The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E13: Silvia Climbs to the Top of the World

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Novel. Hey, girlfriends. This episode includes mentions of child sexual abuse, addiction, and trauma. And it includes some strong language. We don't want that to be a surprise. We're also going to be talking about the use of ayahuasca, which contains DMT, which is illegal in most cases in the USA and several other countries. But there's plenty of wonderful stories on our feed if you'd rather skip this one. So I go deep into the plant, and out of nowhere, I see the image of a little girl in a corner crying. Sylvia is in a large, airy room lit by a hundred candles. She's sitting on a white plastic chair with a blanket, taking part in an ayahuasca ceremony for the first time. And up to this point in my life, the one thing that I did is that I never looked back to my childhood. I always was so hell-bent to even wanted to forget it. As the psychoactive drink takes effect, Sylvia starts to see a vision. And so I come across this little girl in the corner wearing a turquoise suit. And I'm like, oh my God, somebody has hurt this little girl. Who is it? And I realize it's me. Sylvia stops noticing the people around her. Even the priestess sitting on a royal purple cushion by the altar fades away. Sylvia's entirely focused on this child. And there is this kind of reunion. There is this almost spiritual reunion that is happening inside of me. And then as we are holding each other and I can just grab her hand, I hear this rumbling. and all of a sudden these massive mountains appear out of nowhere you can just hear like and I remember just looking at it being like oh god this is what the hell and my little girl is holding my hand he's like no let's go and we just started walking among mountains Sylvia arrived at the ayahuasca ceremony Desperate to find a way out of her misery And here she is, being shown a path into the mountains The message is clear If she wants to turn her life around She needs to do something extraordinary Sylvia had no idea that healing from her lowest traumas would eventually take her to the highest places on earth. But she doesn't reach those highs alone. She brings along that little girl and so many other women too. I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend Spotlight, where we tell stories of women winning. Today, Sylvia climbs to the top of the world. Sylvia Vasquez-Lavado grew up in Lima, Peru. My childhood, you know, it was complicated. It was very complex. I had to endure sexual abuse as a little girl. And it happened between the ages of six to 10 years old. And, you know, on top of that, we were in the midst of a pretty chaotic civil war in my country. So that added a lot of uncertainty. And the relationship between my parents, my father was very old school, very abusive, very violent. And so there was a lot of physical violence in my home. and I just wanted to be obedient. I wanted to be as angelic as I could. And so when the abuser said, your parents want this, you know, you just obey. Sylvia's abuser was someone her parents trusted. And for years, she kept this awful secret to herself. She was 15 when she finally told her mom. She was heartbroken. This absolutely tore her. Like she literally lost the will to live for about four or five months. And it was really tough. And so ultimately she got up, she got help. She asked if I wanted to get help. And to me, living with that shame was so overwhelming that I'm like, no, no, I'm surviving every day. I don't need help. And actually what she was advising for me to potentially leave the country. Peru in the 90s was going through some serious political turmoil. Lots of people were leaving. And Silvia managed to snag a scholarship to study in the U.S. A fresh start. She headed to the University of Pennsylvania. And arriving in America was a total culture shock. I would never forget getting into New York City. New York was to me like, oh, wow. I mean, just that. I think it put some inspiration in my heart. Sylvia would drive from Pennsylvania to New York to work as a waitress at a relative's restaurant. She was funding her studies, but also supporting her family back in Peru. It was a quintessential immigrant experience. But Sylvia also discovered new parts of her identity. On my last year in college, I realized I was gay, but I also was ashamed about it. Because at the time, being a gay person was still looked at like, you know, some cities were more supportive than others. And my older siblings had moved to San Francisco. So I ended up visiting them and I saw Gay Pride in San Francisco on that first weekend that I landed. And that was it for me. I saw that. I felt, you know, this is everyday carnival. Just the happiness, the embracement. San Francisco became home. Sylvia found her people. She'd come to America and come out. and suddenly life felt like one big celebration. This was also right at the time of the dot-com boom and Sylvia started a career in tech. But as her professional life flourished, her personal demons were growing stronger. I was already having drinking tendencies. I started tasting alcohol when I was a little girl, especially it was very common in family gatherings, in