not something I took lightly. Months before we ever boarded a plane for Tanzania, my life revolved around getting ready for that mountain. Every hike became training. Every workout had a specific purpose tied to what I knew was waiting for me on the other side of the world. I researched altitude sickness and its effects on even the strongest and most conditioned climbers. I invested in proper gear. I even purchased a specialized breathing mask designed to simulate restricted airflow so I could train both my lungs and my mind not to panic when breathing became difficult. Looking back now, that last detail almost feels like a sign I did not know how to read yet. I was unconsciously preparing myself for something far greater than I had planned for.

By the time we arrived in Tanzania and stood at the base of Kilimanjaro, the excitement was nearly impossible to contain. There is something about this mountain that commands your respect long before you take your first step. She is beautiful, mysterious, and humbling all at once, and no photograph in the world can prepare you for her actual presence. Our group had gathered from different backgrounds and different parts of the world, yet we all carried the same goal. Over the next several days we would hike together, eat together, camp together, and push each other through one of the most demanding adventures most of us had ever attempted. There is something uniquely sacred about mountain culture. Strangers become teammates quickly because everyone who is climbing understands on a cellular level that no one reaches the summit completely alone.

For the first several days the journey unfolded beautifully. We laughed often and moved through landscapes that barely seemed real, shifting from lush rainforest alive with towering trees and birdsong into stark alpine deserts where the air grew thin and every step required a little more intention than the one before it. Each day Kilimanjaro revealed a different side of herself, and with every mile I found myself falling deeper in love with the experience. Then, as it sometimes does in life, everything changed in the quiet space between one moment and the next.

The Decision I Never Expected to Make

My climbing & life partner became very sick. He could no longer keep food down and his body was struggling to adapt to the altitude. The difficult conversations we all hope we never have to have suddenly became our reality. He needed to descend. And I was faced with a decision we had discussed but never actually thought would have to navigate: leave with him and protect what we came as, a team, a unit, or stay and continue the journey alone. Even now as I write these words I can feel the weight of that moment. It felt much bigger than simply choosing whether to finish a hike. We had prepared for this together. We had imagined celebrating at the summit together. That had always been the plan, and the plan now required a new roadmap.

I stayed. And the instant I made that decision, the first level of consciousness crashed over me like a cold wave. I was now alone on the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. The dark cold nights I had imagined sharing felt entirely different inside the a tent. Just that morning a tent, shared for morning coffee and our 'washy-washy' to begin the day, now felt isolating, lonely, and a void from the absence of my partner. The version of this journey I had built in my mind, the one where we stood at the top together and cried in each other's arms, had evaporated. For a brief moment my mind began doing what minds do: telling stories, asking why, wondering what went wrong, and casting a shadow over everything that was still possible. Life was happening to me, and I could feel it in my body the same way you feel the cold the moment it slips through a tent opening. Ironically our tent had a few rips an unwilling zipper to fully keep the cold chill out.

But I had done the inner work too many times to stay there long. That first night alone, as temperatures dropped and the mountain went quiet around me, I did what I have practiced for years. I paused. I became curious instead of reactive. I let myself feel the disappointment fully without allowing it to write the ending of the story. I asked the same questions I have guided countless coaching clients through: what is this moment trying to teach me? What gift might be hiding inside this unexpected turn? What if this is not happening to me at all? What if it is happening for me? Somewhere in the quiet of that little tent, with one of the world's greatest mountains pressing into the night sky above me, my perspective shifted. Nothing about my circumstances had changed and yet everything within me had moved. By morning I had made a conscious decision to stop being someone left behind and start being someone choosing to continue.

The Guide Who Became Family

The following morning I set out with my personal guide, John Mrina. At first he was simply the person assigned to help me navigate the mountain safely and well. But mountains have a way of accelerating relationships in ways that ordinary life rarely allows. Hour after hour, step after step, through conversations about our families and our dreams and the lessons our different lives had handed us, something between us quietly shifted. Before long John no longer felt like my guide. He felt like family. By the end of the expedition I often joked that I had somehow gained another son, and I meant every word of it. What the mountain gave me in him was one of the most unexpected and treasured gifts of the entire journey.

Looking back, one of Kilimanjaro's earliest lessons was beautifully simple and utterly profound for someone like me. We are rarely as alone as we believe we are. Sometimes help arrives in the form of people we have not yet met. Sometimes strength is found in conversations with strangers who become lifelong friends before the week is over. Sometimes the very support we need has been standing right beside us all along, patiently waiting for us to stop insisting we can do everything on our own. For someone whose natural instinct has always been fierce independence, for someone who has spent most of her life being the strong one, the provider, the person others lean on, learning to receive that kind of presence was itself a kind of summit. 'Let me take your backpack' was a single point in time I humbly realized I wasn't alone, needed the strength of another, and had more of a mountain to hike. And yet the mountain was only just beginning to show me what it had come to teach.

