For the longest time I have enjoyed hiking and trail running in the rugged Mourne Mountains near my home. I love the rough ground, splashes of mud and the achy muscles that accompany both. The uneven ground is good for my brain I tell myself when it gets particularly rocky or steep, it is keeping me vital.
Unfortunately in recent months, high impact hiking and running have had to take a back seat while I deal with a nasty flare-up of pain and fear associated with chronic illness. I have found it frustrating. But, I have been learning to saunter, to stroll, to amble, mosey, bimble, pootle…. to tread more slowly in the wild places I visit. It is good to pay attention I say.
Alongside the slowing down, I have taken to swimming several times a week. I go with the early morning brigade, as soon as the leisure centre doors are unlocked, before the day has really stretched and yawned itself awake. They are an interesting crew, these early morning movement seekers. I have made friends with a woman artist who paints the most exquisite portraits, I looked them up online and told her I loved them. I’ve exchanged chat with a lady who wears bright red lipstick, her head bobbing gently on the water as she serenely breaststrokes up and down endlessly. These are my swimming friends.
I only learned to swim in my mid-30s while on holiday in Tuscany. I’m still not great at it if truth be told. My repertoire consists of a wonky breaststroke and the odd dolphin squiggle if I am feeling brave. But up and down I go, pretending I am in the salty, choppy sea. I allow the water to hold me and I feel something loosen within. I realise there has been a rigidity, a stuck-ness, in my living and in my writing that I want to let go of. Each time I swim, sentences appear in my mind that I must write down as soon as I emerge. Every semi-circular motion of my arms through the water feels like an unlocking, a key inserted somewhere just below my ribcage, a golden secret place. It is interesting to me that this new way of moving is connected to my words. Of course I knew that my time in the mountains was very connected to my creativity, that is what I have been writing about for years before coming onto this Substack space. I wonder too if Substack might be a bit like swimming. It feels less rigid, more fluid, more watery than any other space I have inhabited as a writer. I like it and feel more like myself when I am here. The time in the pool is like a sort of coming home to myself too. With each immersion I am compelled to write, to allow the words to flow with a freedom I have not yet known.
It used to be that I needed a quiet house, great swathes of time, no-one demanding anything of me in order that I could sit my bum on the chair and begin. But that was too rigid I see now, it kept the words tight and stifled, and although they came, they did not flow. In the now I am showing up in snippets while chaos often rages right outside the door. Dogs howl for their dinner, teenagers squabble over whose turn it is on the x-box and missing earbuds, an inner voice reminds me of all the chores I have not completed. But I keep at it. Adding, adding, adding. The words are mounting up, draft three of my book coming together in a way I feel so much contentment about compared with what came before. It is a book about the mountains, my love for them, how they helped me heal in the aftermath of leaving a church that was full of rules and rigidity and where I could not stretch or breathe or be, and somehow in going to the water the words have formed and flowed and I am enjoying the immersions, in the depths of the local pool and in the depths of my creative self.
Sounds wonderful, Kelly! I'm sorry you've been experiencing flare-ups of pain, but you're counteracting them in the best way you possibly can, by being kind and gentle to yourself and letting your body surrender to a natural flow of things. You could push yourself to write with a "perfect" structure and push your body to do heavier exercise, but what for? That would be pushing yourself into a form of rigidity that you left behind. Listening to your body and mind as you do now is the ultimate form of healing xx
How I loved reading that swimming is loosening your words and easing you into your flow! You'll be a fellow selkie before you know it!