Some of you may know my crazy antics of cold-water swimming but what many don’t know is the reason I started it and the reason I continue.  Most people tease me and just think I am nuts but it was in fact what literally brought me back to life.  

After the death of my brother in 2020 I recognised just how little to no time I gave myself and my own needs.  It was his devastating death that shocked me into just how little priority I put on myself and my own needs.  Growing up with a narcissistic mother (and I don’t use that term lightly) I wasn’t taught that my needs, my emotions, my feelings and body where a priority.  Everything in me was geared towards my mother’s needs and her happiness.  As a result, I was trained from a young age to serve….and not in the good healthy way of spiritual service.

I did the work of addressing my childhood trauma and recognising the patterns and conditioning that had resulted.  But the need to put myself first just wasn’t there.  After cutting my mother out of my life for many years all I managed to do was turn my attention and my focus onto the needs of my children, my friends and my clients.  In fact, anyone who I thought ‘needed’ me.  

With my brother’s death I was shocked into realising just how deep our childhood wounds were and just what the consequences were.  My brother took his own life after four years of mental health issues and drug induced psychosis which came from weed.  Anyone who tells me weed isn’t dangerous can quite literally send me over the edge in anger. But that’s for another post.

For the first time in my life as I grappled with the enormity of my brother’s death, I gave myself permission to put me first.  In the throes of grief and loss I just could not be there for anyone else but myself.  I couldn’t hold space and I couldn’t find anything in me to give to anyone.  I stopped answering emails.  I stopped responding to texts other than the essential.  I just dropped out of what I had always done.

On the surface I think I looked like I had it all together and was coping when in fact I was drowning in anger and grief.  I was angry at all the things that had driven my brother to his death.  I was angry with my family for his trauma, with his ex-wife, with the mental health services, with drugs, with people who sold drugs, and with myself for not being there for him.  Of course, I can rationalise all those feelings and put them into order, but it doesn’t take away from the way I felt.  

After six weeks in England with my dad planning the funeral, spending time with my niece and nephews, sorting out all the admin that goes with a death and dealing with his traumatised girlfriend, I came home to Cape Town and collapsed.  I felt disconnected from my life and very much caught in a void of nothing but overwhelming sadness.  I had no drive and no desire to do anything.   

Death for me has never really been an issue.  I get it.  We all have to die and because of the work I do I know the bliss, peace, love and joy that lies on the other side of life.  The sadness wasn’t about his death.  I could hear him and knew that he was good and happy on his side of the veil.  It was me who was left on this side dealing with all the shit that comes with life.  And I was tired.  Very, very tired.  Soul tired.

Of course, all of this went down in the midst of lockdown and the pandemic which did not make things easier.  But in many ways did give me the time and space I needed because we weren’t allowed to do much outside of our home.  How I managed to get out of South Africa and into England when he died was a miracle.  

For me nature has always been a healer and a space where I can be alone and with my thoughts and feelings.  I mostly spend time in nature alone.  I don’t want to talk in those moments.  I just want to be.  When I lived in Cape Town the beach was literally a minute away which I loved as I have always felt pulled to the ocean and its cleansing waters.  Being the primordial mother from where all of life came, I suppose this makes sense.  The longing to go back to the womb.

When lockdown’s regulations began to ease, and we were allowed, I began going to the beach a few times a week to walk and to process.  To breath in the fresh air and to get away from everything in my life that was calling me to engage again.  As the weather started to warm up, I started swimming and eventually would get up every morning and go for a swim before I did anything else.  Rain or shine I needed that swim.  I started to feel again in a positive way and most importantly I started to feel joy again.  

That’s why I continue, the joy.  It brings me joy.  It feeds my soul and makes me feel alive in a good way.  It’s what I need and the only person who can give it to me is me.  Through the swimming I have taught myself how to determine my own needs and how to give to me.  That its ok to give to me and when I do I can be joyful.   Yes, there are all those other wonderful benefits that are spoken of by the different advocates for cold water swimming but for me it was that I could feel joy.  A simple joy that wasn’t created by me doing something for someone else, nor because I had fulfilled a need that came from trauma, but because this seemingly small act every day gave me so much joy.  It fills my cup.  

Moving to British Columbia I haven’t been able to do my morning swims because I am generally not near the ocean, but I can still feel the joy.  It’s there and its strong now so I am ok with not being able to swim every day.  When I have had the opportunity I’ve swam in the ocean here, in a lake and in a freezing cold creek which is fed by a glacier.  I won’t be doing that glacial swim again in a hurry…it was not joyful it was just fucking freezing! Picture for this blog is where I took my freezing cold glacial plunge!

Now I am feeding my joy by being in the forests and these majestic mountains….and only having to think about myself for the first time ever!

What do you do to bring YOU joy? And how do you feed that joy?