PART TWO  ·  BREATHING THROUGH THE IMPOSSIBLE

The Mountain Asks Only One Question

The higher we climbed, the quieter everything became. Conversations grew shorter, not because there was nothing left to say, but because every word required breath and every breath had become precious. Kilimanjaro has a remarkable way of stripping life down to its absolute essentials. You stop thinking about emails and deadlines and the endless responsibilities waiting back home. The mountain does not care who you are, what title you hold, or how many things you have accomplished. She asks only one question, and she asks it over and over again with every foot of elevation gained: will you keep taking the next step?

John and I settled into a comfortable rhythm that became its own kind of meditation. We walked for hours, sometimes talking about our families and our different cultures, and sometimes moving in the kind of companionable silence that only develops between people who have earned each other's trust. That silence became one of my favorite companions on the mountain. It was not lonely or heavy. It was spacious and peaceful and full, creating room for thoughts I had been too busy to hear for years. There is something remarkable about slowing your pace, walking pole-pole (slowly-slowly) enough to actually listen to yourself. Not the version of yourself striving to accomplish more or impress others, but the quiet voice beneath all the noise, the one that gently reminds you of who you have always been and what you have always known.

As beautiful as those days were, I began noticing something that did not feel quite right. My breathing was becoming increasingly difficult. At first I dismissed it, because we were climbing toward nearly twenty thousand feet and everyone had warned us about altitude. Shortness of breath, headaches, and fatigue were all considered part of the experience. Still, something felt different to me in a way I could not fully name. I had trained hard for this climb, months of conditioning and long hikes and the breathing mask workouts, and yet here I was stopping every fifty to one hundred feet to bend over my trekking poles and search for enough air to continue. I kept returning to the same question: I trained for this. Why can I not breathe? Neither John nor I had any reason to believe something more serious was unfolding. He had guided countless climbers up this mountain and his experience was extraordinary, and even he believed my breathing was my body's response to the altitude. I believed it too. What neither of us knew was that my lungs were slowly filling with fluid. Pulmonary edema had quietly begun its work.

Looking back now, I can see how gracious life can sometimes be in what it withholds from us. Had I known then what I know now, fear would have completely consumed my experience. Instead, I was given the gift of staying completely present. One step. One breath. One conversation. One extraordinary moment at a time.

Summit Night: 9:15 PM, Headlamps On, Into the Dark

Summit night began at exactly 9:15 in the evening. Every climber talks about summit night with equal parts excitement and deep respect. It is the moment you have trained for, dreamed about, and quietly questioned whether you were truly capable of completing. We layered ourselves in every piece of warm clothing we had packed, thick gloves and multiple jackets and hats and merino wool, and then we stepped into a darkness that felt almost sacred in its totality. The beam from my headlamp illuminated only a few feet in front of me. Beyond that was nothing but black sky filled with stars close enough in that thin mountain air to feel touchable. Every now and then I could see tiny lights from other climbers weaving silently up the mountain around us, like a slow river of determined, hopeful human beings who had all chosen to keep going when the easier option was to stop.

None of us could see the summit. We simply trusted it was there and kept moving toward it, and that realization has stayed with me every day since leaving Africa. So much of life asks the same thing of us. We cannot always see where we are going. We cannot always know that what we are working toward will materialize the way we imagined. We simply decide, over and over again in the small moments and the large ones, whether we are going to keep moving or whether we are going to stop.

As the hours passed my breathing became dramatically worse, and the rhythm of walk and stop became the entire shape of my experience. Every fifty to one hundred feet (even sometimes 20 feet) I had to pause, bend over my poles, and work to gather enough air to take the next stretch. Every stop was an invitation to quit and every stop became another decision to continue. Somewhere in that grinding, luminous, grueling space I realized I was no longer simply climbing a mountain. I was living inside the third level of consciousness. Life was moving through me. Not something I was doing, not a philosophy I was applying, but a state I had become. Every ounce of strength I possessed was being called forward, not just physically but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The mountain was demanding complete presence, and it would not negotiate. I could not carry tomorrow while standing in that moment. I could only manage the next breath and the next step, and then the next one after that.

In those hours, my thoughts drifted home in the most beautiful way. I thought about my partner and my children and my granddaughter. I thought about our YGC community and the women I have the privilege of coaching. I found myself smiling beneath layers of neck gaitors and cold winds while imagining future conversations, future books, future retreats, and future adventures still waiting ahead of me. Looking back, I understand now that those dreams were carrying me just as much as my legs were, and perhaps more.

