How snowboard icon Kimmy Fasani turned motherhood, loss, and cancer into her biggest line yet
By Leonie Sherman
Almost 15 years ago, Kimmy Fasani rocketed to international attention as the first woman to land a double backflip in a terrain park. Five years later, in 2016, TransWorld Snowboarding and Snowboarder both named her Women’s Rider of the Year.
Having conquered big mountain lines and established herself in a male-dominated sport, she turned her attention to the biggest challenge of her life: becoming a mother. Several months into her pregnancy she decided to self-fund a documentary that followed the balancing act of being a new mother and a professional outdoor athlete. The resulting film, Butterfly In A Blizzard, was released in March 2025.
“I didn’t intend to make the movie that came out,” Fasani admits with a laugh. “The movie started with this idea of telling the story of two professional athletes navigating parenthood.” Instead, the film offers an intimate, inspiring portrayal of grit and determination in the face of challenges that would break most people.
As the cameras rolled, Fasani dealt with postpartum depression, her own childhood sexual abuse, the near-death of her first child, the birth of her second child, and, eventually a devastating cancer diagnosis. Butterfly In A Blizzard is polished and raw, joyful and tragic, luminous and dark. Somehow Fasani emerges from the avalanche of challenges stronger, wiser, and even a better snowboarder — in 2023 she placed third in the Natural Selection Tour, just a few months after completing cancer treatment.
“I started filming when I was just a few months pregnant, my mom had just died, I’d won Rider of the Year,” explains Fasani. “I felt like I was at the peak of my career, and also the lowest low of my personal life, dealing with so much grief and loss, feeling isolated.”
The peak of her career also threatened to be the end of it; her contracts were up and there was no maternity coverage in any of them. Pregnancy was basically treated like an injury that prevented a rider from spending time on a snowboard. “There wasn’t an outlet for women to be a mom and still balance a career as an outdoor athlete,” Fasani says.
So she approached her main sponsor, Burton, then run by Donna Carpenter, who has three children of her own. Through careful negotiation based on mutual respect, they rewrote Fasani’s contract to include coverage for pregnancy. Carpenter added the same language for all her female athletes a year later. “Nowadays, if contracts don’t include pregnancy verbiage they are seen as being behind the times,” says Fasani with audible pride.
That wasn’t the first industry earthquake Fasani caused simply by being willing to speak up. Six months prior to filming the movie, she was at a photo shoot and realized that outdoor brands were using male team members for images, but hiring female models instead of female athletes for the women’s shots. “We were being told and shown that beauty matters more than our athletic achievements,” Fasani says. “Why are we still using these images that sexualize women to sell products to women? Who is making that decision?”
Consumed by frustration, Fasani nearly ended her career at that moment. “I could have walked away from the industry, but instead I spoke up,” she explains. “That advertising campaign shifted. We changed how that brand represents female athletes by raising our voices.”
Butterfly In A Blizzard was intended to highlight Fasani’s triumphs, but it ended up shining a spotlight on her hardships. “I think the beauty of the film is that it captured me going through this incredibly challenging process,” Fasani explains. “I haven’t let these challenges define me; I’ve learned from them and grown from them.”
Fasani didn’t expect to be so raw and exposed on film, but she recognizes that vulnerability is the key to connection. “If this movie can help just one other person feel like they have a connection, feel like they have hope, maybe that is the bigger purpose. Maybe that is enough.”
While connection may be the larger purpose behind the film, shifting her attitude is what allowed her to get through each day. “When I first got my diagnosis I remember talking with my doctor and saying ‘I don’t understand where this came from, I live a healthy active lifestyle, I eat well, I’m an ambassador for Boarding For Breast Cancer!’ And my doctor said being healthy and active was going to make me a stronger patient, help me have a better outcome,” Fasani explains with an audible sigh. “That moment was like a lightning strike. I started looking at the whole thing differently, like maybe all the work I’ve done so far is for this moment.”
Her years shredding in the backcountry helped as well. “The time I’ve spent in the mountains has completely conditioned me to reframe fear, and I think that has been my greatest superpower in navigating all these challenges,” explains Fasani. “Fear can be present in everything; it’s just a matter of how you choose to face that fear. When I got my cancer diagnosis, I was able to think ‘what do I do with unexpected challenges in the backcountry?’ The adventure and problem-solving mindset the mountains had already taught me was such a gift.”
“I was able to break it down like I would plan for a day in the mountains,” she continues. “Like, what do I have control of in this situation? How can I focus on that instead of all the things I don’t have control of? It was like I was trying to see where the light was seeping in instead of focusing on the dark tunnel of despair. Kind of like when you’re out in the mountains and it starts pouring rain and you have to slog out of there, and you think, ‘How can I make this part of my adventure?’”
But the differences between backcountry adventures and cancer were heavy and undeniable. “When you spend time alone out in the backcountry, there’s that element of the unknown and yet it still feels like there’s some safety in it,” Fasani struggles to explain. Though she’d watched both her parents die of cancer, her own diagnosis felt profoundly different. “It felt like a vast wide unknown — like not just uncharted terrain but uncharterable terrain.”
Fasani had no option but to chart her own course through that unknowable landscape. “My mom had terminal cancer and chose end-of-life drugs when she was 72,” she explains. “But my cancer was treatable. Creating my family was part of what gave me the strength to fight so hard to get through it.”
As she dug deep, she found surprising strength, both in herself and her friends and loved ones. “I needed to ask for help. And I saw how a community can support you through challenges when you’re willing to share what you’re going through,” she says, her smile is almost audible over the phone. “Ultimately, even though it was brutal and hard, making this movie created so much healing in my body and my relationships.”
Fasani’s courage inspires all who witness it. “Watching Kimmy go through so much hardship taught me how to face life’s challenges with open arms,” explains Elena Hight, Fasani’s friend of more than 20 years. “She showed me, and all of us really, how to transform challenges into compassion and kindness — how to alchemize pain into love.”
Butterfly In A Blizzard helped Fasani understand that what looked like the end was just the beginning. “All these challenges caught on camera helped me understand I am not done. My purpose for living is still very much alive,” she says. “I might be done in my pursuit of progression, but I am leaning into a whole different side of my career. I’m leaning into advocacy, public speaking, mentorship, so I can pay it forward and inspire others to know they are capable of so much more than they think they are.”
“We all have this purpose, this voice that speaks to us, this knowing inside. That’s our spirit speaking to us,” she explains. “If we silence that and never speak up, how can we create the visions and dreams we want?”
To learn more or watch Butterfly in a Blizzard, visit butterflyinablizzard.com
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