Emma Simpson talks to Fergus Byrne about her journey through grief, illness, and the liberation of wild swimming.
For Emma Simpson, author of Breaking Waves, her job as an air traffic controller was totally immersive. She describes it as a ‘complex puzzle that takes all your attention’. Her work was hyper vigilant. She was either planning a departure order, checking the weather, speaking with pilots or judging if an aircraft on the runway would get its wheels up before the next one thundered down to land. It was a relentless, concentrated, deep responsibility—and she was good at it.
That is, until one evening, a series of traumas that had slowly blackened her world began to break through her focus on ensuring the safety of hundreds of people. Unknowingly, she had been battling depression, and on a quiet night shift at Gatwick, the world’s busiest single runway, she suddenly came to a stark realisation: ‘I took my headset off, looked out at the airfield at night, and thought—I don’t think I’m okay.’
Emma was soon to realise that, although air traffic control is often regarded as one of the most stressful jobs in the world, it had also been the ideal role to help her avoid the gnawing pain and grief that had entered her life. The job provided her with a ‘subliminal pull’ that she subconsciously thought might help her ‘outrun’ her grief. ‘Forging ahead, keeping busy, returning to work early, moving house, having another child’ were all methods of batting away what was truly going on inside her.
Emma’s struggles began after the birth of her first daughter, who contracted meningitis within four hours of being born. The birth is a mix of vivid memories and hazy images alongside the hum of hospital lighting. She had a brief moment of bonding with her baby, Isobel, who was then suddenly taken away. Emma’s memories are a blur of doctors and nurses rushing past while words like: “seizure, white blood cells, lumbar puncture, brain swelling, meningitis, intensive care” pounded at the side of her head.
As the days in intensive care offered Emma little opportunity to see her child, she grappled with conversations that shifted from “dead baby” to “disabled baby” to “deaf baby”. She changed nappies through the armholes of an incubator and, every day, took a photograph of her daughter. Her husband would print them off at home and bring them in so they could be blu-tacked to the hospital room wall the next morning.
At the same time and in the same hospital, her much-loved brother Brian was coming in for dialysis. They would wave to each other, and when her daughter was eventually returned to her room, Brian came to see her. Emma also visited him as he sat having his blood cleaned. They set the world to rights in the bubble of a hospital, and after two weeks, Emma and her baby were allowed home.
Ten weeks later, Brian was dead. The ‘system’ that had provided him with a new kidney many years earlier and kept him healthy for so long had failed him when he was left untreated overnight in hospital. While Emma slept by her weeks old baby, planning to visit him in the morning, he died from sepsis and heart failure. For Emma, it was the loss of someone who she felt had had his arms around her all her life.
Breaking Waves, a book that started as a testament to the transformative power of open water swimming and the healing properties of immersing oneself in water while communing with nature, evolved into a narrative of how these two traumas, just ten weeks apart, chipped away at the very foundations of her world.
While the book recounts the stories of the numerous women Emma met as she began her slow journey to healing, it also tells how the physical toll of the resulting emotional burden ultimately led to a series of debilitating chronic health issues. Emma recognizes that there is an intrinsic link between our mental and physical well-being: ‘I know for myself that if my physical health is vulnerable, it can affect my mental health. And if my mental health is vulnerable, it can do the other way.’ She believes her struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome, histamine intolerance, mast cell disorder, panic attacks, and fibromyalgia, along with eczema, chronic hives, and other illnesses, are directly correlated with the intense grief she experienced. ‘Who knows, if I hadn’t experienced the grief, would I have had any of these conditions? I can’t say, but there is a direct correlation in the timing.’
The turning point in Emma’s journey came with her discovery of open water swimming. Although she had never been a swimmer, an initial opportunity to swim during a holiday with her children in Swanage, Dorset, was revelatory. A profound sense of aliveness prompted a consistent return to the water, which gradually became ‘central to my well-being’. For Emma, the water also offers a unique connection to her late brother and father. She finds solace when swimming on her back and gazing at the clouds. ‘Every time I do that, it just makes me think of them.’ This connection is further amplified during ‘moon circles’ on the beach, where she finds herself looking for the North Star, a symbol of her father.
Through meeting and relaying the stories of many of the women Emma has met while wild swimming, the book emphasises the shared themes of healing, connection, and empowerment found in the open water.
Highlighting interviews with women from as far afield as Fiji, Finland, Africa, and Canada, she learns of grief, chronic illness, body confidence, birth, and community. Emma interweaves these women’s stories with her own personal journey and reflections, celebrating the collective experiences of women who have found solace and strength in the open water.
Her own description of depression is not as a ‘black dog,’ but an ‘elephant on my chest,’ a ‘crushing weight.’ A personal metaphor, stemming from her lifelong love for elephants, she says: ‘when I get in the water, it becomes lighter, and sometimes she swims away.’ For Emma, the elephant is not an enemy to be fought, but a part of her that can be made lighter through the therapeutic embrace of the water.
Emma also discovered a unique liberation in grief itself. ‘Nothing else mattered’, she says. The trivial worries of everyday life—electricity prices, mortgages, social anxieties—simply vanished in the face of profound loss. Although it is impossible to maintain this state perpetually, she views intense grief as ‘a real blessing, because it is an anchor.’ It serves to provide a point of reference, offering a perspective that allows her to re-evaluate what truly matters in life.
On one trip to Aberdeen for “Winterfest”, her husband, whom she describes as her safety blanket, emerged from the freezing water ‘beaming like he had swallowed a coat hanger’. She speaks of a ‘perfect’ weekend of poignancy, hilarity, bravery, and community.
Later he introduces her to the concept of “Fika,” a Swedish practice of gathering and communing for emotional well-being. It deeply resonates with Emma’s open water swimming experience. ‘It’s not about the sharing of the tea’, she says. ‘It’s about the sharing of the time.’ The camaraderie found in cold water swimming groups, particularly in winter, fosters genuine connection and shared experience.
Perhaps one of the most powerful aspects of open water swimming for Emma is the ‘unique liberation that happens in water, and how open water swimming is a liberation from the pornification of the human body.’ In this environment, she finds ‘no judgment, no criticism, just understanding and acceptance and kindness.’
Emma Simpson will be speaking at this year’s Bridport Literary Festival. Check www.bridlit.com for updates.
.
