Doesn't the possibility of suicide make the list at all? I thought we all had a suicide consciousness raising when Anthony Bourdain died. Especially someone who's self-proclaimed motto is that she'll only accept second best when hell freezes over. I presume that means she'd have rather died than accept that she herself was second best.
Maybe on this trip she'd hit a wall, and despite all the conferences trying to convince herself she could be the best, she was staring failure straight in the face. Perhaps the significance of calling her mother was that she felt she couldn't go home and face whatever was waiting for her in SLC.
In a local case where I live, a wife shared publicly that her husband, with whom she had young children and a long, joyful, outdoorsy relationship, had run away and killed himself because he was in debt and facing the loss of the dream home he'd grandiously planned for them. To most people, this would be a pothole on the road of life, but for some people, for various reasons they don't share with us, they can't face it.