Courtesy of Silvia Vasquez-Lavado.Photo: Courtesy of Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
Oddly enough, it wasn’t Silvia Vasquez-Lavado’s treacherous and defiant journey up Mt. Everest that finally led the explorer to write her debut memoir,In the Shadow of the Mountain.
Instead, it was a severe bicycle accident that happened on the first anniversary of her history-making 2016 climb, when she became the first Peruvian woman to summit the fabled mountain.
The crash landed Vasquez-Lavado in the hospital, where doctors discovered a small tumor growing on her brainstem. The tumor turned out to be benign, but the life-shaking experience caused the former Silicon Valley executive-turned-mountaineer to take a serious look inward and quit her job at eBay to begin writing. Finally, Vasquez-Lavado was ready to share her story.
The book,In the Shadow of the Mountain,was published this month and is set for a film adaptation later this year, starringSelena Gomezas Vasquez-Lavado.
“Writing this book, I have to be honest, it saved my life,” Vasquez-Lavado, now 48, tells PEOPLE. “It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s been climbing the biggest internal mountain in my life ever.”
And what a climb it’s been.
Courtesy of Silvia Vasquez-Lavado.Courtesy of Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
Vasquez-Lavado’s memoir travels intimately through the explorer’s life, a rocky journey to becoming a world-class mountain climber — and the first openly gay woman to ascend the Seven Summits of the world, or the tallest peaks on each continent. Yet, the barrier breaker’s climbing career only began in her thirties.
The physically taxing moments they share together invoke catharsis after catharsis in the shadow of Mt. Everest, a mountain Vasquez-Lavado often refers to in motherly terms.
“The first view of Everest had set something unstoppable in motion for me,” Vasquez-Lavado writes in the book, recalling the first time she set eyes on the mountain in 2005.
Vasquez-Lavado says an impetus for writing the book was to inspire young people to take care of their mental health and show how adventuring out into nature can begin to provide that healing.
The author tells PEOPLE she’s hoping to act as a “messenger of the mountain,” in that sense.
“Mountains don’t discriminate,” Vasquez-Lavado says. “They are just open, and it’s so powerful. You can just have this incredible connection and awe, and that is a feeling that will just only enlighten your life.”
Last year, Vasquez-Lavado’s moving memoir was greenlit for a movie, starring Gomez. The author says it’s “an amazing dream,” calling Gomez a “trailblazer” in her own right.
Gomez volleys her admiration right back on the back cover of her memoir, calling Vasquez-Gomez a “warrior” who “rose from the darkest moments of her life to become an inspiration and advocate for others.”
“I keep joking, I’m ready to pitch a tent in her house,” the author says with a laugh, showing how eager she is to begin working with Gomez on her book’s big screen adaptation.
In the meantime, Vasquez-Lavado tells PEOPLE she’s focused on expanding her San Francisco-based nonprofitCourageous Girls, which works on “healing and empowering survivors of violence and abuse through adventures in nature.”
One of the organization’s flagship programs includes guiding a group of survivors on a hike to the base of Mt. Everest, similar to the one Vasquez-Lavado recounts in her memoir.
“Revisiting a lot of this was challenging,” she says. “But I am proud of it.”
source: people.com
