I’m no longer on land but part of a body of water

Even if some of the behaviour on social media is annoying, Frizzell says that, when undertaken regularly, outdoor swimming significantly improves your life, and I agree. It is certainly no miracle cure, but it can offer a kind of healing. A friend who swam in Llyn Padarn during her cancer treatment tells me that it was a way of remembering who she was. Amy Liptrot’s memoir of addiction, The Outrun, contains one of my favourite passages in literature about swimming. Liptrot writes: “By swimming in the sea I cross normal boundaries. I’m no longer on land but part of a body of water making up all the oceans of the world, which moves, ebbing and flowing under and around me. Naked on the beach, I am a selkie slipped from its skin.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/29/swimming-wild-trend-social-media-cliche