“Up and down lost meaning. I could not tell if I was tumbling forward or backward. Instinct took over.” I never expected to find myself on Mount Everest. For seven years before that climb, I was the primary caregiver for my mother as ALS slowly dismantled her body. I learned how to lift her without hurting her. How to interpret a blink as a sentence. How to listen to a machine breathe when she no longer could. Strength, in those years, wasn’t heroic. It was repetitive. Intimate. Exhausting.