When Steph Jagger’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 2015, Steph decided to take her mom on one more adventure — a two week camping and road trip through three national parks.
Steph Jagger’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 2015. Despite their complicated relationship, Steph decided to take her mom on one more adventure — a two week camping and road trip through three national parks. In a time when she needed comfort, confirmation of her own identity, and strength to confront her mother’s decline, Steph turned to Mother Nature. Her new book, Everything Left to Remember, documents the women’s trip and beautifully captures Steph’s reflections on childhood, motherhood, and losing the woman who guided her through life.
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Steph Jagger:
I was petrified of, who will I be if I don't have my mother holding a mirror up to cast my identity back to me? My mother, her presence is and will still be a really big part of my life, but there's really no other mother that's bigger than her outside of Mother Nature.
Shelby Stanger:
Steph Jagger's mother Sheila was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2015. Like many of us, Steph's relationship with her mom is complicated. Watching Sheila's personality and memory disappear only added to the complexity. As an author and coach, Steph is skilled at going deeper and examining her own identity. When she realized that she would be slowly losing the woman who showed her who she is, she decided to turn to another maternal figure for guidance and comfort: Mother Nature. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Shelby Stanger:
Steph Jagger was my first ever guest on this podcast back in 2016. She's the queen of turning her wild ideas into a reality. In 2010 she left her home and career behind and went on an incredible journey around the world. She followed winter through five continents and she set a world record by skiing up more than 4 million vertical feet in a single year. It's the equivalent of going down Mount Everest from summit to sea level over 130 times. A lot has happened since that trip around the world. Steph married the wonderful Chris Rutgers, the guy who founded Outdoor Outreach. She wrote a book about her ski expedition called Unbound, and she became a life coach. But in 2015 Step's family was rocked by her mom's Alzheimer's diagnosis. Her new book, Everything Left to Remember revisits Steph's deep connection to nature and explores the two week camping and road trip she went on with her mom. Steph Jagger, welcome back to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Steph Jagger:
Shelby, I'm so happy to be here. Episode one to today. I love it.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, so you were guest number one in 2016.
Steph Jagger:
It is a really long time ago.
Shelby Stanger:
So much has changed.
Steph Jagger:
Yes. So much has changed and also so much hasn't. Here you are, here I am. We're still living wild ideas. We're still having deep, amazing conversations. We're still using the outdoors to transform and integrate and digest our lives. And it's just a bit of a different phase with a few more wrinkles.
Shelby Stanger:
What made you write this book?
Steph Jagger:
My mom was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in 2015. And about a year after that I got an intuitive hit that I should go on a trip with her. There was really not a lot of time. When someone gets a diagnosis like that, there's not a lot of time that you feel you have left to... Not to be extractive, but to kind of mine their wisdom and pack it up and bundle it up and take it with you. And I really felt like there was an opportunity that presented itself time-wise. My first book was yet to come out. And I thought, "Before that goes and I get busy and the career takes off, let me take this moment with my mother and really see if I can know her on a level that I didn't feel I had as I moved through my teens and early 20s and early 30s."
Shelby Stanger:
So wait, the first book hadn't even come out?
Steph Jagger:
No. I went on the trip with her in 2016 and Unbound came out in 2017.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. I didn't realize that.
Steph Jagger:
Yeah, so the trip itself was just that. It was similar but very different to Unbound. Similar in that I went on the journey not knowing I was going to write about it, different in that they were wildly different pursuits. One was really... Unbound was my maiden voyage, literally a in-archetypal maiden trying to understand, as an individual, what my source of empowerment was in the world and how I was going to use my mentality and my physicality and my energy to understand who I was as an individual. This journey with my mother was really much, much more about how I was going to begin to step into using nature, using the outdoors. How I was going to step into more of the mother archetype, which quintessentially the question there is not, where is my power and individualization? But, what will I allow to be created through me? And I thought, "I have to learn this from her before she goes."
Shelby Stanger:
Now, when you first got the diagnosis of your mom having Alzheimer's, what did you do? What did you think? How did you react?
Steph Jagger:
Well, the actual announcement of the diagnosis was not as impactful to me maybe as people might think that it would be, mostly, Shelby, because I knew. This is not a surprise party kind of disease. This is a slow loss of very small things, little things at a time. For somebody living with a person every day, it actually might not even be noticeable. But because I was... She was in Vancouver, I was living in San Diego and coming back every handful of months. And because of that going away and coming back, I was noticing things I think that my family who was living so close to my mother just weren't able to.
