“This whirring carousel of images accompanied the start of the very last hour of my 45-year voyage through life. Its final phase, which commenced on the third of December, 2014, at nine minutes before noon, would be spent suspended in midair in a wicker basket dangling in the shadow of an enormous 40-meter-tall balloon, now rising silently but steadily toward the stratosphere. 

I knew this moment would be critically important for the future I’d envisioned for myself.” 

I have found that shedding my ego is easier now that I have become a skydiver. There is so much fear in this sport, especially at first. The cool thing about this is that every time I jump, I train my mind to compartmentalize fear. 

One afternoon in the fall of 1988, I quit my job as head of marketing for a bank and broke up my marriage of 10 years … all within a 30-minute span. Not long after that, I took up skydiving.

I hit 50 alone and depressed. My life was not what I expected or wanted. There were some big issues, and I realized I needed to step outside my comfort zone. As someone who always wanted a foot on the ground and needed to know where the next foot went, I thought a skydive might shake up my world. And it certainly did!

“What on Earth—or in the sky—was I doing?” I asked, staring at RwandAir’s confirmation email for my flight to the Kenyan coast to begin AFF. Instead of the excitement that accompanies a trip to white-sand beaches and warm waters, I felt trepidation. Fear.