Swimming for My Life: Care for Others and for Self

Care work - the physical and/or emotional labor of caring for, taking care of, others can be a burden. Something we carry with us, as a load, whether we relish it, resent it, or something in between. I was once in the sandwich generation, for sure, but that’s been a while ago now. With both my parents and my in-laws long since passed, and our only daughter now graduated from college and on the cusp of moving out one last time, I’ve been thinking lately about the less tangible forms of care we extend for others, and how we integrate that kind of care with our own physical, mental, emotional, and professional well-being.

I’m contemplating, especially, the psychological and emotional weights we each carry with us through our days, our lives, and our work, and how that shapes the ways we navigate obstacles and opportunities. When our metaphorical hands are full, do we shift our weight and nudge a door open with a hip? Does that then throw something out of whack, creating chronic pain? When our back or heart aches, do we long to sit or pause before jumping into the next task? If so, how do we make time and space for that? What aids us in balancing the cares we carry with our work—which may also involve a significant component of care—and the other aspects of our lives? This intangible care, too, deserves attention. 

I use a self-invented practice of “swim-prayer” to imaginatively lay down my burdens, taking time both to hold and remember the suffering of those I care for and also to mindfully and physically release it. As a spiritual person, a highly visual and imaginative thinker, and someone who needs to very deliberately remind myself to attend to my body, I’ve found this to be a really easy and helpful combination. 

For over thirty years now, I’ve been swimming laps, and swim-praying, three days a week - typically in the morning, before work - with substantial breaks from the pool only for COVID closures, childbirth, and surgeries. 

You should know that I am NOT a morning person, so this is truly a struggle. But I find that if I drag myself out of bed, follow a very simple morning routine, and just get in the car, I can make it work and, after a half-hour commute and a 35-45 minute swim, I am generally actually awake. 

Swim-praying prepares me for the day, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and it has taught me some things. Recently, I’ve begun to understand that this can also be a practice of self-care not only in the sense of physical exercise and mental and emotional release, but also as a practice of more deliberately and intentionally caring for and about myself. Acknowledging that I, too, deserve my own care, and that this, too, is a burden I can release in the water, is the lesson I’m learning right now.

Why swimming? In the water, I am buoyant. In the act of swimming, I am both released of the weight of my physical form and fully in my body at the same time. What felt heavy on land is suddenly weightless. What ached begins to mend. What was pushed down hard, out of mind, by the busy pressures of work and life, often bobs to the surface, and I remember the people, and the things, I’m worrying about. 

And, in the pool, there is no phone, no e-mail, no conversation, no traffic. Just me, the water, a black stripe, and 2 walls. And, because I’m now fortunate enough to be living in California, with year-round outdoor pools, the glorious sky above me. 

Some of my swim is usually spent sorting through problems I’m trying to solve, professionally or personally: this nut to crack; that conflict to mediate; the big question to ponder. And some time is spent just wandering mentally, being loose, maybe thinking about how my arms, or my hips, or my shoulder blades, knees, or ankles are feeling. But some set of laps is always devoted to this very simple spiritual practice. 

Swim-prayer, as I’ve invented and coined it, involves reciting (in my head, silently) the names of those I care for/about—particularly those who are suffering in some way—alternating their name with the counting of strokes, between breaths: Becky, two, three, four; Becky, two, three, four. Maybe I’m praying for their family members, too: Shari, two, three four; Ryan, Josh, Talia, four. I’m remembering family or friends suffering from cancer, grief, job loss, addiction, depression, or anxiety. I typically pray for two to three people or families a day, granting each a set of up to 5 laps, or sometimes alternating them. 

As I swim, I imagine that I am towing them across the water - on a light-weight toboggan-like float (a sit-on-top kayak, maybe?) strapped to my shoulders - pulling them to safety on the far side. I had a dream of towing my father across a star spangled lake like his shortly after he died, just a couple of years after I began swimming laps, so maybe that image was part of my inspiration. 

Not immediately, I don’t think, but soon after I started this practice, I began imagining Jesus sitting on the far edge of the pool, feet dangling in the water, waiting to take my care, my charge, into his arms—whether to heal them or to take them home, I couldn’t know. 

