visible – Pass the Salt

As a woman of a certain age I feel a deep sense of responsibility to ensure my daughter does not feel the way I have sometimes felt over the last few years. Invisible. Irrelevant. And all because I am middle aged and because our self-worth and identity is directly linked to how others see us. That’s assuming they even see us at all!

The hardest part about getting older is navigating a world that does not value your experience of the aging process. It is framed by society, the media, dare I say it men, and even more frustratingly by women, as a negative experience. But there is a beauty, wisdom and confidence that comes with age that is wonderfully freeing and positive if we can just be brave enough to escape the traditional narrative of getting old. This is the legacy I wish to leave my daughter.

In my late 30’s I left my corporate career because I had a breakdown. I told the world it was because I wanted to retire before I was 40 because life is an adventure and I wanted to be young enough to have those adventures. Why didn’t I tell the truth? Why did I assume I needed to be relatively young to have those longed for adventures? As I hurtle towards 50, I am more able to appreciate those adventures as I have a new found confidence and that comes with an extra decade under my belt. And I am more than happy to share my mental health experiences – albeit from this side of the keyboard. This is only possible because of the passing of years.

There are so many things I have achieved and still want to achieve. I started my own business at 46. And I know many women have done the same. Possibly because the menopause can be tricky to traverse in the work place due to the length and rigidity of the modern working day. This just doesn’t work for the sandwich generation juggling the care of elderly parents and young children alongside a huge shift in hormones. Hormones that left untreated will rob you of sleep and potentially self worth and replace it with fatigue, anxiety and brain fog. The menopause is still under researched even though it affects 50% of the population so many women either do not know what it is or how to manage it . So either because they can no longer work with unmanaged symptoms or because they’ve gained a confidence that comes with age, or both, they are leaving he work place in droves. This mass exodus needs to be viewed as an opportunity, a positive change, a new adventure rather than being put out to pasture.

For me, it is the sea that keeps me young, bold, brave, strong, relevant and visible. It is the sea that buoys up my self esteem and self worth. It is the sea that washes away my anxiety and clears the brain fog. It is the sea that helps me sleep and restores my energy. So it was to the sea I turned to define me, post career, post a significant mental health episode, post 40.

When my daughter was 8 or 9 she joined a newly formed Surf Life Saving Club. As with any community sports club, it required volunteers to keep it running. Little did I know that this would be the start of my adventure into year round swimming. It came at the perfect time, I’d just left work and was recovering from a significant mental health episode. So I gained trainer and lifesaving qualifications and began to run training sessions for the kids. More recently we set up another new club to meet local membership demands and some of the volunteer coaches are the kids I once trained now in their late teens and twenties. Competent adults, fierce swimmers and capable coaches that see me as just one of them. They see me getting in the water, with them, week after week, battling the same challenging conditions, demonstrating the same skills. This defines my identity in their group. Every year I consider handing over the reigns to the next generation, but every year i come back for more, because I like the me I see through their eyes. One the volunteer lifeguards is 61. He’s set the bar high and I aim to rise to the challenge.

Before we set up Seabirds I launched the local Wave Project initiative. Another big step out of my comfort zone of the corporate world. The project required a lot of solo travel and training to the west country and working alongside young, capable, cool surfers as my fellow coordinators around the UK. By now I was in my mid 40s. My lifesaving experience was drawn upon when considering how to run therapeutic sessions safely, my background in corporate project management and report writing proved to be useful and relevant. I was working alongside the younger generation, not competing but lifting each other up. By not segregating the generations we engaged in equal dialogue and interactions. Once again I could see myself through their eyes and I liked what I saw.

So then to Seabirds. By now I was clearly not going to age quietly. I was doing this growing old thing my way. And I was fortunate enough to know and set up a business with a woman who shared my approach to the aging process. We’d gained so much strength and confidence and a new relationship with our bodies from skin swimming in the sea year round we wanted to share this experience with others. We wanted adventure, fun, new challenges to be beyond budget and background. Any new experience is an adventure. Every sea swim is a different experience. Connection and community can eliminate fear, allow you to be bold, break free from self or societal imposed limits. Be you! Swimming in the sea demonstrates strength to step outside your comfort zone. Provides an opportunity to explore new places and travel to new swim spots. Its a place to have fun and rediscover childlike joy. Exposing yourself to cold water is a way of regularly facing your fears. And anyone can do it, they really can, with a group of supportive swimmers to encourage them. We are re-writing our history (in our case her story).

The legacy I am leaving my daughter is that growing old is not a bad thing. The fun loving, thrill seeking, woman of my youth is still there. She just had a curfew imposed on her for a while by dwindling confidence. I have more confidence now than I ever did. I accept myself and although my identity can still be defined to how others see me, I have taken control of what they see. They see a woman who has agreed to swim the channel when she is 50. I have been able to be brave enough to agree to this rather daunting challenge because of the incredible water warriors I surround myself with. Christine is about to to celebrate a significant birthday with a 6 in it and still has many swim challenges set in her sights. She has swum the channel and coached others to achieve it many times. Her calm and confident approach has quietened my anxiety. I am in safe hands with her. And Emma, with a 5 in her number of years, is set to complete her channel swim this year. Her self depreciating tag line ‘If I can do it anyone can’ and infectious encouragement makes you feel like you can do anything you set your mind to. These are the women who inspire me, not the enhanced images of perfection we are subjected to on our screens. It is no coincidence that these women are our chosen swim coaches as they set the most wonderful example to the world.

