Imagine you are 32 years old. You are five months pregnant.

You are sitting on the couch watching Pee-Wee Herman with your 18-month-old daughter nestled in your lap.

Life could not be sweeter or feel more complete. Then a bomb goes off in your brain.

At the hospital, the doctors give you little chance of surviving a profound cerebral hemorrhage.

So you say good-bye to your husband and beg him to keep your memory alive for your daughter. But after 10 hours of surgery you miraculously find yourself whole, complete and contemplating the meaning of life.

No one would blame you if you decided to hunker down and play it safe. But that’s not what Diane Terry did. Instead she chose to live her life as if Helen Keller’s words were etched on her soul.

“Security is mostly a superstition. It 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 outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

“Once my aneurysm shattered the illusion of safety,” says Diane, “I knew my life would be about exploring the world. And my passion—my creative endeavor as I call it—would be convincing other women to do the same.”

And so, for the past 12 years, Diane and her company, Unleashed Adventures, have taken women trekking through the Himalayas, river rafting in Patagonia, on camel safaris in Africa and rock climbing on the Easter Islands— all with a healthy dose of high-end indulgence thrown in. (This is a vacation after all).

The hardest part of any trip? “Convincing women to come along,” says Diane. “If you haven’t had a life-shattering experience, it’s so easy to cling to the idea that you are safe staying home and being a mommy or a wife or a colleague. Talking women into leaving the kids and husband or job behind and making time for themselves is a huge undertaking.”

Diane continues, “What keeps me going is seeing women who were afraid to take chances suddenly becoming aware of their amazing potential. That, and the laughter, support and friendship that makes these trips so different than the ones I do for men or families.”

If Diane had any doubts about leaving her own family to guide others through the world, they ended on September 11, 2001. “When I first met him, my husband worked on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center,” says Diane. “He changed jobs and locations, but we lost five close friends on that beautiful, sunny autumn morning simply because they went to work.”

And so Diane continues to help people shatter “the illusion of safety” and find the strength and wonder in themselves instead.

Does she ever get scared? “Sure I have fears. But my biggest one is leaving this world without the Serengeti or Tibet in my memory bank. I know there’s no point in counting on the future and I don’t want to die with regrets.”

By Jamie Simons for PeterGreenberg.com. Photo credit (top): Diane Terry.

Check more articles from the Grateful Traveler series.

Don’t miss the special two-part series that will tug at your heartstrings and perhaps change your entire view of China: Grateful Traveler: Two Worlds, One Child. Part 2 of One Child, Two Worlds is here.