birthdays, have a little pisco sour. And the one taste I always had was also helped me with numbing, like in a way that if I would get nervous when I would see my abuse or anything, just drinking a little bit more and I could feel my brain going like zzzz. I was struggling with my own identity and my family's acceptance. And so that kind of leading a double life. And I think the hangovers started also adding to that hole, that emotional hole. Sylvia developed a serious drinking problem, and things spiraled way out of control. I crashed into a bus that was parked and I ran away with a car, you know, like the fender collapsed. And it still was in like 1 a.m., 2 a.m. And I'm still like dragging the fender of the car and just like driving and not thinking anybody's going to notice until I get caught up and I get sent to jail. Sylvia was convicted of driving under the influence and lost her license. This was a serious wake-up call, but she hadn't yet hit rock bottom. She stopped drinking for about six months before eventually going back to alcohol. Real rock bottom was to be found, passed out at the entrance of my home by my youngest brother. And of course, he called my mother because my family knew I liked drinking, but they had no idea the extent of my drinking. For my mother to find out the depth of my drinking just was possibly the bottom. And I had to admit to her that I needed help. And it always brings me a big smile. I mean, my mother was an amazing conservative woman, very caring. And on that conversation, she just said, you have to come down to Peru. We're going to do ayahuasca. We're going to do ayahuasca. We are going. No, it's not going to do you. We are going to do ayahuasca. And I went like, what? Ayahuasca is a plant-based psychedelic drink that indigenous people in South America have been using in healing ceremonies for centuries. It's famous for taking people on these intense spiritual and hallucinogenic journeys that can completely change how they see themselves and their lives. My vegetarian friend once did it and spent the entire time crying on behalf of battery farm chickens. She said she really saw life through their eyes, which was perhaps not the cosmic introspection that she was looking for. And I'm sure Sylvia's heard similar stories. So she was understandably skeptical, but desperate enough to try anything. So she quit her job, flew back to Peru, and prepared to face whatever this ayahuasca experience might reveal. I took the leap of faith, did the ayahuasca session with my mother and my father, which that itself, who in the world does ayahuasca with their parents? With all of your complicated feelings around how to be open with your parents about kind of who you are, to go into an ayahuasca ceremony which unravels the very innards of you, that's a bold thing. It was, but you don't know any better. And I go into this session just being like, OK, let's see what this plant is going to show me. And so I take the tea and go deep into the plant. And that's when Sylvia had a profound vision. She saw herself as a child. It is that little girl that I kept trying to destroy with all my drinking. And what the plant was showing me is that, no, that I needed to reconnect to that part of me Sylvia embraced her wounded younger self And as we hugged each other I could feel this electricity, almost this completion, like this missing part of my heart was coming together. Sylvia saw huge mountains rise up all around her. The child, her younger self, took her hand and led her up into the foothills. When I get up, I hear my dad completely like snoring next to me. But I will never forget, I was like, oh, that's my dad snoring. But that vision stayed with me. That was possibly the most profound imagery that I had seen in my life. And when she went back to San Francisco, she kept thinking about those mountains. What did they mean? Were they just some metaphor for the emotional journey that she needed to take? or something more literal? Nature never really called anything in me. I was a city person. I was never compelled. Okay, let's go on this big hike. It just never really appealed to me. And I went like, you know what? Why don't we turn this into a reality? Why don't I just go and find a mountain and see, like, what am I going to learn? Like, just to prove it wrong. And so, but when I'm like, okay, what mountain? And I figure what I have connected to is this pain that has paralyzed so much of my life. And it's so deep that it only makes sense to go to the only place that would have the tallest mountain in the world. I figure, well, why don't I go to the base of Mount Everest? Mount Everest. Sylvia booked a trip to Nepal to visit base camp. That's the tallest mountain in the world. So let me bring this mass of pain to the tallest. Okay. So I decided to take myself there without any prior trekking experience. Just, why not? Choosing the tallest mountain is a bold move with no training experience. How did you start to train for it? Please tell me that you trained for it. Well, I cycled a lot. Okay. Different thing, but... A different thing. And I run. To be honest, I didn't train. I remember I went with my girlfriend at the time to a sports store and she's like, what do you need? Like everything. That is