Dierdre Wolownick, Oldest Woman to Climb El Capitan and Mother of Free-Soloist Alex Honnold
Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais
Dr. Michael Gervais
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2019
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s conversation is with Dierdre Wolownick, the mother of legendary adventure rock climber Alex Honnold.
You may recognize him from this year’s Academy Award Winning film, Free Solo, where he became the first person to ever free-solo El Capitan in Yosemite.
Alex was a previous guest on this podcast, episode 108.
I wanted to speak with his mother Dierdre for a couple of reasons.
First, Alex was one of the more challenging interviews I’ve ever had on this podcast.
Everything just seemed so matter of fact to him.
One thing I hope you’re noticing from listening to these conversations is how much one’s upbringing (their parenting structure and environment) dictate who they become and why they do what they do so I thought who better to have a follow up conversation with then Alex’s mother.
Second of all, Dierdre’s own story is quite incredible.
Inspired by her daughter, Stasia, Dierdre began long-distance running at the age of fifty-five, and she has since completed several marathons, as well as numerous half-marathons and other races.
At fifty-eight, she took up rock climbing with her son, Alex, and at the age of sixty-six, she became the oldest woman to climb El Capitan, the iconic 3,200-foot granite wall in Yosemite National Park.
Dierdre’s award-winning writing has appeared in magazines, newspapers, and books worldwide, and she created a publishing company that sells internationally.a
She just published her first book, The Sharp End of Life: A Mother's Story, where she shares her intimate journey, revealing how her climbing achievement reflects a broader story of courage and persistence.
I think you’ll be fascinated by this conversation.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The objectives of all parenting should be to allow your child to discover what your passions are, |
| 0:10.0 | what drives them, what makes them the happiest and to create an environment where that can happen |
| 0:18.0 | where you can take and explore that and the job of every parent, 100% is to make yourself obsolete. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Jervais, and by Trade and Training, a Sport and Performance Psychologist, as well as the co-founder of |
| 0:45.9 | compete to create. |
| 0:47.4 | Now the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who just have dedicated |
| 0:52.2 | their life efforts to understanding the nuances of their |
| 0:56.4 | craft or the things that they're most interested in, whether that be relationships or what |
| 1:00.7 | they do or how they organize their life. |
| 1:03.0 | And so these folks are rare. |
| 1:05.0 | And because of that, they hold insights |
| 1:08.0 | and they hold understandings that with just the right way to understand what they understand, we can maybe share that with everybody. |
| 1:15.5 | And that's what the design of this podcast was meant to be. |
| 1:19.0 | I am really excited to announce that this year, Finding Mastery is releasing our first ever holiday gift guide. |
| 1:26.0 | Yes. |
| 1:28.0 | Having spent decades working with and around some of the most driven people on the planet, I know the high-performer types in your life can be a little tricky |
| 1:36.2 | to buy for. Their standards tend to be really high, they rarely settle. We all know the |
| 1:41.7 | drill here. And that's why we put together a list of some of our |
| 1:44.8 | favorite products that have been utilized by many of the leaders and athletes and creatives that |
| 1:49.7 | we've worked with on the path for them to be able to reach their potential. The products that |
| 1:54.4 | are on this list are all products that I use. You can check it out at finding mastery |
| 2:00.4 | dot com slash gift guide. That's Finding Mastery.com |
| 2:05.0 | slash gift guide. You can browse the gift guide by |
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