I got to paddle some amazing hard rivers in Nepal, I got to meet a lot of great people who continue to be my friends ever since. Then kayaking just became part of my life as I went through regular progression – college, jobs, graduate school.

It wasn't always something that I could do depending on where I was in the country, but I did when I could.

Around 2007, I moved to Washington DC, which has an amazing community around whitewater kayaking at a very extreme level, 20 minutes outside of the city. You can even ride your bike from the city centre of the nation's capital, right out to extreme Whitewater.

I got certified and started teaching kayaking to beginners and it became a way of life for me. But then everything collapsed, my whole life went to hell. I got divorced, experienced severe depression, and all of this really tied into being trans and not dealing with my identity.

For a lot of us who are trans, the first step comes with trying to reject our transness rather than accepting who we are. And that causes a whole bunch of problems that show up in a lot of different ways.

For me, it was almost debilitating depression. While coming out of those moments of distress, I moved back into a house I'd inherited from my family in upstate New York, and basically tried to rebuild my life, my career -- at this point, I was still not out as trans.

I was still broken and trying to figure everything out. But I was able to connect with a group of advanced kayakers here in upstate New York, who became my friends.

In the first year, I was on the river for 100-120 days – essentially a third of the year – physically paddling on the river that makes for extraordinarily hard and extreme paddling.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued tomorrow]