Swimming Through by Samantha Sanders

I just came across this short film, Swimming Through by Samantha Sanders which was featured in The New Yorker early December in an article titled The Euphoria of Cold-Water Immersion in “Swimming Through”, about three women in Chicago who had a ritual of swimming in Lake Michigan throughout the winter of 2021 during the pandemic.

The morning ritual became “a reason to keep waking up,” Hoffmann says in the film. During the depths of the pandemic, when vaccines weren’t widely available and most people were still isolating at home, swimming gave the women a way to connect and turned them into friends. Hamill-Squiers had recently lost her husband, John, to COVID. Ecstasy and grief intermingle as the women speak frankly about what they’re going through and also shriek and laugh, giddy from the endorphins. “Swimming is this marvelous antidote,” Hamill-Squiers says in the film. “You feel superhuman,” Wagner, who’s a cancer survivor, states. She recalls going into the water after she had finished chemo and radiation. “It just felt incredible. It was this feeling of just being not broken anymore,” she says.

It’s a lovely film about personal strength in times of isolation and grief, finding joy in routine, the emotional and health benefits of swimming, community and friendship.

I don’t think I have the courage to swim in ice water, yet. I hope it is something I can try someday.