Skimo Racer Jessie Young on How Taking Calculated Risks May Boost Her Mental Health
Part 3 in the JOY SEEKERS series, focused on mom athletes and their appetites for risk.
Read the series from the beginning.
Jessie (right) one year postpartum skinning up Aspen Snowmass with race partner Nikki LaRochelle during The Power of Four, a 10,000+ vertical feet ski mountaineering race—the pair placed first for female teams and ninth overall. Photo: Jeremy Swanson
Jessie Young’s favorite sport requires skiing as fast as she can, up and down ungroomed mountains, for up to eight hours at a time. And she’s good at it. The Aspen, Colorado-based mother of two young boys (Ryder, age 5 and Bridger, age 2) discovered ski mountaineering (skimo) racing by accident after meeting her husband Max Taam—a fellow skimo racer—and deciding she would rather compete than sit on the sidelines while he raced.
She’s been pushing herself at big competitions across the U.S. and Europe ever since. Now she’s represented the U.S. at the Ski Mountaineering World Championships three times, placing as top woman twice, the second time just a year after giving birth to her son Ryder.
She’s also competed in the grand course races, a series of three- or four-day skimo races in Europe in which ski partners or groups of three compete on a point-to-point course over a mountain. Teams ski for up to 20 hours each day, crossing glaciers and using ropes and crampons to scale steep cliffs. The closest Colorado equivalent is the Crested Butte to Aspen Grand Traverse in which pairs of racers ski 40 miles and 6,800 vertical feet overnight (when avalanche danger is lowest) across the Elk Mountain Range. Jessie has competed in that race twice, and even won it the second time alongside ski partner Lindsey Plant.
While she always knew she wanted to be a mom, pregnancy and the postpartum phase limited her in ways she hadn’t anticipated. Then a miscarriage and discovery of a dangerous partial molar pregnancy became yet another reminder that family planning is less straightforward from training for a competition. Sometimes your body is ready, and other times you have to give up all control.
Jessie opens up about her return to racing once she became a parent, her changing relationship with risk, and why getting out there to pursue the mountain sports she loves—with or without kids—is the goal that matters most of all.
Carolyn Tory (left) and Jessie (right), a few months pregnant with baby #2, skinning up Tiehack Ski Area in her hometown of Aspen, Colorado. Photo: Tess Weaver
Brain and Body Transformation
“I hated being pregnant. Every minute I had that anxiety of not knowing what was going on in there,” she said. Despite that anxiety, she stayed active, biking thousands of feet up mountain passes near her house, skinning up mountains, and downhill skiing.
“You’re used to having it be all about you and now you’re figuring out this infant’s needs. You lose that sense of self. To be taking care of an infant and not physically able to do things was hard. It seems like such a speck in the grand scheme of things, but I remember at the time thinking, ‘this sucks.’”
As athletes, we are acutely aware of what’s happening to our bodies. A more tired day or sluggish run may be attributed to a harder weekend workout, poor nutrition, or bad sleep. So, when pregnancy and then postpartum mental and physical recovery throw our sense of physical awareness out of whack, many struggle to adapt.
Our physical bodies change as they transform to make room to grow and birth a human. We experience the biggest increase in progesterone and estrogen since puberty, produce 45% more blood, and our hearts pump faster as we nourish and grow tiny living beings. The relaxin hormone makes our ligaments loose and stretchy to accommodate a growing baby, which combines with shifting balance and weight gain to put pregnant and postpartum women more at risk for injuries, like pulled muscles, joints, and ligaments. And the pelvic floor weakens under the strain of pregnancy, the impacts of which can last for more than six months postpartum. As a growing uterus puts pressure on the diaphragm, breathing becomes more difficult, too.
Then just when you think that you’ve reached the birth, and the end of this anxious, unwieldy phase, you’re thrown headfirst into the newborn phase. For Jessie and other active moms, the shift from running out the door in pursuit of the next big mountain challenge, to sitting around breastfeeding or following a nap schedule can feel claustrophobic.
“You’re used to having it be all about you and now you’re figuring out this infant’s needs,” Jessie said. “You lose that sense of self. To be taking care of an infant and not physically able to do things was hard. It seems like such a speck in the grand scheme of things, but I remember at the time thinking, ‘this sucks.’”
