Swimsuit Healing
Remembering my younger self in the pool
(originally published in Human Parts June 16, 2022)
I started swimming this February because I wanted to do something different. Sometimes, even I get bored lifting heavy things. When that happens, I dial back strength training and bring in something new. I wanted to engage in an activity that would be hard enough to demand focus, but not so hard that it would be frustrating. I craved the sensation of forward momentum, and needed to access it without having to travel far. I was looking for something to support cardiovascular health and better sleep.
Swimming ticked all the boxes.
Swimming has the added bonus of helping me unpack my history of disordered eating. Many times when I pull on my swimsuit, old memories I had pushed down — because I felt ashamed — pop up. Rather than shoving them down again, I have lately been using this as an opportunity to examine them with a kinder, more adult perspective.
Part of my work as a trauma-informed personal trainer is to help people extend self-compassion to themselves around movement and exercise. One way you can practice self-compassion in the gym is to grant yourself permission to move in a manner that feels good to you even if that means changing course (like putting down dumbbells and putting on goggles). And if you’re not sure what would feel good, one thing you might consider is what you liked to do in your free time as a little kid. I was the sort of kid who stayed in the pool until my lips were blue and my fingertips were prunes.
A second way you can bring more self-compassion to your movement practice is to make space for all the thoughts and feelings that arise when you are choosing to move (or not to move) and when you consider your past choices around movement. When it comes to my own relationship to swimming, that can be bittersweet, even hard. That doesn’t mean it is bad to do; it is a hard thing worth doing.
I’ve been spending quality time with past me nearly every time I get ready to swim these days. A somewhat fragmented memory from high school gym class pop ups and I allow it to surface. I was a new kid in school. I remember what it felt like when I packed my swimsuit and towel into my school bag: a pit in my stomach began to deepen while a simultaneous sense of dread began to rise. I allow this memory to come to light while staying anchored in my present-day adult self. I picture my 14-year-old self in my messy bedroom, in the gray light of an early winter morning, and I can still feel the pit and the dread. I ride that wave, because I know that allowing for feelings to surface and then pass is integral to healing. Thoughts and feelings that we hide have a way of becoming limiting narratives. Allowing for them to surface as memories can help us integrate them into our larger narrative so we don’t get stuck.
I had been the new kid twice before—and neither time had gone well. I was regularly bullied (oftentimes in gym class) and my bigger body was usually the target. Even though the kids in my new high school gave me no reason to be alarmed, it was hard for me to feel safe. In my first year there I spent P.E., lunch, and free periods taking preventative steps to avoid being shamed, shoved, or groped.
And yet, I did find safety in my new bunch of friends. I connected with a group of open-minded girls who accepted me as I was. While they were each comfortable enough in their own skin to not demand conformity, they all smoked cigarettes. I didn’t know what the correlation between smoking and being part of this welcoming group of girls was, but I understood there to be one. I chose to cement my bond with my new friends by taking up smoking too.¹
With that bit of context in place, we can now head to my high school’s pool deck in 1992, where 14-year-old me was clutching a towel around my waist to hide my tummy, hips, and thighs. I was standing so still, hoping to disappear. The swim coach, also named Laura, spoke. She was young and glowed with a healthy beauty I associate with Olympians.
Next, I remember standing poolside watching my classmate, James² swim. I was impressed. He was a fast swimmer! I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me; he had the build of a swimmer and he was competitive and aggressive. When he hoisted himself out of the pool and I saw how lean he was, I thought about how nice it must be to be a sinewy teenage boy—the kind of boy who looked like he was never soft, not even as a baby. (Today I find myself wondering, “Did the soft boys look at him with envy too?”)
While he stood on the deck toweling off, his friends yelped and slapped him on the back a few times for a job well done. I froze in place, terrified that if they noticed me, they would use the same amount of energy they had used to boost him up, to tear me down. (They didn’t.)
Coach Laura announced that it was time to do a relay race—boys against girls— which gave rise to complicated feelings for me. My peers had grown accustomed to my lackluster performance in gym class and I knew that I was about to surprise them. They didn’t know that I had competed on a swim team in middle school. Anticipating their reactions felt good, but also a little bad. Being acknowledged for being good at something is generally pleasant, but surprising people with being good at something can be tainted by rotten feelings if their surprise stems from the fact that they are accustomed to you being bad at things.