how novice I was. But when I started the walk, almost like within the first two hours, just something started shifting. That whole area is quite magical. And so we managed to get to a place called Namche Bazaar on the first day, which usually takes about two to three days when you first start trekking. the next morning we left to what's going to be the real start of the Himalayas. And that is possibly the one moment that my life just, you know, turned into a 180 degree. And I will never forget just this unobstructed view on a gorgeous day with the sun shining. All of a sudden I was ready to kneel down and just completely bow down to just this gift. It was something so profound. Something had opened up. Like all of a sudden, if I had been living on a box, somebody had opened up the lid. And next thing is like, holy wow, the size of these mountains. Just looking at how everything else looked in comparison literally made me see my space in this world. And I went from feeling this human to tiny being an ant. I think that's what the plant wanted me to see. Energized by this feeling, Sylvia pushed forward at an incredible pace. She made it to Everest Base Camp in just four days. For context, that usually takes a week and a half. But from there, she couldn't actually see Mount Everest itself. She needed to climb a nearby peak called Kalapatar to get a clear view. It is amazing what as well, just a small, you know, 500 meter climb can completely just change the landscape and the perspective. So now I had the whole visual of just the mountain, the sun really coming from behind Everest. And it was one of the most magical moments. And at that point, some local Sherpa mentioned to me, oh, by the way, like we call Mount Everest Chomalugma, which means mother of the world. Standing there on Kalapatar, looking at Chomalongma, the mother of the world, Sylvia makes a vow that would shape everything she does next. Like mother of the world, you have changed my life. This is unreal. I just feel like I want to promise to come back one day and attempt to climb. as a way of saying thank you, pay my respects, and this time let me come back prepared, let me come back as a mountaineer, but also let me come back with a social cause as a way to give back. After the break, Sylvia tries to fulfill that promise, but it's not going to be easy. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast Doubt the case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was no voicing of any skepticism or doubt it'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong listen to Doubt the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. when telling stories like this it's easy to get stuck in a trap of wanting everything to happen in a straight line sylvia goes to everest base camp has a transformative emotional experience turns her life around and achieves amazing things. That would be neat, right? But sadly, it's not really how life works. Soon after Sylvia returned from Nepal, her partner, the one she describes as the love of her life, died. It was a lot of grief to process. So when an opportunity came up to move to Switzerland for work, she took it. I'm heartbroken, starting all over again. And I, because of my grief, I kind of forget about the promise of climbing and I get back into my drinking habits. Sylvia's life was busy. She got married, kept climbing the corporate ladder in tech, and occasionally dabbled in mountaineering. She conquered Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Mount Elbrus in Russia. But she still wrestled with alcohol. And then came more heartbreak. My mother gets sick with cancer in Peru. I go back and I end up almost putting my life on hold because of that. She battled for two and a half years and she passed away. And three months later, I get divorced. I was in survival mode and I would drink, but, you know, in a way hidden. And I never really had a chance to deal with grief or deal with even the emotions. Losing her mother, who had always been her anchor, and then watching her marriage fall apart brought Sylvia to another rock bottom. But this time, from the depths of her despair, she remembered something. A vow she had made on the top of the world in the Himalayas. Ah, the mountain. I got to go back to the mountain. And this time I figured, you know, it was my first Christmas that I was going to be without my mom. And I felt, you know, the tallest mountain in the Americas, South America, is called Aconcagua. And I'm like, why don't I go to do Aconcagua? Aconcagua in Argentina, the tallest mountain in the Americas. It's about 7,000 meters high. That's 23,000 feet. and Sylvia set her sights on the summit. I was so angry. I was like this time mad at life. And it's like, you know what? I want to kick the shit out of her. Like I'm like going to go and like just kick the rock and like, yeah, it's going to be me and the rock and like, let's get it on. And so we get up to like the last camp before the summit push at about 22,000 feet and I develop a headache. And it's the very first time in altitude that I am developing altitude sickness. And that evening I have a meltdown in my tent I started crying and just had to surrender to the emotions I had to surrender to just the grief. And so all this pain started