Matrescence, the term for the physical, emotional, and social transition to becoming a mother, is less discussed than adolescence (that infamous transition from childhood to adulthood), and hence many postpartum women are hurled into a lonely, terrifying, challenging time with little validation or resources. I often think back to how we studied the motherhood experience in high school, reading “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story account of a woman driven to psychosis in the time following the birth of her children (and her husband’s failure to understand her “condition”). At the time, I had no way to relate to the way the main character’s reality morphed as she grappled with the drastic transition from existing solely for herself to giving life to children, and I’m not sure our teachers did, either.
Just last month, British journalist and author Lucy Jones published “Matrescence”—a deeply personal and research-backed book that details this metamorphosis from self to mother. Hers is one of the few books that attempt to explore, if not fully make sense of, this transitional time for women. In her short essay by the same name, she writes:
“A study of women’s lived experience of postnatal depression is illuminating. It discusses the process of turning from a ‘known person in a known world to an unknown person in an unknown world’. To accept their new self as a mother, the women interviewed experienced a cycle of grief, triggered by a loss of self-concept and self-esteem. The women reported a state of shock and the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief: denial and isolation, anger, depression and acceptance. ‘They felt they had to experience death of their former self before giving birth to their new persona,’ wrote the author, Denise Lawler. My psychic state starts to make a lot more sense.”
Athletes often find consistency in training schedules, setting goals around races, and the seasonality of biking, running, skiing etc. For Jessie, returning to ski racing within that first year postpartum felt important. But training and racing while breastfeeding was another story. She nursed both kids into their first year of life and remembers how physically demanding and disruptive that felt to her training schedule.
“I had a little hand pump I would bring with me on longer workouts and spent many stressful minutes before races pumping in the car before racing to get to the start line in time,” she said. “Two years [after giving birth to Bridger], I feel like I’m finally getting my body back to a place where it can function like it used to. I never did a sit-up between kids, because, what's the point?”
Celebrating after competing for the U.S. in Ski Mountaineering World Championships in Switzerland with baby Ryder and husband Max Taam.
Fitting in Just One More Ski Season & Throwing Plans Out the Window
For Jessie, competition—and sports in general—weighed heavily on the way she planned her family. “I always wanted to have kids,” she said. “There was always the question of, ‘Is now the right time?’ When deciding to have a second one I told myself, ‘Maybe I’ll fit one more season in before I have to be pregnant again and dial it back.’ Even though skimo racing is something I do for fun, balancing it with other goals, like having a family, made me think.”
Even tennis superstar Serena Williams, for all her mental toughness, said she definitely didn’t want to be pregnant again as a professional athlete in her letter in Vogue last year announcing her retirement from tennis. She acknowledged the physical toll that growing and birthing a child can have on women. Retirement felt like a necessary choice in favor of growing her family. “Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family,” she writes. “I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family. Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity.”
The meaning of family planning is shifting as our options grow, even as infertility rates increase. Embryo and egg freezing, IVF, or surrogacy—for those with the resources to afford them—have enabled many women to delay their first pregnancy. About 20% of women in the U.S. now have their first child after age 35, according to the National Institute of Health. But for all the scientific advancements, planning when to get pregnant remains an elusive target for many.
Jessie got pregnant with Ryder fairly quickly, giving her confidence in her ability to choose when she wanted kids. And she got pregnant quickly when it came time to try for another. Then a miscarriage around eight weeks sent her to the hospital for a D&C (dilation and curettage), in which the cervix is opened and then a thin instrument is inserted into the uterus to remove tissue.
She was recovering from the miscarriage and ready to try again, until tests revealed a partial molar pregnancy, a rare complication often resulting from an egg being fertilized by two sperm cells. As a result, the placenta contained regular and irregular tissue; Jessie’s body was growing part fetus and part tumor. Even after the D&C procedure, she was at risk of continuing to grow molar tissue which could spread and cause cancer, especially if she got pregnant again right away.
The doctors told her not to get pregnant for six months. “Those six months were hard,” she said. “When you want to get pregnant, you want to be pregnant now. So obviously all planning went out the window.”
Once her six months were up, Jessie was able to get pregnant with Bridger and had a smooth pregnancy and birth.
Dialing Down the Risk
“Dying is the worst-case scenario, but even if you’re injured and can’t pick up your kid, that’s a setback,” Jessie said.
What about taking risks once the baby is born and you can return to the mountains without them? Jessie and Max are raising their boys in the mountain playground of Aspen, the same trails that Jessie grew up skiing, running, and biking.