If that name raises red flags for you, bear with me. For me, Jesus is meaningful. Raised Baptist, they have been my spiritual friend since I was a little girl, and whatever tradition I’ve been engaged with, and wherever my theology and doubts might land me, that friendship has been a constant presence, guide, and comfort. It’s an imaginative point of entry to the great beyond. So Jesus. Won’t work for everyone, but you get the idea, I hope. It’s what floats my boat.

When my dear friend Becky died of leukemia days before I was to fly back to Ohio to see her, I was heartsick. I’d been swim-praying with/for her and her family for two years. But almost as soon as Becky left this earth, I saw her there, too, at water’s edge. A career lifeguard and aquatics manager, nicknamed “waterbug,” and a generous soul who had provided morning childcare for our daughter when our girls were both in kindergarten, Becky was a dear friend who had cared for our family in countless ways over the years. We had met at church, and she was the one who reminded me when I was distressed over new leadership, “priests come and go: we are the church.” 

So it was easy for me to imagine this saint, in her bright red swimsuit, joining Jesus on the pool deck. Now they were both there waiting, watching, guarding. And shooting the breeze. 

A couple of years’ later, when Brother Camillus Chavez died (just recently) after a long and splendid life of spiritual care work as a Christian Brother, I began to imagine him there, too. I’d been a semi-regular at Br. Camillus’s Jungian meditation sessions on Saint Mary’s campus for a long time and had been hearing his voice in my head, at the end of my swim, for years. After laps, I float on my back, resting in a state of watery shavasana and hear him recite, so calmly, Breathe in, slowly, deeply, and completely (now I’m rising to the surface). And then, Breathe out, slowly, deeply, and completely (now I’m sinking just below). 

It seemed fitting that this saint should also appear among my guardians. 

Now, as I curl into my flip turn (a move I learned in my 40s, by watching my daughter’s swim lessons: (I can learn new things!), I can almost physically feel the saintly trio jointly lifting my cargo, my beloveds, up out of the water, into their mutual care.

Released, I spring off the wall with a burst, launching back to the other side. 

As I slice with relative ease through the water (slower than I was 30 years ago, but better aligned and more graceful, from study and practice), I can feel my vertebrae unlock, jiggle themselves apart. Reaching forward, horizontal, I stretch further, getting longer as I go. When I eventually climb up the ladder, out of the water, and onto dry land, I’m definitely taller. 

I grew up in the Okanagan lake district in British Columbia, am an Aquarian, and have been a water lover from birth, but I didn’t start swimming laps until my mid-twenties. I was in my first year of graduate school, living with my older brother and his wife in Toronto, and grappling with all kinds of deep questions and uncertainties about the future. I was also plagued, for the first time in my life, with night terrors. I was spending most of my day and evening reading and writing, and my body felt and showed it. When New Year’s struck, my brother, a former competitive swimmer, was inspired to get back into the pool and into shape, and he cajoled me into joining him. 

So early one morning in the first week of January, 1992, Dennis and I trudged a few blocks up Dufferin Street, through the snow and slush, to the free community center pool. That first day, I struggled to swim more than a single full lap without pausing to rest and catch my breath. I remember it being really hard. I think I maybe swam 20 lengths (10 laps) in total, exhausting myself in the process. Well, that’s that, I thought. Not sure I can, or want to, keep that up. 

As we walked, more slowly, back home, Dennis issued a bold challenge: we were both going to swim 100 lengths (2500 meters) in under an hour … by Valentine’s Day. Huh? Despite the fact that we were an ultra-competitive pair of siblings - driving my sister-in-law nuts by turning everything into a game and battle … of wits, words, cards, dice, whatever was at hand - I didn’t bite at first. Fine for you, I said, that’s your goal, not mine. 

But something must have sparked. Valentine’s Day would also be my 25th birthday, so maybe swimming 2500 meters had enough of a ring to it to burrow into my subconscious and catch hold. 

In any case, I went to the pool again, and then again. And soon, I was hooked. If I awoke in the morning and didn’t smell chlorine on my skin, I felt antsy. I began swimming regularly - at least 3 days a week - and, sure enough, less than 6 weeks from that first effort, we both hit the target. It took me an hour, exactly, to swim 100 lengths: 50 laps, 2500 meters, 2.5 km, 1.5+ miles. I was, again, exhausted, but I was also exhilarated, inspired, and pretty proud of myself. 

