As I said at the end of this reel, “There’s so much to tell!”

Let’s start with a little background to catch you up.

I grew up in the unincorporated Redford Township of Detroit, Michigan, in a yellow-lined tract housing subdivision. My childhood swimming experience consisted of playing Marco Polo and other summertime water games with neighborhood kids in the few above-ground backyard pools belonging to neighbors who were slightly better off than my family on our solidly working-class, dead-end block of Lennane.

Other “swimming” memories from this time centered around packing up a cooler of Banquet fried chicken and my mom’s famous deviled eggs. We’d then drive in the pre-dawn hours to meet our extended Mexican family at Bishop Lake. My sisters, cousins, and I would play all day in the water while the adults watched from the shore.

Looking back now, I realize none of those adults likely knew how to swim.

My Mom never learned to swim. This wasn’t surprising considering her one-and-only “swim lesson” consisted of someone throwing her into a lake from a boat when she was a young girl and yelling at her to “Swim!”

She almost drowned and never trusted water again.

Determined that her three daughters wouldn’t live with that same fear, she scraped together enough money for swimming lessons for us. Though I can’t remember the name of the neighbor who taught my older sister and me in her above-ground pool on the next block, I know her excellent instruction imparted both skills and confidence in the water.

I’ve always loved water. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to swim, but I’ve never been a swimmer.

Fast forward to when I was 10 and we moved to Tucson, Arizona. In the desert, water became even more precious, especially during the brutally hot summers.

This precious pool memory records the one time mi abuelita, Rita de Luna, visited us in Tucson before she passed away. My mom, Aurora, stands safely in the shallow end, while me and my two sisters, Rita and Ana, balance on our shared floatie in the deep end.

My Mom had an in-ground pool designed and installed—partly because of my Dad’s disability, and partly because she wanted to keep her three daughters close to home as we grew older. Though deathly afraid of water, she still wanted to join us, so she brilliantly designed the pool to be two-thirds shallow.

That pool became the center of play and fun for our family and visiting friends and relatives.

A photo of me jumping into the deep-end with my Papi, Miguel, looking on. That pool was key to maintaining his mobility. Being in the water became a daily physical therapy for his disability. 

During high school, I gradually drifted away from our backyard oasis, as childhood summers faded into memory. Throughout college and graduate school, water was a place I visited, not something I immersed in. Later, I dabbled in activities like outrigger canoeing and ocean kayaking but the Santa Cruz Bay remained primarily a backdrop for my daily runs rather than a body of water I ventured into.

In the early 2000s, I somehow convinced myself that knowing the basics of swimming, biking, and running qualified me to dabble in triathlons. Though swimming was my weakest leg of the race, I secretly celebrated that it came first—at least I could get those nerve-wracking water moments behind me quickly! I completed a handful of triathlons, but swimming in those events simultaneously terrified and challenged me. Those starts! Picture a frothy washing machine of limbs and adrenaline, where an errant kick to the head was just part of the experience. And in the US Pacific Northwest? That water—so bracingly cold it transformed my fingers and toes into popsicles even during the height of summer—left me seriously considering doing duathlons instead.

In January 2023 I tentatively re-entered the water on the encouragement of a girlfriend—taking my first swimming lesson in over half a century while my courageous mom, who’d once feared water herself, began her final journey in hospice care.

Beginning to swim again felt like a fitting tribute to her—

🧜🏽‍♀️ a chance to reclaim a childhood joy she made accessible to me,

🧜🏽‍♀️ an opportunity to face my adult fears about open water swimming, and

🧜🏽‍♀️ a way to honor my bond with her, even as I witnessed her slipping away.

Returning to the water through open water swimming has brought me healing, joy, and deeper connection.

What started as an homage to my mom has become a journey of learning, growth, and wonder—one that challenges me, heals me, and deepens my connection to water and place in ways I didn’t anticipate.

I never expected open water swimming to have such a profound impact, yet here I am—finding courage, clarity, and connection with every stroke and every breath.

✨ Thank you for diving into this first chapter of The Mermaid Diaries with me!

🧜🏽‍♀️ In the coming months, I’ll be sharing the waves of wisdom, challenges, and unexpected joy this open water swimming journey has brought into my life. Join me on this adventure by following along on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Know someone whose spirit would resonate with these ripples? Please share this blog with them.