Rita Losee: A woman of adventure by Michelle Libby

When one has turned 37 as many times as Rita Losee, it is expected that she has seen a lot of life. However, for her life hasn’t included too many knitting circles or rocking chairs, instead it has included some amazing adventures.
Losee doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed into a mold. “I’ve never lived a normal life,” she said. Proof of that is by her actions, having done a triathlon in Hawaii, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, been a through-hiker on the Appalachian Trail and has published two books.
 
After reading a quote by Helen Keller in her thirties, Losse was inspired. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”
    
“I decided then, I’m going to live a life of adventure,” Losee said. She rock climbed in Vermont and ended her 30 year marriage after asking herself, “Okay, Rita, what would a woman of adventure do here?”
 
“I can’t imagine living any other way. I created a mission statement for my life,” she said. In her thirties, Losee started running. “I was growing up into being a jock,” she said.
 
Losee is a nurse by trade, having studied at Maine Medical Center, and then earning her doctorate in Rehabilitation Counseling with a focus on psychiatric rehabilitation at Boston University.
 
After returning home from the Appalachian Trail (AT) in her fifties, she developed Lyme Disease and spent eighty percent of the last three years as a recluse in a recliner, she said. Now that she has her health back, she has returned to her life of adventure and is speaking publically to groups and is penning her new novel, titled, “Healthcare Nightmare: One nurse’s life at the chilly end of the stethoscope and how she got well.” She plans to self-publish the book once it’s finished. She is also a member of Legal Shield.
 
Losee coined the word “Inspiractional,” which comes from combining inspiration and action. “When you do that you get fabulous results,” she said. In her months on the AT, Losee learned about “trail magic,” which she still believes in. Trail magic is the little things that happen for a reason, some call it karma. She believes that when she asked the universe for a nice woman to pick her up to drive her to a hotel on a stretch of the AT in North Carolina and a woman turned around to ask if Losee wanted a ride, that’s trail magic. “It exists because people believe it,” she said.
 
Losee doesn’t believe in letting fear run her life. She wants people to be inspired by her story and be motivated to action. 

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