The Mountain With No Summit

There are seasons when growth is spoken about like a destination.

Like a summit you reach.

A place you arrive at.

A moment when you finally stand on stable ground and say, There. I did it. I’m done now. I’m healed. I’m evolved. I’m the person I was trying to become.

But life has never felt like that to me.

Growth, real growth, doesn’t feel like a mountain with a top. It feels like a mountain with no summit at all—no final ledge, no finish line, no moment where the work ends and the human experience becomes effortless. Not because we’re failing, but because living is not a problem to solve. It’s a landscape to meet. A relationship. A practice. A journey we keep walking until we don’t.

And here’s the part we don’t talk about enough:

Before we ever start climbing, most of us spend years—sometimes decades—living under the mountain.

Not on it.

Under it.

Under the Mountain

I was speaking with a loved one recently, and they said something that landed in my body before it even landed in my mind. They spoke about the feeling of being underneath the mountain, and instantly I was taken back—not to a thought, but to a whole era of my life.

Because I know that place.

I know what it is to wake up each day already carrying weight that isn’t yours.

To feel like you’re behind before you’ve even begun.

To move through life with a low-grade sense of pressure, like the world is asking you to be someone, prove something, fix something, achieve something—just to be allowed to rest.

And I want to be clear: I don’t mean the mountain is bad.

This isn’t some anti-growth, anti-ambition, anti-responsibility rant. The mountain isn’t the enemy. The mountain is simply the fact of being human: learning, expanding, confronting fears, stretching into maturity, meeting reality, trying again, loving again, losing again, starting again.

The mountain is life.

But being under the mountain is something else.

Being under the mountain is what happens when life becomes layered in inherited expectations—when the weight of the “shoulds” stacks up so high you can’t even see the sky.

It’s the invisible architecture we grow up inside:

• Family narratives about what counts as success

• Cultural rules about what a “good” woman is

• Unspoken agreements about being easy, pleasing, capable, strong

• Generational messages about safety, money, status, sacrifice

• The roles we were assigned long before we consented to them

• The versions of ourselves we built to be loved, chosen, respected, safe

Under the mountain, we are not climbing. We are surviving.

We’re trying to manage the weight.

We’re trying to hold up the world with our shoulders and call it a life.

The Networks of Conversation

Under the mountain is not just stress. It’s not just busyness. It’s not just “a lot going on.”

It’s deeper than that.

It’s the network of conversations we inherit—those stories and expectations that live in us like default settings. Most of them were never spoken directly. We absorbed them through tone, reward, silence, praise, withholding. We learned what got love. We learned what got approval. We learned what got safety.

And then we called those learnings “who I am.”

So under the mountain, growth becomes confused with performance. With being good. With being impressive. With being productive. With being unbreakable. With being acceptable.

And because the mountain is heavy, we start making the most human mistake in the world:

We assume the weight is us.

We assume the heaviness is our identity.

We assume the exhaustion is our personality.

We assume the pressure is just “how life is.”

We don’t realize we’re standing under something we could step out from beneath.

A First Step

This is why I’ve come to believe something that sounds almost too simple:

The first act of growth is not climbing.

The first act of growth is getting out from under the mountain.

Because you can’t climb while you’re pinned.

You can’t practise while you’re bracing.

You can’t create while you’re collapsing under expectations you didn’t choose.

So what does it mean to get out from under the mountain?

It means seeing—really seeing—what you’ve been carrying.

It means distinguishing between:

• What is yours to live

• And what you’ve been trained to prove

It means noticing the “should” before it becomes your next decision.

It means recognizing the voice that says “not enough” as a pattern, not a truth.

It means realizing that many of the rules you’ve been obeying were never laws. They were just repetition.

It means letting yourself disappoint the version of you that was built to keep everyone else comfortable.

And I know how edgy that can sound. But I’m not talking about rebellion for rebellion’s sake. I’m talking about liberation in its most intimate form:

Choosing what is true for you, even if the old world doesn’t clap.

Getting out from under the mountain often looks ordinary from the outside. Quiet, even. It can look like:

• Saying no without a long explanation

• Stopping the compulsive need to be understood

• Resting without earning it

• Asking for help without shame

• Letting someone be disappointed and not making it mean you’re wrong

• Admitting “I don’t want this life I’ve built” without immediately knowing what you want instead

It’s not glamorous.

But it’s holy work.

Then We Begin to Climb

Once you’re out from under it, something changes.

Not because life gets easy, but because you’re upright again.

You can breathe.

You can see.

You can choose.

And from that place, you can begin to climb—not as a project of self-improvement, but as a practice of aliveness.

This is where the tools come in.

Because on the mountain, we’re going to meet everything:

Fear. Doubt. Desire. Grief. Longing. Old wounds. Old patterns. New edges. New courage. The parts of us that want to turn back. The parts of us that want to sprint. The parts of us that want to quit. The parts of us that want to control.

And the tools—breath, inquiry, nervous system work, self-honesty, compassion, prayer, journaling, mentorship, truth-telling, boundaries, embodiment—these tools aren’t there to get us somewhere.

They’re there to help us keep walking.

They’re there to help us stay in relationship with ourselves as life changes.

They’re there to help us climb without abandoning our humanity.

Because the point isn’t to become some polished, perfected, permanently unbothered person.

The point is to live.

Not Progress. Not Arrival. A Life

I want to say this clearly, because it’s easy for the mind to weaponize even the most beautiful metaphors:

This isn’t about progress.

This isn’t about becoming “better” in the way empire defines better—more productive, more optimized, more impressive, more controlled, more socially acceptable.

This is not a hustle dressed up as healing.

This is the opposite.

This is about the journey of our lives.

About meeting ourselves honestly.

About softening where we’ve hardened.

About strengthening where we’ve betrayed ourselves.

About learning how to be with discomfort without turning it into a story of failure.

About learning how to choose from desire instead of fear.

About walking our own path—even when no one else recognizes it yet.

If there is anything like “success” here, it might be this:

That you stop living under the weight of borrowed expectations.

That you step out into your own sky.

That you climb because you’re alive—not because you’re trying to earn your right to exist.

A Small Inquiry, If You’re Willing

If you feel the weight… if you feel tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix… if you feel like your life is full but you are not inside it…

You might not need a new plan.

You might not need more discipline.

You might not need to climb harder.

You might simply need to ask:

• What am I carrying that was never mine?

• What “should” is quietly running my life?

• Where am I living under the mountain instead of on the path?

• And what would it look like—today—to take one step out from under it?

Not to get somewhere.

Just to breathe again.

Just to begin.

Just to remember that the mountain is not meant to crush you.

It’s meant to be walked—one honest step at a time—by the only person who can live your life.

You.