Let Me Put U On: ‘How swimming continues to save my life’
In our weekly series, “Let Me Put U On,” the UATL team shares the stories, places and experiences that continue to resonate long after we first discovered them. Some things are simply too good to keep to ourselves.
When I’m in the water, time surrenders its giant grip. Today’s worries cease. Tomorrow’s plans become fleeting. Stressors stop.
Only one thing matters: swimming as fast and gracefully as I can.
My relationship with swimming is both complex and rewarding. I’ve done it since I was a toddler.
Today, swimming has become a respite from constant anxieties — serving as a necessary vessel for peace and safety in my life. And, if you’re interested in trying, it can be the same for you.
Black Americans have long had a complicated relationship with swimming. A 2017 study commissioned by the USA Swimming Foundation found that 64% of Black children had low or no swimming ability.
Behind that statistic is a history of segregated pools, unequal access and economic barriers that have kept generations of Black Americans from learning to swim.
Those obstacles have helped fuel the enduring stereotype and jokes that “Black people can’t swim.”
But my introduction to swimming doesn’t exist without Blackness.
I was born in Detroit and raised in Chicago, but I spent many summers in the former with my dad’s side of the family.
My dad worked for Detroit Parks & Recreation, home to many predominantly Black day camps. From the age of 3 until 13, I attended camps at Adams Butzel, Joseph Walker Williams and Crowell recreation centers.
The decade I spent there was a pleasing potpourri of Black youth. Pure bliss. Unrelenting ebullience.
We’d perform Motown tributes (I was a fabulous Tammi Terrell), dance competitions to Yung Joc’s “It’s Goin’ Down” or Missy Elliott’s “Lose Control,” and learn popular line dances (most notably, the Turbo Hustle).
Afternoons were spent with arts and crafts, on field trips (Cedar Point or Kalahari Resort in nearby Ohio was heaven for us!) or playing in the street in our swimsuits while water from the fire hydrant served as our pool for the day. In other words, the kids were outside. It was an indelible Black cultural utopia that defined my childhood.
Swimming was an important part of my day camp routine. We’d receive daily lessons from a host of Black lifeguards who’d easily shatter the “Black people can’t swim” myth. They taught me how to swim with ease and agility. And, if we were good enough in the elementary rounds, we’d graduate to the deep end — where they’d test our skills by telling us to retrieve a 5-pound black brick as if we were training to be lifeguards ourselves.
It was intense. But they were that passionate about ensuring we could swim. And swim well. We learned freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly techniques.
In turn, I became so good at it that they recruited me to be on a swim team. However, because I didn’t live in Detroit, I couldn’t officially join. To this day, I wonder how much deeper my connection to swimming would’ve grown had I done it.
Because, back in the Chicago suburbs, I attended a predominantly white high school, where many on the swim team had the financial resources to do it competitively since childhood.
I’d only swum for leisure. My mom and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment. Constantly paying to be on the swim team was out of the question.
When I learned how much time and money it took to join my high school’s swim team, I realized that the swimming experience I’d gained at the Black day camps in Detroit wasn’t sufficient for the world of competitive swimming.
I was at an immense disadvantage. I felt so small.
I’d attend swim camps hosted at my high school in an attempt to level the playing field, but that seemed futile. When approaching my senior year, I gave up on the effort entirely.
Besides, “What was I going to do with my hair?” I thought.
Swim caps were never enough to effectively protect my mane from chlorine. There went my competitive swimming dreams.
Still, my connection to it remained.
As I entered adulthood, I could afford memberships to YMCAs and gyms with pools. And, with diagnoses of depression, anxiety and PTSD in my early 20s, I realized that I needed swimming now more than ever.
At my local LA Fitness, I swim 10-20 laps of freestyle or backstroke at least once or twice a week, incorporating it into my regular workout regimen.
When I’m in the water, I feel unstoppable and triumphant.
I try hard to replicate those feelings outside of the water but I’m not always successful.
In the water, those feelings come easily.
Chronic overthinking halts. Joy abounds. Suddenly, I’m connecting with a day camp version of myself who never had to question her love of swimming or her place in it.
It’s a healing journey that I’d recommend to anyone.
So, if you want to find that same sense of serenity but don’t know where to begin, start in the shallow end. Sit on the ledge. Put your feet in. Gradually submerge your body into the water. When you’re comfortable, go a little deeper. Then, deeper. Keep your body afloat. Become one with the water. Remember to breathe.
And when it feels like you might drown, doggy paddle your way through the uneasiness.
Sometimes finding the thing that brings you peace requires trusting yourself enough to leave the ledge.
Then, you’re halfway there.