“As women who are pregnant and postpartum, our brain is primed to take care of a baby. You’ve invested this time and energy [in pregnancy and birth], so you want to make sure the baby survives. You probably want to make sure you survive as well, because you’re the main source of care in many cases.”
“Living in a mountain town, I feel like we lose a lot of young people. We often ask ourselves, “Does this happen everywhere? Or is it a mountain town thing to lose so many people from our graduating class to ski accidents and brain injuries?’”
Outdoor-adventure related deaths tend to spike in towns where homes back up to high mountain peaks, snowpack totals measure in the hundreds of inches, and the accompanying snowmelt surges downhill, turning snow lovers into river explorers.
And Colorado leads the country in avalanche deaths each year. The 2022-2023 ski season saw 11 deaths in the state alone, almost half of the 27 avalanche-related deaths in the U.S.
Each winter, the familiar conversation around snowpack and avalanches seems to consume Colorado skiers, especially experts like Jessie and Max and their friends, whose favorite backcountry ski terrain passes on or near high-angle slopes where avalanches are more likely.
“Now that we have kids I’m more conscious of our objective and the places we can go. I want to do tours that avoid avalanche terrain completely,” she said. “I don’t want to go under it or on it. Before we may have pushed the edge a little bit to get to steeper terrain when the conditions were right, but my tolerance is different now. Even if everything is rated green, I still want to avoid it. Our mindset now is aim for a tour that manages our risks appropriately.”
Racing feels different now, too. Jessie described a recent race where she held back to preserve her body. “I told myself, ‘I don’t have to ski to the wire or to the point of almost exploding. If I’m going to win this race either way I’m going to dial it back. I don’t think I had that check in my mind before kids. I would just go as fast as I could. Now I’m focused on self preservation.”
While no direct research has been conducted about postpartum women and their appetites for risk, neuroscientist and maternal brain researcher Jodi Pawluski speculates that a decreased appetite for risk seems like a logical part of the way the maternal brain changes.
“Perhaps we are less motivated or find it less rewarding to be risky because our brain is more geared towards things that make us survive or make sure our child is safe,” she said. “As women who are pregnant and postpartum, our brain is primed to take care of a baby. You've invested this time and energy [in pregnancy and birth], so you want to make sure the baby survives. You probably want to make sure you survive as well, because you’re the main source of care in many cases.”
The maternal brain rewires after pregnancy and birth, and while memory loss is a perceived side effect of “mommy brain” as it’s so often called, Jodi says otherwise. “The reduction in gray matter doesn’t impact memory like many people think. There’s an enhancement in memory for baby-related things,” she says. “The decrease in gray matter is associated with increased feelings of care for the child. It’s a healthy thing. I think of this as less is more,” she says. In fact, after giving birth the maternal brain develops superpowers like an ability to stay calm and focused under stress, the ability to differentiate newborn cries, and greater awareness of potential threats, according to a 2017 Nature Neuroscience study.
Could the joy we once felt from our sports be replaced by the joy we feel when we look at our children? If so, maybe risk feels less "worth it" without the same oxytocin reward. I asked Dr. James Rilling who studies the human brain, human social behavior, and the anthropology of fatherhood at Emory University.
“It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that parents become more risk aversive once they have a dependent child,” Dr. Rilling said. “By promoting the mother-child bond, [oxytocin] may indirectly increase the mother’s fear of putting the infant’s life in jeopardy.”
If hormones are the cause of a lower tolerance for risk, decreased testosterone in breastfeeding women (due to the rise in milk-stimulating prolactin) could be responsible for my own nerves on that first ski run back. And new dads may encounter something similar. Studies show men’s testosterone levels dip and can stay low for up to three months after having a child.
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As a mom of two young boys, fear for their safety has also become an ever-present reminder. “It’s this push and pull of the brain trying not to worry or project that something could happen. Because that’s your worst fear, that something could hurt them.”
This spring Jessie and two mom friends brought their boys on their first-ever mom and boys hut trip. “Pulling them in on sleds and then helping them ski out the following day, that was a feat,” she said.
“I think there’s importance in the physical challenges that we put ourselves through for our mental health. In the grand scheme of things, it’s better for our kids and ourselves as athletes to get out there and get after it.”
Enjoying a family ski day on their local Aspen Mountain after the mountain closed for the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020.
