The Book

Masters of Badassery

You don't earn your worth. You remember it.

Masters of Badassery, book cover

This is not a book about becoming someone new. It's about remembering who you were before you started apologizing for taking up space.

I spent thirty years proving I belonged, on the wall, in the room, in a life I'd built to escape into. The book is what I found on the other side of all that proving: that the exhaustion was never about not doing enough, and that wholeness isn't waiting at the top of the mountain or the end of a perfect plan. It's what's left when you stop performing and finally sit with what's actually there. Not to fix it. To be with it. The healing starts the moment you stop abandoning yourself.

Told through the climbs and the collapses both, from the Andes to El Capitan, this is the story version of the work I do: how to stop proving and start living, how to tell drive from override, how to come home to a self you stopped listening to a long time ago.

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Why I wrote it

I'd toyed with writing my life down for two decades. When I finally committed, all I had was that. Just commitment. No outline, no storyline, no title. Just the unmistakable knowing that it was time.

It came in the most ordinary place. I was digging in my garden when I suddenly understood what the book actually wanted to be about, and after that it poured out. The manuscript was done in two and a half months.

It wasn't the book I thought I'd write. I always assumed it would be about climbing mountains and traveling the world. But I knew, deep down, those were only adventures. They weren't the thread. The real story was harder to name: what it takes to stop waiting for permission, stop fixing yourself, and start remembering who you already are.

After it came out, the feedback made one thing clear. The book isn't about me anymore. It's about whoever's reading it, and people meet it where they are. I'm at peace with that, because I told the truth.

What readers say
Hear the epilogue, in Marta's voice · 2 min

“From the very first page, it's like she was speaking directly to the deepest parts of me.”

As a woman, a climber, and a mother, somewhere between responsibilities, love, and the quiet weight of expectations, I lost pieces of myself. For years I've been sifting through the rubble, searching for my own voice again. Every word resonates with the aches in my heart and the wild knowing I've always carried. This isn't just a book. It's a call to remember, to step back into my wild, worthy self.

Morgan Fields

“A lot of self-help books leave me overstimulated and over-motivated in ways that don't last. This one is completely different.”

Most speak from a pedestal: here I am up here, and there you are down there. She keeps you at eye level with the person trying to heal, gentle and intimate. She stayed humble, real, and relatable. It made long-lasting self-love feel truly possible.

Amber Griswold

“A memoir that doubles as a manual for transformation.”

The tree metaphor, roots, trunk, fruit, isn't just poetic, it's practical wisdom for anyone ready to stop performing their life and start living it. It stays with you long after the last page, not as inspiration but as invitation.

Townsend Wardlaw

“Amazing questions that challenge us to look at who we are and how we limit ourselves.”

Filled with love, sadness, and deep insight, it let me see exactly where I limit myself and don't live my full potential.

Diana J. Bonnici

“A sweet hike through a landscape of self-help tools. Candid and heartfelt.”

This book looks and feels different than any I've seen, original and lovely.

Denise Labarre
Masters of Badassery, the book

You don't earn your worth. You remember it.

Buy the book →