coming out of my heart. Despite this emotional and physical breakdown, Sylvia pushed on the next day and was actually the only one in her group to reach the top of Aconcagua. And so when I got to the summit, I was like, wow, I was able to leave a photo of my mom, was able to leave a photo of my partner who had passed away. And as I started coming down on that evening, out of nowhere, in the middle of my dreams, I get a voice, like a very strong assurance that tells me, Sylvia, you have to keep climbing. You made the promise to come back to Everest, stick with it. It's almost like the mother is waiting. And two, bring other survivors of sexual abuse and sex trafficking with you to the base of Everest so they have a chance to experience what you've experienced. Like those two things became so like clear in my head. Back in San Francisco, Sylvia started working to make this vision come to life. She called her organization Courageous Girls. Trying to build it from scratch while holding down her day job in tech wasn't easy. But Sylvia was all in. And so for me, it was very clear that I wanted to bring girls from Nepal and I wanted to bring girls from the US to do this thing. Bringing survivors to the base? Okay. The idea was pretty revolutionary. Bring together two groups to trek Everest. survivors of sex trafficking from Nepal, and survivors of sexual abuse from the United States. Through what Sylvia calls some magical coincidences, she found partners in Nepal pretty quickly. And I will never forget meeting this group of young women from this organization called Shakti Samoha. I ended up connecting with a group of Nepali mountaineers who were like, okay, yeah, we can work with you. We can help train the girls locally. Finding young women from the U.S. to join the expedition? Well, that was a much tougher sell. I mean, think about it. Hey, want to go halfway around the world with a bunch of trauma survivors to climb the highest mountain on Earth? It's not exactly an easy sales pitch. I think we're quite jaded here. And so it took a lot of convincing because we had a lot of trial and errors, especially with American girls who a group will come, then they will get scared and then blah, they'll quit. Then another group will come, they'll get scared and they'll quit. Eventually, she found a small group of American survivors brave enough to take on this challenge. In 2016, it was finally time to make it happen. Sylvia would lead these young women to Everest Base Camp. And afterwards, she would attempt her own summit of Mount Everest, fulfilling both parts of her promise to the mountain. Most of the girls she was taking with her had never even left their home countries, let alone hiked in the Himalayas. From the get-go we start the hike with the girls and everybody gets sick. Everybody gets like a little bit of altitude even the Nepali girls. I'm like really? And so we're struggling and it's like oh god this is not right and not only I'm like playing mom with all the girls I'm having to have my own briefings for climbing the mountain after and the dangers of it. So it's very stressful. What was the interaction like between the Americans and the Nepali girls? I have to tell you, it's almost a reason why TikTok has been so successful. I mean, we might not understand each other, but there was this common language. One of my girls in the US loved makeup. She had a Nepali counterpart, so they started bonding on makeups. On every break, it would be the little things that we would be bonding on. There was a sense of camaraderie that was getting developed. There was a sense of the newness of what we were trekking. There was a sense of this very unique place. The American girls had never left the U.S., so this is something like, wow, being out of their element. The Nepali girls had never trekked to that area, so to them there was another sense of newness. And so I felt it was, there was this kind of little sisterhood. But Sylvia couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. She'd organized this whole journey, hoping these girls would experience the same profound healing she'd found in these mountains. Even though there was this little connection that kept forging, but it wasn't really coming the way that I thought it would. Then, about three days before reaching Everest Base Camp, something amazing happened. The group was taking a rest day to adjust to the altitude, and Sylvia called what she thought would be a quick meeting. As an executive, I can just easily get together a group of people and ask everybody, all right, let's talk. How is the team doing? Give me your strength. Give me your weaknesses. So I call for like a 30-minute meeting, and I ask strength, weaknesses. Nobody answers. Pretty much my idea goes as one girl starts sharing, like one of the Nepali girls starts sharing her journey. She talks in Nepali. One of my guys, Trekking Friends, starts translating. And she almost opens up the circle of literally translating her own journey, her suffering, what being together means for her. And it's almost like the first match lights up. And then the next one, next thing is close to six hours that every young girl in that room opens up to just the hardship and the connection. Just sitting there and literally each