Steph Jagger:
And so by the time she got diagnosed I was a year and a half into conversations, difficult conversations, primarily with my dad saying, "There's something going on." So the diagnosis actually, to me... I don't know if relief is the right word. Confirmation probably was the right word with that. But the more worrisome stuff was before that. Like, "What is going on? Why is no one paying attention? Does nobody else see this? Am I going crazy?" So the diagnosis itself wasn't the most difficult part of this. I think the most difficult part is when we collectively see things that we don't want to.
Shelby Stanger:
After her mother's diagnosis, Steph's family had to grapple with the journey ahead of them. Luckily Sheila was diagnosed early on in her disease's progression so there were still time to do a little adventuring. Steph and her mom flew to Montana where they hiked, rode horses, and camped in Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks.
Shelby Stanger:
So you go camping with your mom. And the first thing that comes to mind, when I tell anybody your book about going on this beautiful camping trip with your mother who got diagnosed with Alzheimer's, anybody who's had a family member with Alzheimer's is like, "Huh, how do you do that?" There's also a lot of different forms of Alzheimer's. So Johnny's reading your book and he's like, "My mom could not have done what Steph's mom did, even a diagnosis that early on. She had a different form of it." Your mom, it seems like at least in the beginning she didn't wander off completely.
Steph Jagger:
Yeah, that started... This was quite early on in her diagnosis. And so there's a section in the book that I write about where I'm encouraging her to go use the bathroom facilities that are not too far from where we were camping. And that nervousness I could feel in her of like, "Ooh, you're not going to come with me? Am I going to make sure I could get back?" But I was in eyesight. The sight line to the bathroom was there. A year later there's no way I would've done that. So it was a very unique period of time within her diagnosis and within her progression that, number one, she wasn't going to wander. We were glued together the whole trip. There was really no place for her to wander. I would've heard a tent zipper opening or those types of things. And number two, her physicality was phenomenal and always had been. She was a really, really active, fit outdoors woman.
Shelby Stanger:
It's just so amazing. One, as adults, we don't take... Always, not all of us. You get to a certain age, you don't always take a trip with just your mom like that.
Steph Jagger:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
I read this thing, Jesse Itzler was a guest and he broke everything down in numbers. And he was like, "Listen, if you see your parents twice a year and the average age a parent can live, and let's say 90, and they're 70, and you see them twice a year, you've got like..." Am I doing my math right? 40 times left to see them. I don't know. He broke it down and I was like, "Oh my God, I have like 10 times left to see my mother." And I booked a trip with her to Hawaii. And we did everything together, and it was so weird and so fun. But camping is a whole other thing than staying in a hotel, Steph, so I'm pretty blown away that you took your mom camping in the outdoors.
Shelby Stanger:
So if you read her book, they go horseback riding. And I'm not going to give tons away, but they go horseback riding, they go whitewater rafting. And they do these things that you wouldn't think that you would take someone who just got diagnosed with Alzheimer's on, although I don't know a lot about Alzheimer's, and we're still learning a lot about it.
Steph Jagger:
That's right.
Shelby Stanger:
And every case is a little bit different, I'm guessing. And some are similar.
Steph Jagger:
Absolutely. There's another component. There's a lot that happens within different forms of dementia, and Alzheimer's included, that have personality shifts where a lot of frustration and anger can show up. That hasn't been my mother's experience. And that certainly wasn't... There's little bits of time occasionally where frustration showed up. But that was also a really key component of this, is I knew... And this is also about knowing the person with the diagnosis. I knew if she was on a whole horse being guided, given instructions, checked in with on occasion, there wasn't going to be a panic or a frustration or an outburst of anger that sometimes shows up with a further progression or with different forms of Alzheimer's or dementia, or with different people who have Alzheimer's and dementia. And so a lot of it came down to knowing her very well and knowing me and what I felt I was capable of providing.
Steph Jagger:
And there is another portion in the book I remember with the whitewater rafting. I remember calling the place and saying, "What's the easiest water? What's basically a glide down the river? Because if she goes out of the boat..." I don't know, that was a worrisome thing for me. And everybody involved was really wonderful. "This is the easiest one. This is how we're going to deal with the fact that she will not remember the safety instructions." Everyone was extraordinarily helpful as we went through this, so there was a lot of it that really had to do with knowing her, the stage in her progression, her physicality, her really strong physical body going into this. And also, so much of the book, Shelby, becomes down to my mom was a person who showed their love demonstratively.
