Our Story
We are the Mountaineers, otherwise known as Julie and Matt
Hi there! We're so glad you found our blog about our current journey of not just surviving, but thriving through cancer. We hope you find something pivotal within our thoughts and takeaways that we are identifying as we stumble through this process that you can apply to your own life. This is definitely an uphill struggle, but being guided by the Holy Spirit through this process, there is no way we can falter, and there is no going back to the people we were before all this started. We are excited to see the view from the top of the summit, and look back down over the trail to see how far we have come and the lives we have touched along the way. Won't you join us for the journey?
We have broken up this blog into a 'His-and-Her' format, to allow you to follow along with each of our perspectives, and see how we overcome battles in our own minds, and collaborate together to fight side by side. There isn't a 'Trail Guide' for walking the path, as every journey of this type is forging a new route, but bear with us as we move forward together and find ways to pull one another up, guided by our Father to find our way to the summit with our sanity mostly intact!
The mountaineering theme resonates with us deeply; we both come from families that have taught us to love the outdoors, and we have successfully passed this passion along to our children. Having scrambled up a few of the volcanoes and jagged peaks here in the Pacific Northwest, we are each very familiar with the need to pace ourselves and set small goals along the way, in order to achieve the grand accomplishment of completing the journey!
Years ago, Julie's gang of girlfriends used to take her out for a mani/pedi, and the next day, she'd be scrambling up some backcountry summit, scraping her shins and dripping blood on her newly-painted toenails. Upon hearing the story & seeing the carnage, they dubbed her 'MountainDiva', and the name has stuck ever since! Needless to say, Julie is much more comfortable on a distant trail than she would ever be in any boutique or beauty shop. Pulling from these strengths, she is the best candidate for truly kicking cancer to the curb on this journey!
Let the Mountaineers know what you think of the journey!