of these young women showing me the power of their vulnerability and what they have overcome and almost teaching me the power in community. We literally started right after breakfast and the next thing is dinner time. Wow, that's so beautiful. It was this powerful bond that when all the girls left, the little room we were in, like there was a side of a mountain. And I just looked and I said, well, this was the healing. It doesn't matter if we make it to the base or not. This is what we needed to come here. It didn't matter, but Sylvia and the young women were energized. We all made it to the base. It was just so powerful. And what were the reactions from the girls as they stepped onto base camp for the first time? A sense of like almost so unreal. One of them makes me cry because she was saying the names of all her ancestors and she didn't realize it was the tallest mountain in the world. It's like, wait, what? It's like, what mountain? They were climbing. It's like, okay. But just there was a sense of for them to feel what they had achieved on their own, but also in a community. It just felt this nirvana, this sense of heaven that they have touched. Even just seeing the reactions, knowing that they are stronger than what maybe the world told them. I think especially when you suffer through a lot of injustices, especially when you suffer a lot of trauma, where you're in a marginalized community. I mean, my Nepali girls were part of the lowest caste, so they always had to endure criticism, this and that. My girls in the U.S. had experienced homelessness at one point in their life. So it's like sometimes society puts, almost puts these labels or these limits on you. Like, oh, you're never going to accomplish this. You're never going to do that. So for them, making it to the base, it was powerful because they felt like, wow, I just did this incredible thing. Powerful. So that sense of their own accomplishment was like I'm watching as a proud mother and just being grateful to witness that. I feel like there's also something to be said for the fact that your ayahuasca vision was you with yourself as a small child, your inner child, walking towards this mountain that you later learn is referred to as the mother mountain. And then when you return, you return in the role of that mother with your child reattached to you, you being a holistic person again, who's able to give that love to other women. There's like just a beautiful circle there. Full circle. After saying goodbye to the girls, Sylvia stayed behind at base camp to fulfill the second part of her promise to Everest, to attempt to climb all the way to the top. I will never forget, I have this like boom, close up to Everest. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to climb this? That doesn't feel like a mother. Like, wait a minute. I have been talking that one day I'm going to do this. I have been saying one day, one day, one day. And here I am on my one day. I'm like, no way. My legs started shaking. I kept looking at myself going like, no way. Oh my God, what have I signed up to? What am I doing? After the break, Sylvia sets off for the summit. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast Doubt the case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong Listen to Doubt the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I Clayton Eckerd and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it, all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. this season an epic battle of he said she said and the search for accountability in a sea of lies listen to love trapped on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I've got you, I've got you, I've got you. Sylvia is standing at Everest Base Camp. She's still riding high from her amazing experience with the Courageous Girls. But now she's facing her own massive challenge, climbing all the way to the top of Everest. I meet up with my expedition team and it turns out that all my fellow climbers are men. So here I go from being with this kumbaya group of amazing women to a team out of seven men and me. Even one of them is like, listen, I'm happy to bring anything that you might want to leave at the top with me because I don't know if you're going to last. And so there was kind of little support to begin with. And I laugh because coming from the tech world, I was already used to the tech bros and mountaineering is almost a mountain bros. But then something unexpected happened. The two men who'd been giving Sylvia the most grief, they were the first ones to drop out of the expedition. One of them got a pulmonary edema, the other one torn a ribcage. And at the end, it was only three men and me who had the chance to push for the summit. And that was another lesson that regardless, I mean, of all this bravado, All this noise that we hear a lot is noise. Now I can clearly say that the journey walking together with my young women gave me the tools that I needed to endure what came after for me. You did reach the summit. I reached the summit May 19th, 2016, becoming the first Peruvian woman to do so. That's incredible. Sylvia had fulfilled her promise to the mountain, but her story wasn't over yet. In the years that followed, she kept leading courageous girls' expeditions and worked