Wow, I thought. I can do more than I thought! I can do hard things.

So I swam in that community pool for the next few months. Then, on finishing my Master’s degree, returning to Vancouver, getting married, and taking a full-time job teaching at my alma mater, the University of British Columbia, I began swimming in an Olympic-length pool for the first time. In the UBC pools (both indoors and outdoors), I learned how to apportion my energy and breath for a 50-meter length (100 m. lap) and how to navigate my pace and space in often crowded lanes with both slower and faster swimmers, and with some very aggressive ones. 

A year later, we moved to Atlanta, where I swam for the next six years in the Emory University pool. It was just fine. Then, PhD in hand, we moved to Dayton, where I had landed an awesome tenure track job … at a university with a very sad pool and worse locker rooms. So I was back to swimming in a neighborhood community center pool for few years, where I had to do laps around some very relaxed and slow elderly folks. 

When aquacizing women called out from the class next to my adjacent lane, Haven’t you had that baby yet? I simply grinned. I was still swimming comfortably, and ultra-buoyantly, at 9 ½ months pregnant. And I knew our daughter - whose first name was TBD but whose middle name was definitely going to be Marina - would come through the water in her own time.

A few years later, the University of Dayton did build a beautiful new recreation complex, and I began to swim on campus, except on rainy mornings when the pool closed, lest a thunderstorm electrocute us through the giant windows. I rarely had to split a lane with a partner or circle-swim with two or three others, but sometimes there was a master class occupying most of the lanes, and so I had to learn not to measure myself against their speed, form, and ambition. I did sometimes used those ultra-fit middle-agers for a little extra inspiration, though.

It was in this pool that my daughter first learned to swim, where we swam and frolicked together for fun on wintry Saturdays, and where I swam M-W-F laps with delight for nine years, longer than in any other pool in my life. The new UD pool had a vaulted ceiling, floor-to-ceiling windows, fake indoor palm trees, a diving well, a vortex pool, and a really good hot tub. It was nirvana in Ohio winters, and still a place that feeds my dreams of the life we left behind in Dayton. 

It was there that I began my practice of swim-prayer, often flanked in nearby lanes by Sister Laura or Brother Dan, vowed members of the Marianist religious family, whom I adored.

When, after earning tenure, promotion to full Professor, and years of progressive leadership roles at the university, I began to consider becoming a dean, I swore that I wouldn’t go anywhere that didn’t have a pool at least “almost as nice” as UD’s. I ultimately landed at Saint Mary’s, in the San Francisco East Bay, in 2015, just months after its Alioto Recreation Center opened, with a glorious outdoor pool, great hot tub, expansive deck, and a big blue sky. 

Here, for the past eight years, I have swum in the early morning hours, in the heat of summer and in the cold rain of January. And, occasionally, after a long work day, under a starry night sky. But the water is always 80F and just fine, waiting to bring my troubles to surface, release me of my burdens, and wash me clean of worry. And Jesus, Becky, and Br. Camillus are perpetually there, chatting on the deck, splashing their toes in the water. 

For the past few months, while on sabbatical, I’ve actually been swimming in our neighborhood pool, which is just a few blocks from home. It is smaller, shallower, less pristine, and, at 25 yards (vs. meters), a few strokes shorter than I’m used to. But it is still glorious. And it was here, just last week, that it finally dawned on me. 

After almost two decades of swim-prayer, I suddenly realized that I could actually add my own name to the list. That, even when I don’t know what to ask, what to seek, or what I most need or want, I can simply recite my own name in my head, and trust that I, too, will be lifted out of the water and cared for in the guarding arms of love. I may have shed a tear at that recognition, but you can’t really tell in all that water. 

As I approached my trio of guardians, my own name on my lips this time, I curled into a fetal ball and - swoosh - released with a spring. Something was lifted off my back, and I come off the wall, quickening, swimming back lighter, faster, taller.

I’m curious: what works for you? I welcome your comments and ideas!

And, if you are interested in reading a short poem, here is “Aqua Girl,” one I wrote and published many years ago, and the piece from which today’s blog title comes.