Sequoia Schmidt has seen an awful lot in her 32 years. The Kiwi-born entrepreneur, adventurer, author and leader gets real with us about grief (something she tragically has a lot of experience in), resilience, fear and the importance of taking risks. In our story series ‘How Are You Today?’, we have a meandering, mental-health focused chat with some of our most well-known New Zealanders. Check out previous chats with people like Hayley Holt, Kiri Allan and Jacinda Ardern.
When Sequoia Schmidt was 22 she got one of those phone calls – the kind of ones that are reserved for only your darkest nightmares. Her father, acclaimed climber and guide Marty Schmidt and her brother Denali, a gifted artist, skier and mountaineer, had been hit by an avalanche on K2 – one of the most notorious mountains in the world.
Sequoia’s grief was immense, only compounded by the fact that the bodies of her father and 24-year-old brother were never found. There was no closure, no grave to visit. Two years later, when she found that some bodies had been spotted on K2, she decided to immediately make her way to see for herself. It was a perilous mission – one she made with no preparation, in fact, she was a smoker. But Sequoia was determined, if not for her own family, to put her loved ones to rest, than to bring closure to another family and give their deceased love ones a final resting place and some dignity.
While the burial she held ended up being for other families’ loved ones and she did not find her own family, she did still find herself closer to her brother, and in particular, her father. Braving the elements unlocked something in Sequoia and set her on a different path of adventure and exploration. She chronicled that journey in her first book – the widely acclaimed Journey of Heart: A Sojourn to K2 (it really is a must read) and now, in her latest book out this August, Dream of Flight, she tells of how she has dealt with the grief and trauma in her life through adventure – in particular, a passion for base jumping.
Because sadly, despite the fact that Sequoia is only 32, she has had more trauma and tragedy in her life – a few years ago her husband was diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive brain tumour.
Here, in this How Are You Today? piece, she talks to Alice Hampson about grief, trauma, risk-taking, resilience, healing and the very odd architecture of the universe…
How are you today, Sequoia?
Oh, that’s a great question. Like, lately I’ve just been busy with media interviews and I haven’t stopped for a second to think about how I’m doing… but.. ok, today’s a good day. I feel strong today and I feel centered. I feel good!
Fantastic! Ok, I know we need to talk about your new book, but I want to go back a bit further in time first. I’ve actually just been listening to the audiobook of your first title, Journey of Heart: A Sojourn to K2. It’s such an incredible book, but it’s also such a joy to listen to because of your voice. It’s beautiful. Your voice really tells the tale of the nomadic upbringing you had – which, I think involved living in four different countries and 15 different cities by the time you were 14. Besides this fabulous accent, what affect do you think all that moving and change at an early age had on you?
Apart from the accent?! Um, yeah, it’s interesting. There’s like an actual definition for it now – it’s called the Third Culture kid. There’s a Facebook group called Third Culture kids and it’s a legit thing when you’re raised in multiple different cultures.
It’s interesting because when I’m back in New Zealand, I think about my childhood, the most prominent memories that I have in my childhood are in Hawke’s Bay. I was born in Napier and grew up in Hawke’s Bay and so when I think of what feels like home to me, it’s here, it’s Aotearoa. But I think that there’s a lot of really strong benefits that come with being raised in multiple different environments. One of them is adaptability, for example, like I think that that comes in handy a lot later in life – it has for me anyway, being able to adapt with multiple different people in multiple different situations and I think that’s a necessary important thing to human growth.
I imagine it also taught you a lot about resilience, which you’ve also needed to practice a fair bit in your lifetime already.
Absolutely. Anytime you go through something incredibly challenging you come out the other end of it stronger. But, you have to be careful in navigating it too – watching for when that strength becomes a barrier against the rest of the world, versus when you know how to use it as armour. That’s something I still struggle with and I’m still trying to navigate, but I do feel like it’s a case of, once you know how strong you can be in getting through a situation, it helps in every other aspect of your life.
That sounds like an interesting balance to try and keep. Ok, for those of our readers who aren’t too familiar with your story, I just want to go back in time a bit and talk about what has happened in your past. Your first book talks to this incredible tragedy that happened to you and your family when your brother and father were taken by K2, when you were 22. You ended up going to the Base Camp of K2, just two years later, really all because you witnessed something very shocking. A Swiss climber, Mike Horn, posted footage from K2 on Facebook that included video of people who had deceased. There were some harrowing images of a dismembered body, and you thought, when you saw the head, that it may be your brother. It was a despicable thing to do – but it spurred you into taking your journey. What do you make of his actions now? I noticed you thanked him in the book at the end for sending you on that expedition.
Yeah, I mean, I think that it’s interesting you brought up the me thanking him, because I think that that was more symbolic than anything. I could care less about that individual to be honest, I have no relationship with them whatsoever. I probably never will.
It was the catalyst for me going and taking a journey that ended up changing my entire life and my entire view on the world and so I thanked him and the situation as a whole for doing that.
My relationship with that particular journey that I took, well, it’s morphed and changed over time. The one thing that it did was send me kind of on this trajectory of exploration: nature, adventure, navigating emotions…
Growing up, because I predominantly grew up with just the two of them – my Dad and my brother, and my dad was one of the best climbers in the world and my brother was insanely gifted and talented as a skier and as a climber in many aspects. And I always felt a tiny bit out of that world.
