Making the decision to start a family while also pursuing my career was anxiety inducing. Would my sponsors support this transition into motherhood? Would I be able to fulfill my mountainous pursuits? Motherhood has taken plenty of adjustments and we have learned so much along the way. One of the major lesson’s you don’t know unless you go.
“I feel like other women need to see that even though it’s not easy, it’s possible.” Kimmy Fasani
When Koa was around a little over a year old, we met up with Megan Michelson, a writer for Outside Magazine, for a fun back country adventure in our beloved Eastern Sierra mountains. Koa was giggling in the backpack and we split boarded our way up one of our favorite protected zones for some family powder turns. Megan wrote a beautiful article about how me becoming a mom is changing the rules of what being a mom in action sports looks like. Below I have shared some of the most impactful quotes from the article, but to read the full and in-depth write up click here.
“I knew when I had a baby that I was going to have to pave my own path, because not a lot of women in pro snowboarding have tried to do this,” Fasani says. “But I was 100 percent in.”
She called Burton CEO Donna Carpenter in September 2017, when she was about 12 weeks pregnant. “I had already decided that just because I was pregnant, I didn’t need to retire from snowboarding,” Fasani says. “But still, I didn’t know how my sponsors were going to react.”
Turns out there was no need to worry. “As soon as I called Donna, she said, ‘Let’s do this,’” Fasani recalls. “To have one of the biggest leaders of our sport—a female CEO of a company I’m very passionate about—say that immediately … it made me let go of my guard and realize that me having a baby is not only going to be accepted by the industry, it’s going to be celebrated.”
“I’ve never met someone as tough and determined as Kimmy,” says fellow Burton athlete and three-time Olympic medalist Kelly Clark. “She was one of a handful of women who went after big-mountain riding as if there were no barriers.”
“This has been the biggest year of learning and adapting and slowing down in my life,” Fasani says. “For that, I’m thankful—because I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
