Katty...Climber of Many Mountains

Last weekend I had the privilege of meeting an amazing young woman...Katty Guzman. This lovely, soft-spoken woman is from Columbia, South America. Although Spanish is her first language, and English is mine, we struggled through some lengthy conversations. Katty shared...quite modestly, I must add...that she was traveling to several locations in the U.S. to climb the mountains and that she had recently climbed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
Now I had visited this park many years ago and remembered watching climbers on the sheer rock face. (I also remembered during our stay in the park, a climber had fallen to his death!) I was quite impressed that this little woman had made it to the top...not once, but 10 times! What a feat!

Katty and I were attending the SwissJust national conference in Atlanta...a wonderful affair with true international flavor. Throughout most of the conference, we ladies (and men) took turns wearing translators so we could understand the speakers. Half of the conference was in Spanish and half was in English! We also were trained on some of the aromatherapy and hydrotherapy products we carry. It was quite amazing. Katty was chosen to be the test model for a couple of our therapies...facial and feet. She was so excited to treat her wind-burned and sun-damaged skin with the essential oil products. And we saw such a difference in her skin...(Notice the healthy color on the right foot...the one on your left. That was after soaking in Pedibath for only a few minutes!)

As the afternoon sessions moved forward, the featured speaker was called up to the stage. It was Katty! With clicker in hand, Katty began to tell us of her journey over the past few years...a journey that began with Katty telling her mother that college was not for her at this time. She felt that she had to CLIMB MOUNTAINS! In her powerpoint presentation, we saw Katty training with other men and women. And we watched her journey spread throughout the world...through Europe...through India...then Nepal...and then to Mt. Everest! This young lady took us through her journey of self-doubt and of determination...all the way to the summit of Mt. Everest!!! Katty was the first Columbian woman to reach the summit!!! (And I was impressed that she had climbed El Capitan!) The gist of her speech was that everyone has a dream. Some dreams are easy to achieve. Others are quite difficult. On the path to reach that dream, there will be self-doubt and naysayers who tell you that YOU cannot achieve...detours and delays because of "weather". But no matter what, we need to keep our focus on that dream...and persevere until we achieve our goals.

For Katty, her dream was to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. For me, it's to have a place on the beach. No matter how big or how small our dreams are...we MUST avoid those who tell us that we cannot reach it (especially those little voices of self-doubt we hear in our heads)...find those who encourage us...and we must never stop until we have realized our dreams.

Katty reached her goal...and I will, too!!!

*My apologies for misspelling Katty's name in the original post.