Just keep swimming

I used to be a kinda big deal in the world of swimming. My personal record for longest slow-build panic attack is eight days. That’s how long my heart raced and my breathing become increasingly shallow before an anticipated entry into a body of water—a lake, to be exact, with a squishy bottom and murky water. That’s 192 hours of invasive thought loops about how water (according to Nancy physics) magnifies the gravitational pull.

Epic.

Terror was my transformative superpower that turned my hands, with their grip too weak to open a jumbo-sized jar of extra crunchy peanut butter, into clamps that clutched the shallow end of a pool with a force that could tear off the concrete in chunks and crumble them into dust.

Herculean.

Now I’m just a middle-aged woefully mediocre swimmer, still struggling with timing my breaststroke catch, pull, and kick, and battling my menopausal muffin top. For years, I’ve shown up at the pool at 6:15 am on my swim days, concerned most about the water temperature (not too cold), whether I’ll get a lane to myself (no sharing before morning coffee), and if someone did share my lane, that it would not be Aggressive Flip Turner.

The May 2025 American Cancer Society 5-mile challenge was a way to get me out of my rut, inject some motivation into my routine, and boost the happy hormones that swimming releases—and muffle the I’m-a-loser internal soundtrack for at least a few hours post-swim.

I can’t cure cancer. I certainly can’t bring back the people I’ve lost to cancer: Mami, Papi, Todd, Sara, Carol, Abuelo… too many more. I can’t erase the emotional and physical scars of my loved ones who’ve survived cancer. I can’t raise millions or even thousands of dollars.

A woman can be drowned by “can’t”s.

The can’t-take-swim-lessons-with-my-son almost drowned me 17 years ago. Some days, it still can. I never got the chance to learn to swim alongside Liam so he could see Mommy be brave and (hopefully) never be burdened by fear and anxiety like me. When John and I lost Liam, focusing on the “can’t” was leading me to I-can’t-live, so I had to do the exact opposite: I focused on “I can learn to swim.” “I can be scared shitless each time I take a lesson.” I learned to swim so I could live.

I can and did accomplish the 5-mile challenge, each lap spectacularly flawed but completed. I didn’t raise millions but I exceeded my goal thanks to the people in my life who love and support me. I heard stories from others who have also lost loved ones and in honoring their memories, we helped each other heal our hearts a little bit more.

I still can’t swim with Liam. Just can’t.

I did learn to swim in the hope that he can see me and be proud of me—and continue to teach me to be strong, to persevere, be confident, and remember that I’m not a loser (particularly for having lost him).

I continue to learn that I can accept the unwelcome changes of life, aim to learn my own over-splashing flip turn, want to continue to live this one life in my own spectacularly flawed way, and I don’t have to do it on a world-stage scale for it to matter. I do what I can, where I am, with what I have, and that can make a difference that ripples beyond me.