Stella Point: Where I Finally Broke Open

After what felt like an entire lifetime contained inside a single night, we reached Stella Point, the final waypoint before the true summit. The emotion hit me before I fully understood what was happening. Tears streamed down my face as months of preparation and years of personal growth and countless difficult seasons all collided in one overwhelming moment. I shook. I cried without any performance in it, without any audience or story attached, just a woman and a mountain and everything she had carried releasing into the cold morning air. I was not crying because I had reached the summit. I was crying because I knew in my body that I finally would. John smiled the quiet knowing smile of someone who has witnessed hundreds of these moments and understands exactly what they mean. He gave me space to feel it fully, and then we took pictures and drank water and gathered ourselves for the final stretch.

This is where I gave what I did not know I still had. My breathing had become my greatest obstacle by then, not my legs or my mind or my will, but my ability to simply take air into my body. I never once doubted my ability to endure pain. I was seriously doubting my ability to keep breathing. And then, almost as if the mountain had orchestrated the timing precisely, I saw familiar faces coming down toward me through the early dawn light. The friends who had traveled with us to Africa were making their way back from the summit, and their smiles said everything their voices had no room to carry. We embraced each other in the middle of that mountain, laughing and crying and celebrating and promising to meet again at base camp. It felt like life itself had paused for exactly one moment to remind me that encouragement almost always arrives at the precise second we need it most. As they continued their descent, I turned back toward the summit, tightened my grip on my poles, looked at John, and said the only words that mattered: let's f'n do this.

PART THREE  ·  THE SUMMIT WAS NEVER THE GREATEST VICTORY

Uhuru Peak and the Level I Had Always Been Reaching For

The final stretch to Uhuru Peak was unlike anything I have ever experienced in my body or my spirit. John had assured me it would feel easier after Stella Point, and while the incline softened slightly, my body did not. Every breath felt borrowed. Every step demanded the very last thing I had left to give. The sky had slowly exchanging darkness for dawn, and with each passing minute the horizon became more brilliant, deep blue surrendering to lavender and then to bursts of gold and orange spilling across the African sky in the most breathtaking sunrise I have ever witnessed. I could barely stop long enough to take it in. My lungs were fighting, my body was at its absolute limit, and everything inside me was focused on one single thing: the next step.

There are moments in life when your body says it cannot and something much deeper says you can. That quiet voice became my only companion during those final minutes. I was no longer operating on physical strength or months of training or mental toughness alone. Something greater was carrying me forward, and I knew it, and I surrendered to it completely. This is what happens when we finally stop trying to control every outcome and simply let the journey unfold the way it needs to. And then, almost without realizing it fully, I was there.

Uhuru Peak. The summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. The Roof of Africa. I had imagined that moment for months, pictured the celebration and the pride and the exhilaration. What I experienced instead was something infinitely deeper than any of those things. The moment my feet reached the summit, it felt as though time itself slowed. Every emotion I had carried up that mountain surfaced at once: relief that I had made it, gratitude that my body had carried me there, joy for every person and every challenge and every sacrifice that had led me to that exact place. And then, beneath all of it and through all of it, something happened that I still do not have perfect language for and am not entirely sure I am supposed to.

I was not simply standing on the mountain. I had become completely present within myself. Every layer I had been carrying throughout my life, the expectations, the striving, the pressure to keep proving myself, the need to have every answer, gently fell away all at once. There was nothing to accomplish, nothing to fix, nowhere else I needed to be. I was fully and completely alive inside the very life I had been given. In that moment, I understood the fourth level of consciousness in a way no book or teaching or classroom ever could have given me. Life was not happening to me. It was not simply happening for me. It had moved through me and now it was happening AS ME. Not a better version of me. Not a future version I was still working toward. Simply me, completely aligned, completely present, completely at peace. Through me, as me.

I quietly walked to the rim of the crater. There was nothing dramatic about the movement, yet it felt more sacred than anything I had ever done. Only a few inches separated me from the edge, where glaciers stretched into the distance and the vastness of creation unfolded in every direction. I lowered myself onto my knees and placed my hands on the frozen ground, and I stayed there. I did not kneel because anyone expected me to or because it seemed like the right thing to do for a photograph. I knelt because it was the only response my heart knew how to give. Tears moved down my face in waves as gratitude poured through every part of me. I have had moments throughout my life that took my breath away: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling in Rome, never ending green rolling hills of rice fields in Indonesia, and every beach my toes have had the pleasure of sinking into. Those moments filled my heart completely. This moment filled my soul. Everything became still. I heard nothing and needed nothing and wanted nothing except to remain exactly where I was, completely grounded, overwhelmed by a Presence much greater than myself. One with The God of the universe. One with creation. One with myself. It felt like heaven had gently brushed against earth for a single perfect moment, and I was the place where they met.

