“Who am I, and where have I come to in my life?”
When she was turning 49, Kate Washington looked back.
In 2015, her husband at the time was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. He endured a difficult stem cell transplant. After four and a half months in the hospital, he came home immunocompromised and blind.
“It was really a miracle that he survived,” Washington said.
The caregiving fell on her — for her husband and their two young children. While he eventually got back both his vision and his independence, Washington said they couldn’t recover who they were before.
Come 2021, she wrote a reflection on her experience with caregiving and burnout.
By then she contemplated ending her marriage. She felt as though she’d lost herself after years of caring for other people.
“I found myself looking around, thinking, what have I done?,” she said.
Washington turned to the water for answers.
“I’ve always loved the water,” she said. “I grew up in a town with a lot of swimming holes and actually a public swimming pool that’s a dammed creek. I decided, almost on a whim, to try to make a project out of getting into 50 different natural bodies of water.”
50 bodies of water by the age of 50, those are the rules — creeks, hot springs, lakes, oceans. If she could put her head under, it counted.
By swim number 20, Austin’s own Barton Springs, she plunged straight in. Those familiar with the swimming spot might cringe at that idea — the waters sit at 68 degrees year round, goose-bump raising to most Texans.
“To be honest with you,” Washington said, “that’s not cold for the water I’m used to.” She’s from Northern California, where cool mountain swimming holes habitually plunge into the 30s.
Washington said she had come to Austin to give a talk about caregiving and visit a longtime friend. Even on that warm November day, she had to talk her friend into the water.
But that swim in Barton wasn’t just a fun outing with a friend.
“She had had a difficult first marriage and was really remaking her life at the time that we went to that swim together,” said Washington. “I really admired how she’d rebuilt her life and found a lot of joy, eventually a new partnership. But that moment and seeing her and connecting with her around the swim and around this kind of joyful, fun experience, gave me some inspiration.”
With 30 more swims to go, Washington wasted no time.
She took a solo trip to France towards the end of her project and swam underneath a 2,000-year-old Roman aqueduct. Other waters she ventured include the American River, Tenaya Lake, and Big Chico Creek.
One of the most impactful swims, she said, was a little more local.
“There was one just in a tiny, little, very cold hole in a creek that runs through my hometown,” she said. “I was with my older daughter, and she was hesitating to go in because it was so cold. She looked to me and she said: ‘I’ve never seen you come out of the water without a smile on your face.’”
Then her daughter leapt into the water.
“The fact that she saw that, and kind of knew me as a person and not just as a mom, it really made me feel like I’m modeling something besides duty and obligation to my daughters,” Washington said.
When all was swam and dunked, Washington said the waters had cleansed her soul.
“It really helped me break out of some creative blocks, just taking that time and really learning to be in the moment for myself,” she said.
While she changed course, it felt more like a return for her.
“I had kind of pursued a more intellectual path through college and graduate schools, and had pushed aside some of the physicality that I enjoyed as a little girl,” said Washington. “To return to that really helped me feel like I was reintegrating a self that I had lost leading into midlife.
After she catalogued her experiences on her personal blog, Washington compiled her experiences into the book “Midstream: A Life Remade in 50 Swims.” It came out July 7 with Beacon Press.
While Washington isn’t recommending a cold plunge as a cure-all, she does say everyone has their own personal river they must swim.
“There’s something out there that can give you that same feeling, that rush that I got jumping off a rock into a deep swimming hole,” she said. “It’s worth it to take the time to go and find it.”