Would they be surprised to learn that I knew how to dive off the blocks? Would it feel good to surprise them? Diving from the blocks would give me an advantage, but I was also terrified of feeling like I was on display in my swimsuit for even a moment. I chose to use my advantage and climbed up on the block. Was my body bad or good? Was swimming terrible or wonderful? (Thinking about it now, it seems like that was an awful lot of competing thoughts and feelings to hold.)
I must have proven myself to be fast because the next thing I remember I was being instructed by Coach Laura to swim against James in a kickboard race. I don’t remember the relay, getting out of the pool, or back in the pool. I don’t remember what color kickboard I was given, or if anyone spoke to me. I just remember being in the pool with a kickboard anchored by my left arm. Hidden from the neck down by the water, I felt safe to observe how free the boys were with their bodies. They were all different shapes and sizes and they were jumping around poolside in their swim trunks. They all seemed to feel fine being seen in a half-naked state. I don’t remember what the girls were doing. I just remember angrily wondering why I couldn’t feel fine? “I have to win this stupid kickboard race,” I thought and I narrowed my focus on the lane ahead.
Fueled by spite (how dare those boys exist so freely in their bodies) and by grief (why can’t I feel free like that anymore) I pushed off the wall and kicked as fast as I could. I won. And for a moment I remembered how good it could feel to be seen in the pool sometimes. Then I waited until everyone was looking away to get out of the pool, and I hurriedly covered up with a towel.
As class wrapped up, I walked toward the locker room with my head down. Coach Laura put herself in my path. “Hey Laura, would you consider joining swim team,” she asked. An electric current moved through me and I smiled. I liked that she saw my potential and that I had the same name as someone so pretty, as if that somehow made me pretty too. (I realize now that this brief moment of recognition would help me put on a swimsuit in the years to come.)
I considered her offer and asked, “Would I have to give up smoking?”
“Yes,” she replied on a sharp exhale.
“No, thank you.” I said.
Then I walked away, hoping she would ask again.
When this memory first surfaced (just this year), I was furious at myself, but I hadn’t made space yet to be with it and get to understand myself better. So rather than shut it down, I let it repeatedly surface and I sat with it and paid attention to how it felt to be me in 1992. I began to understand why I said no, and I let my regret and anger go. Today, I mostly feel sad for my younger self as opposed to mad at her.
Examining your relationship to movement with self-compassion means being kind to yourself even when facing moments you have buried under shame. For most of my adult life, I felt ashamed that I picked smoking over swimming. Now I have a more nuanced understanding. I might have learned to enjoy a sport earlier, and not become a smoker for 10 years, but what I needed at that time in my life was the sense of safety that came from having a group of friends at school who accepted me. I really thought taking up smoking was the best way to ensure that happened. When I asked if I had to give up smoking, I wasn’t asking about giving up cigarettes; I was asking about giving up my friends. In hindsight I realize they probably would have still been my friends, but back then, having experienced bullying at the hands of kids who I thought were my friends, living through two divorces, and moving twice, I believed all relationships were fragile.
Sure, I can’t help but sometimes wonder what might have been if I had said yes to Coach Laura. Letting those thoughts, and the feelings attached to them, surface is also part of extending myself compassion. Sometimes, as I change into my swimsuit I wonder if I would have learned to celebrate what my body was capable of before I reached middle-age? What would that have looked like? How would my life have been different? And when I am very still and I picture Coach Laura, I can feel the words, “Actually, I changed my mind, yes I would like to be on swim team,” still caught in my throat. And then for just a moment, the grief condenses into a small cloud in my chest which evaporates as I cross the threshold of the locker room to the pool. I step down into the water, find my lane, push off the wall, and take pride in what my body can do.
I enjoy swimming these days. I like figuring out the best way to cut, pull, and push the water up and down the lane. By giving myself permission to move in this different-for-me way, I am more likely to keep exercising (even strength training) for the long haul. And by making space for all the thoughts and feelings that arise around choosing to swim now and choosing not to swim then, I am freeing myself from regret and shame by being honest with myself about my own wants and needs.
If you choose to look to your past relationship to movement for inspiration when cultivating a new relationship to movement and exercise today, I urge you to do so with not just a curious mind, but an open heart.
[1] Don’t take up smoking to feel accepted. My friends would have been my friends regardless. And smoking leads to diseases and death. You will also smell bad, age your skin, and it is very expensive. Plus, quitting smoking, which I did 10 years later, is a very hard and miserable process.
[2] I have changed his name.