The Descent and the Diagnosis

I want to be honest about what came next, because the story does not end at the summit and neither does yours. The descent from Kilimanjaro is typically where altitude sickness fades as you lose elevation. For me, the opposite happened. My breathing became noticeably worse with every passing hour. Walking downhill should have felt like relief, but every movement seemed to require even more effort than the ascent had. John and my porter quickly recognized that something serious was happening, and before long they were each supporting one side of my body as we carefully navigated the loose volcanic scree, moving as quickly as we safely could to get me lower. I wanted so badly to tell them I was fine. But my body was no longer allowing me to perform anything. After more than four hours of descent we finally reached camp, and I told our lead guide plainly: something is seriously wrong. Unless I am sitting completely still, I cannot breathe. A frightening wheeze had developed that I could not push through no matter how hard I tried. Within minutes a helicopter was called.

John never left my side as we waited. Somewhere over the previous week he had become so much more than my guide, and in those hours he made sure I knew I was not alone. When we arrived at the clinic, my body began revealing everything it had been silently carrying. My left knee was swollen. The coughing intensified. I was off balance and dizzy. My energy disappeared almost instantly. The diagnosis was H.A.C.E pulmonary edema. Fluid had slowly accumulated in my lungs because of the altitude, and it had been building for days without either of us knowing the full extent of what was happening. As I sat with those words I felt something unexpected move through me. Not fear. Not regret. Gratitude. Deep, real, settled gratitude. Had I known earlier what was truly happening inside my body, I almost certainly would have been removed from the mountain long before ever reaching the summit. Instead, I was given an experience that permanently changed my understanding of life and purpose and peace. I am profoundly grateful for the guides whose experience and quick thinking ultimately protected my life, and I recognize clearly how fortunate I was that the situation was identified when it was. Their decision to evacuate me without hesitation prevented things from becoming far more serious, and I carry that with me.

What the Mountain Gave Me That No Boardroom Ever Could

Today when people ask me about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, they often assume my greatest accomplishment was reaching Uhuru Peak. It was not. My greatest accomplishment was discovering what remained inside me after everything else had been stripped completely away. The mountain burned off every layer of performance, every piece of striving, everything I had been carrying that was never mine to carry in the first place. There was no audience at three in the morning in the dark at seventeen thousand feet. There was no brand to protect when I was kneeling in the frozen dirt at the edge of the crater letting God and the universe hold me up. There was nothing left except exactly who I am.

Kilimanjaro taught me that strength is not the absence of struggle. Strength is choosing to keep moving, with wisdom and humility and faith, when every single step requires courage you did not know you had until you needed it. It taught me that allowing others to help is not weakness. In fact, allowing others to carry us through difficult seasons is one of the bravest and most regulated things a leader can do. For someone who has spent much of her life being the strong one, the provider, the one others lean on, receiving that kind of support became one of the greatest lessons the mountain had to offer. And it taught me, most importantly, that peace is not something we find after life becomes easier. Peace is something we discover when we stop resisting what life is trying to teach us and finally allow it to move through us and ultimately as us.

Your Mountain Is Already Speaking to You

You do not have to climb Kilimanjaro to find the fourth level of consciousness. Your mountain may be grief. It may be a divorce or the end of something you built your life around. It may be building a business from nothing while raising children and questioning whether you have what it takes. It may be learning to love yourself again after years of believing you were not enough. Whatever mountain is standing before you right now, the path through it follows the same four levels. From believing life is happening to you, to trusting it is happening for you, to allowing it to transform you through you, until one day, in one extraordinary moment you were not expecting and could not have planned for, you realize life is expressing itself fully and completely as you.

That journey is available to every one of us. The mountain asked me everything and I gave it all. And what came back to me at the top was not a trophy or a title or a milestone to add to a list. It was a knowing. A deep, settled, unshakeable knowing that the most peaceful and most powerful version of ourselves is not somewhere ahead of us, waiting to be earned. She has been there all along. We simply have to be willing to climb high enough, and be still enough, to finally meet her. The mountain will speak to you too, if you ask it to. Ask.

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You Were Made for More Than Surviving

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yvette Valdenegro

Yvette is the co-founder of YGC Collaborations, a Houston based coaching, speaking, and community brand built for women who are done surviving and ready to lead from a regulated, grounded, fully alive place. She is a certified coach, author, podcaster, speaker, event creator, Kilimanjaro summiter, single mother of four, grandmother, and a woman who believes without reservation that the highest version of leadership always begins within.

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