by Robin Bunn
My name is Robin Bunn. I’m 33 and I’m from Petaluma where I still live today. Growing up I was always an active kid. I started playing softball when I was 5 years old and played competitively up through high school. I dabbled in other team sports like basketball and soccer, but softball was always my number one sport and consumed most of my time. When I was a teenager I would play high school ball all spring and then summer and fall would be travel ball. I made friends on my teams, a few of which I still play with today in a slow pitch softball league, but I was also very shy and socially anxious, so I never branched out much from my bubble. I was always pushed very hard to be the best, especially from my family, and that made me quite competitive, but it was also stressful at times. If I struck out or made an error it was hard to not feel like I failed since I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it.
I have a distinct memory of my high school English teacher coming out to one of our games and I struck out one at bat. He proceeded to tell our entire class the next day and I felt humiliated. Everyone was laughing, and as a vulnerable teenager who was already quiet and self conscious, it was mortifying. It was always hard to feel pressure from my family, but even in school I didn’t have a safe space. I think this combination led to social anxiety that I never really was able to overcome at the time.
As a kid, climbing was a sport that honestly had never even crossed my mind, probably because it wasn’t a “traditional” organized sport that I was used to playing. The first time I actually went to a climbing gym was in 2017 when I was briefly living in Scotland. It was fun, but even then that’s all it was. It didn’t necessarily ignite anything in me to go again. Honestly I think it was just because a cute guy took me, which I know a lot of us can relate to. I went again a handful of times to the Touchstone gyms with guys I was seeing, but again, it didn’t really spark anything in me. It wasn’t until Session opened that I was starting to get into it consistently. Even sitting here and thinking about it now, I can’t really pinpoint the moment it all clicked and came together. It was like this light switch turned on and there was this sudden realization that for the first time in a long time I felt happy in what I was doing. I wasn’t trying to impress my family or even a guy for that matter. I was doing it for myself. Every time I sent a higher graded route for the first time I was ecstatic and proud of myself. It didn’t matter if I failed a dozen times beforehand, because no one was giving me a hard time about failing. I’ve always been hard on myself and I know some of that can be attributed to my childhood and teen years playing softball, but for the first time I wasn’t doing that to myself anymore.
When I started I was mainly just top roping, and then one day I really started paying attention to the lead climbers. I wanted so badly to progress to their level and have that door open new opportunities. I took the lead class only after a few months of climbing. The only problem was I was the only one in the class who didn’t have a partner. I was so excited for the class I didn’t even think about the partner aspect of it. I took the class in April 2023, but didn’t actually take and pass the lead test until December 2023. No one I climbed with either had any interest in the class or were a ways from being ready to take it, and my social anxiety was preventing me from finding new climbing partners. I was honestly genuinely terrified of putting myself out there and making new friends. I always just felt comfortable in my bubble.
I joined the WLC chat after I took the lead class in April 2023, but I was immediately overwhelmed so I honestly ignored it for a long time. I could have asked someone to help me get lead certified, but anytime I opened the chat my heart would start racing and I would chicken out. It took 8 months for me to take and pass the test, and even then it was a guy friend I had made who took the test with me.
During this time I was also trying to get into bouldering since I wasn’t lead climbing often and I felt like I wasn’t challenging myself much more on top rope. This is where I made my first real group of friends. I started bouldering with this group of guys who oddly enough shared mutual friends with my softball friends. We all recognized each other from a couple of gatherings we had all attended, and I immediately started bouldering with them on a weekly basis and we became very good friends. They were such kind and supportive people, and I felt like they helped me progress my skills without ever judging me. I felt so comfortable being around them. To this day, they’re still an amazing group of people that I adore and love climbing with. That was my first sense of community I really felt at the gym, and I started coming slowly more out of my shell. It was actually through one of my guy friends that I finally got introduced to a few members of the WLC, and the rest is kind of history.
From there my climbing really picked up and before I knew it I was at the gym almost everyday. It wasn’t just about climbing at that point, it became my main social circle. My community. It came to a point where I could go anytime by myself without a plan and always run into a friend I could climb with. Before, I couldn’t even imagine going to the gym by myself, but I no longer felt afraid to put myself out there. Every person from the club I climbed with was always so encouraging and supportive. For the first time I felt like I actually knew who I was and was becoming the most authentic version of myself. Climbing, and the WLC in particular, have really helped me in a way that I didn’t know was possible. Even just writing this I’m getting a little emotional thinking about this journey and just being so thankful to be a part of this incredible community, and I think it’s influenced my life off the wall as well.
Being a shy and introverted person my whole life I think led me to act in ways that weren’t beneficial to my personal growth. I would always try to appease other people or be afraid to voice my opinions. I would fall into other people’s hobbies and lack a sense of self identity. I was afraid to set boundaries. My family, of course, also had a ton of expectations for where I should be in life, and climbing has helped me break these habits and patterns.
I’ve experienced a fair amount of injuries this year as well. I sprained my finger in January, had a pinched nerve in my neck in April, and then sprained my ankle bouldering in July. The first injury took quite the toll on my mental health, since I didn’t go to the gym for a couple of weeks and just stayed inside without really talking to anyone. The next injury took me out for almost two months, but I wasn’t going to sit inside and sulk. At this point I had made friends and I made a point to go to the gym and do PT and just go and socialize. I would hang out for hours with my bouldering friends just sitting and watching them climb. Even though I couldn’t climb myself, I was still so happy being with my friends. Without putting myself out there and making new friends, who knows what holes I could have fallen into during those injury phases. This community I could rely on helped get me through those really rough and mentally taxing times.
This year is the first time I’ve had the chance to go outdoor climbing. One experience in particular that stands out is my first time climbing in Yosemite Valley this past October. It was my first time doing multi-pitch climbing which in itself was exciting, but there was this moment when I was on the 2nd pitch of Munginella and I turned around off the wall for the first time and in that moment everything made sense. The sun was setting on Half Dome, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and I just slowly scanned the whole valley floor below. I couldn’t believe I was actually there at that moment experiencing this. I wanted to cry because of how beautiful it was. There was also something special about knowing you’re the only person out there who had that vantage point of the valley at that time.
That was the moment I realized what really does matter. It’s not fixating on where my family or society thinks I should be in life personally or financially, it’s moments like this. Climbing has given me the opportunity to be in nature more and absorb all the wonderful gifts our earth has to offer. I get to experience places like Yosemite, a place I spent summers in as a kid, in a completely different lens. Climbing has also given me the opportunity to really discover who I am and helped me get over my social anxiety. Now it feels like I can talk to anyone, inside or outside the gym, and it’s an incredible feeling.
Whether I’m lead climbing with my girls, bouldering with my boulder bros, or even still playing softball with my childhood friends, I just want to live my life with the people I care about enjoying the things we love together.
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