Steph Jagger:
She was a very physical person. She didn't want to spend a lot of time talking about emotions, and so I knew we had to be doing things. I knew it was uncomfortable for her to just be sitting and talking, and so we had to be going hiking. We had to be going horseback riding. There had to be activities for us to do. That's kind of her love language. And so that was a really big doorway in for me as well as a place where she could experience some joy.
Shelby Stanger:
Instead of feeling frustrated or sad, Steph tried to go with the flow and meet her mom where she was in that moment. In the book, Steph writes about the first time Sheila didn't recognize her. Rather than try to make her mom remember, Steph joined her in this new reality. That shift in mindset made for a much more pleasant experience for the two of them. When we come back, Steph talks about using humor when things got difficult, why it was so important to take her mom out in nature, and what Sheila thought of Steph writing a book about their trip.
Shelby Stanger:
While the mother daughter road trip was full of quality time spent in nature, there were also days when Steph got annoyed with her mom. But it was important to put that aside and recognize that with Alzheimer's disease her mother would never remember as much as she did right then. Steph wanted to seize the moment. She tried to make the best of their time together and let herself laugh about some of the little things her mom did. Another thing I thought was really interesting is how you use humor to deal with something that's challenging. You talk about how your mom ordered a margarita and then forgets that she already drank a whole margarita and gets another one. And I was like, "That's really cool that you can just laugh about that."
Steph Jagger:
Yeah. Listen, laughter is holy.
Shelby Stanger:
It is.
Steph Jagger:
When you're sitting in fear and when you're sitting in ego and when you're sitting in... Ego is dead serious, and fear is very serious. And so whenever I can introduce some levity, that's going to bring me to a place where I can add in curiosity, where I can start to get playful with something, where I can learn more about somebody and their experience. So that's a really important component for me. Any of these longterm degenerative diseases are just excruciating. They're just a horrific experience for the person going through it and for all of the different family members and friends involved. And I don't know how you do that kind of endurance event without moments, glimmers of hilarity.
Steph Jagger:
There's stories that my dad and I and my siblings have about my mom and what's happened that at first glance you could look at and go, "That's really sad." And then at second glance you can go, "But she was talking to the stuffed animal like it was a living child." It's so sweet, it's hard not to laugh. So I think that's been a really important component of how to survive through these, again, any disease, especially those longterm degenerative diseases.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, the levity part is important. Johnny, when I met his mother she had Alzheimer's. And I was like, "What if she doesn't like me?" And he's like, "It's okay. She won't remember." And I was like, "Thanks. Thanks Johnny." It's a hard disease. But what I thought was so interesting in your book, there's lots of studies about people with Alzheimer's who, when they listen to songs, they can kind of remember. Especially if it was a song they listened to in high school and something that really made an impact on them. But also these nature moments, they're just visceral. And it can make someone remember, almost, because it's just so beautiful and magical.
Shelby Stanger:
What sort of role did nature play in your journey together? And how was it having this incredibly deep experience with your mom in this really wild, unfortunate but pretty pivotal part in both of your lives in this backdrop of camping under the stars? And of course you're in Montana, so you're in like the biggest yeah nature you can possibly be in.
Steph Jagger:
Yeah, it was phenomenal. I think there's two ways that nature really played a role. The first is, specifically with Alzheimer's and dementia and different brain-focused diseases, there's a loss of cognitive ability. And so there's a loss of cognitive ability to communicate, and intellectualization, an ability to maybe to have a conversation or talk rationally about something or logically about something. And so to me, what that really leaves us with is the facility of our body instead of our mind. And how do we communicate with our bodies? We use our senses. So to surround ourselves, to surround our bodies and our senses with the smell of pine trees, with the look of those huge mountains in front of us, with the sound of gravel underneath our feet as we walk on a trail. It helps us to ground into our bodies and just let our bodies have a conversation with one another because our brains can't, or couldn't at that point.
Steph Jagger:
And so that allowed me to sink into, you know what? As a person who really likes to talk and really likes to have a conversation, just to follow into an embodiment and hold my mother's hand as we walked along the trail. I felt like we were having a deeper conversation that way maybe than we ever had. And really nature set the path for that, set the example for that. The second part that I would say was really important for me... And this is more of a existential yearning inside of me. And maybe yearning isn't the right word. It was really more of a... I was petrified of, who will I be? Who am I if I don't have my mother holding a mirror up to cast my identity back to me?
