Hi, I'm Willow Belden and this is Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories in the outdoors.

Today's episode is about finding your way back to happiness.

The story comes to us from a woman named Becky Jensen.

She lives in Northern Colorado, and about a year ago, she did something that would turn her life around completely.

Now, Becky knew she had a lot to be grateful for.

She had sweet kids, a caring fiancé, a promising

career. But deep down, she wasn't happy. She was growing distant and resentful, taking care of

her family exhausted her, and her plans to get married filled her with a heaviness she didn't

want to admit.

And so she decided to leave everything behind and head into the mountains.

On this episode, she tells the story of what happened.

It's a story about relationships, with family and with ourselves.

And it's about what happens to those

relationships when we do something just for us something selfish I'll let Becky take it

from here last year I ran away from home but that's not what I called it back

then I called it my solo through hike, my digital detox, my bucket list adventure.

That looked better on paper, and for the image I was carefully crafting for myself, the

image of perfect mom, perfect writer, perfect outdoorsy bride to be, live in the dream.

Telling the world that I wanted to escape my life was unthinkable. If I exposed that

ugly truth, I might be seen as the selfish, ungrateful, and emotionally checked out fraud that I knew myself to be.

And people don't need to know I'm depressed, I told myself.

Nobody wants to hear about that.

...