This autoethnographic exploration of my journey from college athlete to an adaptive athlete and an Israel educator. The emergent self-study leverages photographic and poetic inquiry to explore feelings surrounding my relationship to my acquired physical disability and my relationship with my Jewishness and Israel. My story connects the seemingly unrelated fields of Israel education, adaptive rock climbing, and disability. As I sought to break down the walls between my identities in search of authenticity of self, I uncovered a maladaptive connection to perfectionism. To disrupt this connection, I discovered a space for identity (re)negotiation and growth in my embrace of the wildness. Wildness offers room for processing and meaning-making in self-exploration (Chapman, 2004). The vulnerable analysis of my photographs and poetry identified links to self-compassion and an acceptance of imperfections (Neff, 2010, 2011) as well as my own post-traumatic growth (Day & Wadey, 2016). [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]