Steph Jagger:
That's a consistent... Our mothers, whether we look like them or not, are our first mirror of how we understand our own identity in the world. And Shelby, my experiences in nature, my ability in the first book, in Unbound, to go to nature as a source of wisdom, it just became obvious to me. Like, of course it's going to be nature. My mother, her presence is and will still be a really big part of my life but there's really no other mother that's bigger than her outside of Mother Nature. And so the idea of, who will cast my identity back to me? Who will hold me? Who will provide nurturing and grounding? That's Mother Nature.
Shelby Stanger:
I tend to turn to nature when I need comfort. Being outside helps us process. It reminds us of what's important, and it shows us who we are, the same way our moms do. Years after the trip, Steph decided to write a book about their time together on the road. You were able to share with your mother that you've been writing about it. And she was able to share with you that she wanted you to. Is that right in some ways?
Steph Jagger:
Yeah, ish, in some ways. We went on the journey together. A while after that the quote, unquote knock on the door, "You should write a book about this," arrived. I was nervous about that but it was clear. And okay, I'm going to say yes to that. And so I went and visited her. She was further along by that point in her progression. And we were out for a walk and I said, "Mom, what do you think about me writing a book about you, about us?" And she kind of paused and was like, "About me? Why would you do that? There's nothing special or unique." And I said, "Yeah, about you and me." And she paused again. And she looked at me very concerned. And she said, "Would I have to write any of it?" And I was like, "No, not at all. You wouldn't have to come up with a word." And then I just watched her body just, whew. Relax. And she said, "Okay, you write it. I'll walk it." And that moment was of a lot of lucidity, that, "You write it, I'll walk it." I can still feel it. It gives me shivers in my body.
Shelby Stanger:
Have you been able to share the book a little bit with your mom?
Steph Jagger:
Yes and no. No from a, I wouldn't be able to read her anything and get any sort of cognitive of reflection back or digestion of. That's beyond where she is in her progression. My dad sent me... So my mom's in Vancouver, Canada. I've been able to visit her only once, actually, during the pandemic because of border restrictions and restrictions in her care facility, which I have a lot of respect for. And so my dad sent me a video. So I sent him a very early copy of the book. He took it in to her and took a video of her just holding the book. And she wouldn't let it go. He went to go take it back and she was like, "No, this is mine." And so that was really touching. Something inside of her knew, I think, what this was.
Shelby Stanger:
That's really beautiful.
Steph Jagger:
Yeah, it was really cool. Really cool video.
Shelby Stanger:
What's the feedback been so far? Right now it's February while we're recording, so not a ton of people have gotten to read it yet.
Steph Jagger:
Yeah. Gosh, I get covered in shivers and it's just been really, really wonderful. I think the feedback thus far has been probably twofold. One, really, really centering on the mother daughter. I originally thought, is this book going to land outside of the Alzheimer's community? And I think the answer is a resounding yes. This is a really big exploration of mother daughter. And the feedback within that sounds something like, "I've got to phone my mom," or, "This has given me hope. We're all going to be okay." And especially in a time where we all don't feel like we're going to be okay. What is even the state of the world? What is the state of the natural world? To have something that provides a bit of a cushion to be like, "We're all going to be okay." That has been the main feedback, and that's been the most meaningful.
Steph Jagger:
And I think, Shelby, some of that is I'll take credit of, great, I wrote a book and channeled some good stuff and put myself in situations where I was able to write some things well. There is also, inside of this book, so much of my mother's energy. And so in a time when I think we all could use some really big mother energy, I think that's been the biggest piece of feedback, is that that's coming through in this book. And I'll give credit it to my mom for that.
Shelby Stanger:
Listening to Steph makes me want to go hug my mom. Our mothers are the first people we ever meet. That relationship can be sacred but it can also be fraught with challenges and pain. I can only imagine that Steph's grief around her mother's journey with Alzheimer's has been really tough. Sometimes going after our wild ideas means taking the hardest parts of our lives and getting really close to them, examining them, and then using them to create something new.
