During a Friends, Mothers & Sons trip to a remote private island last year, the boys took us to a secluded spot with an impressive rope swing that sailed into the trees. Most of the kids started from the ground, but one challenged me and pointed up at the two-by-fours straddling the trees: a launch pad. I climbed out on it, trembled and chickened out. My son consoled me, "Don't worry, Mom. I'd never even think about doing it."

The next day, I walked to the woods, shimmied out on the two-by-four and jumped. I prayed that my ass would land on the knot and that I could hold on for the catapult into the trees. I screamed like an animal and grinned as it echoed in the forest. My son took a picture when I was only a dot in the treetops. And I didn't even lose my pee.

"Why do you have to do things like that?" Tabitha (her name has been changed to protect the antagonist) asked me in disgust upon my dismount.

"What do you mean?" I asked tamping my quivering arms.

"Why do you have to conquer fears?" she asked. She put fears in little air quotations.

This is a woman who hiked alone for months and wore crampons and carried pitons to ensure her survival across glaciers.

"Don't you do stuff like that?" I asked.

"I do it because I have to. You do it because—because of some other reason," she said waving her hand as if whatever reason I had it wasn't even comparable to hers.

Then I got quiet and retreated into myself; feeling first proud that I had swung like Tarzan and then embarrassed due to Tabitha's obvious disapproval.

It is a question worth asking: Why do I do things like that?

Let's start with my childhood. By age four, I was a grown-up, assuming adult responsibilities like worrying about money, relationships and jobs. My role in the family, I believed, was to keep it all together. In addition, I had undiagnosed Celiac Disease so I was often ill. Diarrhea, stomach cramps, anemia, fatigue and general malaise are not wild, fun playmates. Even when I was well, I avoided physical risks. As a teenager, you would've been encouraged to hang out with me because I was a smart, cautious, thoughtful kid—and always the designated driver.

Now as a healthy adult, I constantly test my equipment. Last spring, I wrote a proposal for a Just Move grant in an elementary school. Once a week I spent two hours jumping rope with kids to heart-pumping music during their recesses. While turning two ropes with my egg beater arms, the sixth grade girls encouraged me to double dutch with them. They said, "C'mon, try it. It's so easy." Could I learn to double dutch at 35? I tried and it wasn't easy. At all. Still, I was intrigued. The hard part was entering the ropes and after being whipped many times, I learned that it was easier to jump in at the diagonal. My patient spinners watched me jump in successfully only to trip up within a few seconds. I knew in my head that I had to jump over the rope that was closest to me as it was coming down, but my body didn't get the message. Finally, the ever-auditory learner, I stopped fixating on the ropes and started listening. Swoosh-thwap, swoosh-thwap. When I jumped thirteen times in a row, I screamed "I am a Double Dutcher!"

Could I have a water birth at home?

Could I climb a small mountain by myself?

Could I lead a sermon on intuition even with a group of skeptics?

Could I dance in front of hundreds of people on stage?

Can I still do a cartwheel? Let me check. Yes, four of them before my wrists tingle. These are accomplishments that keep me in check learning the ever-changing boundaries of me.

One friend wondered if I had to do those things to establish a self separate from being a mother and an educator. Certainly that's part of it, but my role models influence me too. For example, my petite aunt, mother of four, plays ice hockey with Amazonian young women and holds her own. My other aunt who just retired is taking swimming lessons for the first time in her life. My grandma who is over eighty? She belly dances and just recently quit roller blading. These women don't mind looking foolish or out-of-place to those who judge. Like them, an elderly woman came into my favorite sushi establishment after she read a foody write-up in the local paper, "I've never tried sushi and I don't want to die before I do," she said. And she loved it. I wonder if there are women back at the retirement home chiding her, "Why do you have to do things like that?"

Writer and life coach Martha Beck may answer: "Do whatever it takes to convey your essential self." Gratitude movement promoter, Sarah Ban Breathnach, may point out that there is nothing wrong with my desire for something more. "Your playing small does not serve the world." Author Susan Jeffers reminds me I can feel the fear and do it anyway. And Marshall Rosenberg, father of Nonviolent Communication once said at a seminar, "Don't 'should' on yourself or let anyone 'should' all over you." And that's what Tabitha did with her tone and her question. She 'should' all over me. She suggested with those nine little words that it was inappropriate for me to be a hellraiser in the trees embracing my inner child, celebrating my essential self and living large in a small body. I shouldn't want to. I shouldn't try to. I just shouldn't.

Well, I don't give a should.

I never got to respond to Tabitha and we have since grown apart. At the time what came to mind was, "Shut up, who are you to judge?" but I didn't engage her. Plus she had a dog with her that bites. If could rewind and do it again, I'd claim it. Yes, I do those things because I show-off—for me. Not to do something no one's ever done before, but to do something I've never done before. Not because I'm the Alpha Female who thinks I'm better than you or anyone else who can't cart wheel or double dutch or give birth in a hot tub. Not to resist the aging process, but to embrace and redefine it. I am not a fear collector anymore, and the only way I know how to rid myself of them is to expose them. In my messy, blurry life when I am scared shitless, I have a moment of clarity and trust I will live—really live—through it.