I feel a huge responsibility to ensure that my daughter, and all of our daughters, and our sons, never become daunted by the aging process. We can remain visible and relevant, brave and bold, throughout our lifetime. I want to set them an example I can be proud of. That they can be proud of. I found my way back to myself. I hope the next generation never loses sight of themselves as they age, that they never have to find themselves. But rather they dictate their own self worth throughout their lifetime as I have finally dictated mine.

This weekend my swimming group and hopefully swimming communities around the UK have been encourage to add some fun to their swims. After what feels like the longest month in history fun is most definitely needed. We feel we all need a bit of glamour in these grey days – so when you are dipping this weekend , glam up and out your glad rags on. Take some photos and share with the rest of us to make us smile #furcoatnoknickers is the hashtag. For me , not only is this another opportunity to embarrass my kids, but also another opportunity to be visible. I won’t be left out of the conversation just because I am of a certain age. I’m going to be the conversation. I hope you can be too!

Over the last couple of years I have watched the Salty Seabird flock grow in number and more importantly in strength. Changes, subtle over time, can go unnoticed. As autumn turns to winter, the days grow shorter and the sea temperature drops, transformations take place. Women are finding a new place in the world, a place where they are strong. We draw our strength from the sea and each other.

When we set up the Salty Seabird’s Swimming community group we had no idea what we were doing or indeed, what it would become. We just knew that we loved swimming in the sea, all year round, and that it made us feel happy. People, mainly women, began to gravitate towards our group and find solidarity as well as solace, What I have come to realise is that swimming in the sea also makes me feel strong, significant and visible. All words that are not usually associated with women of a certain age. And my fellow female swimmers feel the same.

As a woman enters her forties and fifties her body changes considerably. This has a significant impact of how she views herself and how others view her. This is unique to females. It can be a very difficult time, for a number of years, plagued by low self-esteem, and dwindling confidence. No longer seen as sirens of the sea luring sailors to their death by the sweetness of our songs. How are others supposed to recognise our worth when we struggle to recognise it ourselves. So we take to the sea where we remain our real selves. Youthful, relevant and defiant.

People’s perception of you changes when you say you swim in the sea all year round. Too many women don’t swim at all, at any age, let alone in a big mass of salty water in the depths of winter. By doing something out of the ordinary, that some would say is brave and bold, blasts stereotypes out of the water. Quite literally. And as these positive affirmations continue the perception others have of you becomes yours. You are what they see. You find the real you. You become the person you were before you were defined by your role as a mother, a carer, a worker, etc.

Over the last few weeks, our company Seabirds have been running Introduction to Sea Swimming Taster sessions. They are not aimed specially at women, but 100% of the participants have been female. We have commissioned two new swimming coaches, Emma and Christine, to keep up with demand. At the beginning of each session we ask the women to introduce themselves and their swimming experience and ability. Without fail they all claim not to be swimmers even though they refer to time spent in the water.. Phrases like “I only dip really” and “ I used to swim all the time when I was young” are all too common. We reassure them that they are swimmers regardless of how far, or long or deep they swim and that the person that used to swim “all the time” is still there and we will help to find her.

It is not by accident, that all of our coaches, including myself, are women ‘of a certain age’. Our youngest is 48 and our oldest is 60 but you would be hard pushed to guess which one of us is which, as the sea keeps us young. We’ve been that woman that claims not to be a swimmer, I still am sometimes. We can relate to their anxieties but are proof that you can overcome them. It is incredible to see, how, with the right encouragement, these swimmers morph in a matter of minutes into smiling and laughing women proud of their achievements. It is an absolute privilege to be a part of their journey of rediscovering their self-worth.

We recently had a group of women from Girls Alive in Surrey, visiting our shores to experience the sea as part of their channel swim relay preparations. Girls Alive is a collective of encouraging, all-female, non-competitive activity groups for women of all ages and abilities. As we knew we would, we had a wonderful morning with them talking all things tides, waves and weather conditions before a social swim. During the talk a couple of fishermen set up close by and struck up a very loud conversation. It was so loud many of the participants were unable to hear and so I asked our 17 year old lifeguard to ask them to keep it down as but as we were running a session. Their initial reaction was slightly aggressive, possibly because a young female was asking them to move away from the session. It then turned to complete surprise that our group was even there, as even although they had walked passed us we were clearly invisible to them. The result of that session was that a bunch of women, some significantly nervous of the sea, smashed out a swim against the current, and a young woman had the confidence to ask members of the public to pipe down.

That 17 year old lifeguard happens to be my daughter. I swim with her when she will let me although she leaves me for dust. I regularly coach at a Surf Life Saving Club with her. And she is often my lifeguard at Seabird sessions. I feel strongly that she should never be judged by her gender or age or lose any of her self-worth as she grows older. My aim is to demonstrate that I am not ready to be put out to pasture, that I can skin swim throughout the bitterness of winter, that I am strong, I am significant and I am relevant. And she can be too, now, and as she inevitably ages. Charlotte Runcie put it perfectly in her book Salt on your Tongue. ” The call of the sea is the call to the absolute strength of women telling their stories and making music of beauty and imagination, and eternal mothers and grandmothers making eternal daughters and rocking them in the night as they sing while the tide comes and goes. And the power of women is to do all of this, to follow art and the moon, and to absorb it all and go on. ”

We are still swimming against the current but one day the tide will turn. Until then we will continue to encourage others to feel strong, significant and relevant by providing them with the confidence needed to swim in the sea. A confidence they can take with them in dry land.

Tag: visible

For My Daughter

Seasoned With Salt