Shelby Stanger:
I really wanted to ask you about advice on living wildly. I think the first time I talked to you you said starting lines are the most important. They're the hardest. You have to get to the starting lines. And recently I asked you about finish lines. A lot of times when we finish something grand, there's this release. There's this physical exhaustion that just happens. But then there's this mental exhaustion. And sometimes that can lead to sort of like a depression. So I guess my question for you is, what would older, wiser Steph say now about not only how to live wildly, but how to approach the starting line and then the finish?
Steph Jagger:
Yeah. The older, wiser version of me would have a handful of things to say. Number one, inside of the peak experience, especially if it's endurance-based, if you're training for the Olympics, if you're writing a long book, if you're going on a year skiing trip around the world, et cetera, are there moments inside of that peak experience where you can begin to discern if something is beginning to feel extractive? That's a line that I am looking for now. Before, the younger self of me would be like, "I can extract as much as I want from myself and be an empty tank tomorrow, and probably the next day and probably the next day and probably the next day." And that would lead to a crash for me. And so now I'm looking at that line of, would saying yes to this or no to this, or setting boundaries in this way...
Steph Jagger:
Where's that line of where I can continue to give with as much of my energy and wholeheartedness as I can, and where is that line of where it becomes to feel extractive for me? So that would a bit of advice about during a period of long haul effort, I'll say. The other advice that I would give is to really pay deep, deep attention to the cyclicality. I think in the society that we live in, we're just expected to produce and consume, both, at a certain level consistently 24/7, 365 days a year. That is not the way any of the natural world works. It is not the way we work. And so how do I allow myself to find my own cycles and rhythms daily, monthly, yearly, much longer term? Is it okay that I know myself well enough to know that... I'm making something up. 2:00 to 3:00 PM is like kind of sleepy time for me.
Steph Jagger:
And will I allow myself to have kind of a chill hour at that time? And that's okay. And not push through and move to extraction, et cetera. That's a daily example. Outside of that, from a creative standpoint, my experience has been that it is not realistic that I'm going to be writing 2,500 words a day every day of the year. No. I haven't written written in six months. I'm okay with that. I'm not in some scarcity mode that it's gone and it'll never come back. I know it's cyclical. I watch the moon. I watch the sun. These things go away and come back. This is exactly how nature works. So that's a big piece of wisdom that I tune into now, is, where can I begin to know myself, know my cycles, know my rhythms of creativity, of productivity? And will I allow them to actually move in cycles instead of creating a static, unmoving line of, "You must produce and consume this much every day, every hour in the same way." It's just not how we were built.
Steph Jagger:
And I think this is... One of the biggest archetypal initiations is the initiation that is known as life, death, life. Big circle. And our society tends to look at the death part and go, "I would like to avoid that. I'd like to avoid the grief and the loss and the horrific mix of emotions that comes with that part of the initiation." And what that ends up doing is it suspends an initiation. And we think by pushing off death we just keep life. We just keep living more life. "If I don't look at that, there's more life. If I don't look at that there's more life." And it's just suspends the initiation. And what it is is it's a living death. It flips it upside down. And that's a pretty intense way of saying that, but it would be like saying to autumn and winter, "You are not allowed. You are not allowed."
Steph Jagger:
And to be quite frank, everything would end up dying, and it would be so overwhelming. So overwhelming to just have spring summer, spring, summer, spring, summer, and then just nothing. So I think that's a really, really important reason why nature is, again, such a model. It really is the model of our master cycle of a life, death, life.
Shelby Stanger:
Nature has so much to teach us about life, like the rhythms of productivity and rest and the realities of life and death. Steph's trip with her mother taught her not only about embracing her mother's new identity, but also about embracing her own.
Shelby Stanger:
Steph Jagger, thank you so much for having this beautiful conversation with me. Steph's book is out today, April 26th, so go get it wherever you buy books. It's really a touching read and it's beautifully written. It's one I think anyone who is a mother or daughter or who knows someone living with Alzheimer's will love. You can follow Steph's latest work on her website at stephjagger.com. That's S-T-E-P-H-J-A-G-G-E-R.com. You can also follow her on Instagram, @StephJagger,
Shelby Stanger:
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler and Sylvia Thomas of Puddle Creative, and our senior producer is Chelsea Davis. Fun fact, Annie Fassler has an awesome little kid. Sylvia is busy doing capoeira in Brazil right now, and Chelsea Davis just got a really awesome tattoo. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we appreciate when you follow this show, rate it, and review it wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.