I separated myself from that world for many years but then after taking that journey into K2, I realized that part of my upbringing was part of who I am – that exploration, that adventure, and I opened the door to go into that world again, but I did so in a way now as an adult and in taking the things that I really value in my life. One of the those things is storytelling – so now, I’m not going as my father’s daughter, I’m not going as my brother’s sister. I’m going as an individual who wants to get to know these things, who isn’t claiming to be an expert who isn’t, you know, doing the hardest mountains in the world and hardest base jumps in the world, just navigating what it is to be in that world and writing about it, because that’s what I really enjoy – telling the stories of those journeys.
I think it’s incredible, hearing about the challenges, journeys and adventures you’ve thrown yourself into – whether that’s climbing or your passion for base jumping. It’s particularly incredible given your background – I mean, many people in your situation, who experienced a tragedy like you did, could easily become quite risk adverse, whereas you have really leaned into it. What is it about taking risks that you feel is so important to keep doing?
I mean, I think the most soul growth and the best adventures in life happen outside of your comfort zone. I say that quite a bit because, well, what’s the purpose of being on this earth if we just live in a bubble that we’re comfortable within? What’s the point of human life if you’re just doing the same old thing every single day and not scaring yourself, not becoming stronger, not developing?
As a soul, like, I feel like that’s the whole reason we’re on this earth. So, I agree with you, I think that a lot of people who go through horrific, tragic situations tend to go back into their cocoon and crave that sense of security and sense of stability even more so. But perhaps it’s my upbringing – the eternal conversation of nature versus nurture – but I definitely feel like it’s healthier to explore what we do not know, because life is going to be full of so many unknowns. To prepare ourselves for those unknowns, think it’s good to put ourselves in situations that scare us.
There has been plenty that life has thrown at you to scare you though too. You shared on your Instagram last year that it was the 10th anniversary of the death of your father and brother, and, it was on that very same day that your husband was taken in for a very serious operation – one that would take two days to try to remove a very complex, rare tumour – a paraganglioma at the base of his skull. The odds of everything lining up to have it on scheduled for that very day is more than uncanny… how did it feel?
There’s a whole chapter in this book about that too, that yes, it was 27th of July. As well as being the 10 year anniversary of their deaths, it also the exact day that I had met my husband, four years earlier. I met him six years after they died on the exact day that they died.
I think I’m like, there’s must be, like, something else going on. To say that that’s pure coincidence is just too bizarre, like I don’t believe that.
Absolutely, it seems statistically impossible that those things could all happen on the same day.
Exactly. So, yeah that makes me really, really question like the architecture of the universe and the architecture of our lifetimes, and this spiritual element that is associated with navigating life. And that’s something I’m working on in my next book is like that deep delve into the purpose of life.
Did it all happening on the same day feel like a good omen or something – like a sign that it was going to be okay?
I struggled with that. I went back and forth quite a bit. I think in my chapter, what I said was, whoever up there is the designer of all of this, God or whatever you want to call it, whoever up there is deciding all of this, they couldn’t be so cruel as to take my husband on the exact same day. So I’m going to take it as a good sign.
Surely. And, I already feel excited for your next book. Can you tell me more about that side of things in your life, because you do all these wild things like base jumping, but then you also run a not-for-profit to honour your brother, as well as a publishing company that you started when you were like 16 or something outrageous. How did that happen?
I just kind of fell into it. Someone asked me yesterday if it was premeditated, but I was like, no – think about yourself at 16, this was not planned whatsoever! I truly fell into it. All I knew was that I didn’t want to work for anyone else. That’s all I knew, and that I wanted to be a creative of some kind. It originally started as a magazine, and then it developed from there into a publishing firm. Yeah, and now it’s been going for 16 years.
Okay, that is truly incredible. Congratulations.
Thank you, I mean, I would say that’s one thing I would say is like, I don’t feel like entrepreneurs get enough credit in life. I get way more credit for jumping off a cliff, which to be honest, isn’t that hard to do, than I do for running a company for 16 years.
You’ll know this – entrepreneurship and running a small business is a grind. Like, you have to have more strength and more perseverance and more balance and more determination than 99% of the planet or you will not survive as a company. I feel like true entrepreneurs, not “Instagram” entrepreneurs, but like true entrepreneurs understand that it is a very, very rare set of skills that you have to have over time to be able to keep a small business running, and that’s where I feel like that that sector of society needs more credit for what they’re doing.
Oh man, running a business is hard. Running a media company is hard. We’re four years in and have seen some amazing highs – as well as some pretty low lows.
Oh, it’s really challenging. I take my hat off to you guys. I went through years of that in my early 20s. And I was in the States and was thrown so many lawsuits – like, I have been almost bankrupt five times. I had to lay off employees, because I could not afford to pay them. It’s a nasty business at times. It took so much dedication and time, and I’m sixteen years in and I have now, you know, I have a great team and it’s a stable business, but it took me years and years to get to that point.
Thanks so much for your time today, Sequoia. To finish up, can I ask you, what are the biggest lessons perhaps you’ve learned about grief?
It’s a great question. You know, I always say that grieving is an ongoing process. It’s not something that ends very quickly – it takes a lifetime to navigate. It’s nearly 11 years and I’m still navigating how to deal with waves of grief and emotion. But I would say that a really important lesson that I personally have learned over the last 11 years now is, human beings, we’re really strong and we’re really resilient. The necessity to trust in our own inner strength is really, really important. I think that shit doesn’t get piled on you in life unless there’s a reason for it.