on completing something called the Seven Summits, climbing the highest peak on each continent. I become almost like a national hero in my country, and I'm getting a lot of attention, and the one little guy that was in a way was my drinking. And after Everest, a lot of the celebration maybe got to me, especially my story exploded in Peru, but it was a little bit too much for me to cope. And life had one more challenge for Sylvia. It happened in 2017, on the anniversary of her Everest summit. I was cycling to my work. It was a gorgeous day and my hair was quite curly and I'm like, you know what, I don't need a helmet. And as I'm coming down, I live at the top of the hill in San Francisco. I'm going into the city. A truck almost runs me over and I end up falling into a ditch. And I hit my head so hard without a helmet that I passed out. My brain literally shook. Somebody calls the paramedics, I get taken to a trauma center. And while I am at the ER, you know, once I regain consciousness, I'm like, oh, I'm bleeding, but I got to go and climb a mountain in two weeks. I last mountain, blah, blah, blah. And I'm being a little bit of a pain. Sylvia was so focused on her mission to climb the next mountain that she wasn't ready for what the medics discovered. And ultimately, a doctor is like, listen, you're bleeding, and we have found a brain tumor in your head so you're not going anywhere. This diagnosis was exactly the wake-up call Sylvia needed. And I kick everybody out. I just want to have time for myself. And I have this silence and I feel this moment of gratitude. I take a deep breath and I'm like, OK, God, thank you. You have given me a hell of a life. I've seen the most gorgeous places in the world. I have seen the most magical sunsets, the most magical sunrises. I have loved. I have lost. I've had had a hell of a life. And if it's a cancerous tumor, I'm going to quit my job tomorrow. I'm going to spend the rest of my life being in the outdoors, climbing, inspiring young people and finding a way to share my story so that maybe others could learn from it. The tumor wasn't cancerous, but after the surgery and recovery, Sylvia still changed her life. She quit her corporate job to dedicate herself fully to her mission of helping women heal their trauma through the power of the great outdoors. Oh, and she also managed to climb the last of the seven summits, making her the first openly gay woman to conquer the highest peaks on all seven continents. Now I can proudly say I'm seven years sober. It's been this powerful journey. I'm launching various projects. So I'm literally just literally following this dream of being of service. And yeah, it all started with the lovely ayahuasca. The impact of Sylvia's work with Courageous Girls has spread in some really beautiful ways. The initiative has involved almost 300 young women across Nepal in leadership and healing programs. And they've also expanded to Peru, where Sylvia is addressing education and literacy gaps in rural Amazon communities. and in 2025 Sylvia climbed Mount Everest with an all-women team on the 50th anniversary of the first woman to summit the mountain. Pretty incredible. We spend a lot of time saying healing is rooted in talking about our feelings and I'm not about to discount that but what I really like about Sylvia's journey is that it shows how sometimes healing can be a more active decision. I like the idea that sometimes healing can come from not seeing how big your problems are, but standing at the foot of a mountain and realizing that actually you're pretty small. We've all gone for one of those sad walks with a friend and felt better at the end of it. So next time I've got a big problem, maybe I'll just hike up Everest, or perhaps just one of London's nice flat parks. If you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find loads more incredible women on our feed. Do check them out. And please do spread the word and tell your friends about us. We want as many people as possible to be part of the Girlfriends gang. Next time on the Girlfriends Spotlight, Vissaka sparks a ceasefire. He said, look, we came to speak to you as mothers. And then, of course, he said that your army have killed our people. And I said, yes, but let's see how we can stop killing. and save lives. The Girlfriend Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcast. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio. The show is hosted by me, Anna Sinfield. This episode was written and produced by Al Shabani. Our assistant producer is Lucy Carr. Our researcher is Zayana Youssef. The editor is Hannah Marshall. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are our executive producers. Production management from Joe Savage, Cherie Houston, and Charlotte Wolfe. Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Jake Otaievich, Nicholas Alexander, and Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein and Gemma Freeman. The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemkool. Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to Katrina Norville, Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carly Frankel and the whole team at WME. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it, all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.