Exclusive: Breaking Waves Chapter 1

The Shape of Water

As the copy edits come to a close and Breaking Waves is hurtling ever closer towards actual publication (argh!!), I am going to share an exclusive excerpt from each of the 10 chapters between now and September, when it will become available for pre-order.

I will write about this part of the editing process in my Book Deal Diaries series giving insight into copy edits, proofing, first bound copies, advance reader requests, acknowledgements and more…but here I want to start to introduce you to THE BOOK. To the women who feature in it, to the landscapes that have inspired me, to the water that has saved me.

This is for you 🌊💕

Chapter 1: The Shape of Water

It’s so hard to choose which piece to share with you - I want to share it all but I must be patient!! So today I chose this excerpt because I have been reflecting a lot upon ‘rest’ and what that means for us individually. For me, rest is not about being ‘still’ as I struggle with meditation in the traditional sense, however the open water brings me the revitalising qualities of rest. It takes me to a mindful and present place that is beyond what I could find if I went looking. This is about how I began to inhabit the shape of water, and it is a story of noticing, of rescuing bees, and how cold water can be like sex…

I hope you enjoy it, and I’d love to hear your thoughts 🫶

“Recently, while circumventing a particularly large swan, I came across a little bee on her back on the surface of the water, trapped in the meniscus, fighting for her life. Suspended in that liminal moment between life and death, she almost appeared to be peacefully sunning herself without a care in the world, the deceptive reverie interspersed with intense yet futile spasmodic efforts to right herself and fly away. The lifeguard approached, noting that I had stopped swimming, him caring for me as I cared for the bee. Together we flipped the little bee onto the rescue board, where she crawled into a patch of sunlight to recover. In that moment I felt a unique sensation of joy and connectedness to something bigger in the world, a feeling of playing a part in the greater symphony of life on earth. My kind and gentle Dad used to rescue poorly bees, scooping them up and feeding them sugar and water in the palm of his hand – I could feel his smile behind the sunlight.

I have often considered the significance of the bee, and how I absolutely had to come back and write about it that very day. How it made me reflect on the care my dad took when he looked after them, showing me the gentleness of humanity, the importance of noticing things outside our own direct context, and the acknowledgement of what nature does for us. How happy it made me to see the bee and immediately think that I could be like Dad, just for a moment. How it made me consider that we carry our history in our DNA.

I’m not sure when I first began to notice such things. When did I change from a hair-on-fire-person-of-extreme-busyness who would flurry past people in the street barely noticing their own mother, to someone that spotted a flailing bee? Is this what it means to ‘be present’? As someone who struggles with meditation or mindfulness and has the stillness capacity of a toddler, I consider that perhaps temporary bouts of ‘presence’ is exactly what I have found through this time spent in nature. These years of gentle slowing allowing me to ‘notice’, both above and below the surface. On turning my face into the water, I leave the bird and bee life behind, becoming mesmerised by the shards of light that are scattered Pollock-style beneath the surface. I catch slices of my ‘land-based’ world as I turn upwards to inhale before plunging back into the shared silence. In temperate water, ideas flow through me as I swim, stories are born and chapters are written. My words are lazily piped out into the morning mist, as if by Alice’s Wonderland caterpillar, suspended above the water before they evaporate with the sun, yet somehow baked into my mind to perhaps be retrieved later. Time takes on a different meaning. I may find myself swimming fast yet staying still, suspended in currents beyond my power, or surrendering to calm waters as I float and drift.

When I plunge into the cold, my mind contracts to a razor-sharp pinpoint. Demons are vanquished as I become witness to my body’s autonomic function – the gasps, the contractions and releases, every receptor stimulated, flashes of cold crackling through my limbs. I am reminded of the intense focus and narrowing world of air traffic control – a time where I could escape the world and exist in a single moment. My voice enters uncharted territory, from the initial high-pitched ‘fuckety fuck fuck! It’s freezing!’ song that I sing as I start to make my way in, to the alarming guttural noise and breathy groans I expel upon submerging my chest. My body responds involuntarily with my lizard brain telling me to scream and run away. In those moments I am exposed and raw, often fleetingly wondering if I make the same primal sounds during sex and therefore how many people have heard that side of me. Sharing the experience of ice swimming with another human is a curiously intimate and connecting moment; from the trepidatious adrenaline-spiked entry, to the overwhelming bodily sensation of a thousand tiny pinpricks as pain subsides into pleasure, to the subsequent dopamine fuelled euphoria. The post-coital cigarette reincarnated in the ritual zipping of each other’s dryrobes while sharing hot tea and pressing jelly cubes through chattering teeth.”

Chapter 2 excerpt next week…if you like this, please do share! It means the world 🙏

As always,

Love & lemons 💕🍋

Em xx