tend and befriend

ocean swimming, winter feeling

The sheets are on the washing line; blue stripes and yellow florals that promise an extra-pleasing sleep tonight. The ground is soggy after a week of heavy rain but now there’s sun and enough wind to whip away what was beginning to feel sullen. I walk, sigh and pull the sleeves of my jumper over my hands, look out to the sea and think of the words I’ll write to you.

On the winter solstice I was driving my 11-year-old to the orthodontist (I now have two children in braces; RIP my savings) and we were listening to ABC radio. The journalist was at the Dark MOFO solstice swim, where hundreds of people run into the sea wearing only a red swimming cap. “I’d never do that,” I said, aloud.

I lied. I am now someone who has swum naked at dawn in the middle of winter (sans red cap). The ocean was steaming; it was far warmer than the air which was a crisp 2.5 degrees; the water so clear I could see my white toes on the sand as I walked further in. In A Brain That Breathes I interviewed a few women who are year-round ocean swimmers and they said they all shriek when the water reaches their vulvas. I shrieked then, too. But the joy when you’re immersed, and you feel the pulse and tingle of blood and breath, and nothing that ever worried you about your body seems relevant anymore.

Maybe it’s just who I am now? – I swim naked with new friends just as the sun is rising. The truth: I have not dipped one part of me in the ocean since, although the waves here are tinged with tannin from the gumtrees that cover the mountains, the pigment leaching into the rainwater as it makes its way through the rivers and out to sea. It’s turbulent and dark at the moment, but will calm when the skies do, too.

What was most clear to me after a weekend spent with 17 other women, is the relief of being just who we are. There is a comfort in this realisation, that there’s no one to impress or compete with, and what follows is honest conversation and a lot of laughter (there’s often tears, too). This is an evolutionary stress response for women known as ‘tend and befriend’ – it’s informed by the flow of oxytocin, the ‘bonding’ hormone that acts as a stress tonic, helping us relax and settle.

I observed and felt this process over the weekend; the softening and sighing, the considered listening and deep rest. It’s a beautiful thing to witness a shaking off of expectations, an ease in the body, thoughts tumbling onto paper, the ruddy cheeks and soft gaze of a woman fireside in winter.

So many of us are trudging through weariness, wondering how it’s July already and feeling as if we’re free-falling to the end of the year. Slow down, we say, while feeling the increasing pressure to hurry up. But here we are, doing precisely what nature intended: not being so productive, going to bed earlier, leaning into the warm comfort of blankets and tea and hearty meals. Yet still, we are breathing competitive, capitalist air and it’s difficult to turn away from it; it seeps into everything, catches us in quiet moments and whispers in the ear: shouldn’t you be working, earning the money?

Something happens when I’m walking each morning, when I’m at my desk, when I’m doing the menial things that cannot be hurried, when I’m forced to be right where I am; I forget about the rush of the world, and exist only in the moment. Time can’t touch these still places; or at least, the minutes slow here. I’ve learnt to envelope myself in these precious interludes. My days cannot exist entirely in these spaces but when I reach them I don’t let myself be torn away. I’ve had to learn this. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’ve had to re-learn it.

None of us are born wanting to be the best, but we are all born curious. No child is in a rush to do anything he doesn’t want to but we learn to let go of the instinctive compass and move with the pace of the world. The wealthy dictate what’s normal and this is how we measure success; on the size of homes, the overseas holidays, the shopping hauls.

I write this from my little room, where there’s a cobweb I haven’t brushed away from the window frame because I appreciate how delicate it is, how strong. The diary is beginning to fill with interviews for my next book and I know with absolute certainty that it’s the book I need to be writing. I’m sitting in the ease of this feeling well aware that there will be doubt and many, many hours of hard work, too. It’s a book about what we need and how we can care - for ourselves and each other and the world - and it’s prompting me to look a little more deeply at the parts of my life that make a whole; decisions, priorities, intentions; what to keep and what to let go.

For now…there’s no need to make big decisions about our lives. None of us need to be summoning the energy to do all the things all at once. When we listen to our body and heed the call to rest and retreat, we give ourselves what we will always crave: gentle tending; befriending.

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2027 Creative Retreat with Bri Lee and I in the Bay of Fires

No nude swimming required (consider it a joyful extra-curricular). Picture this: you’re deep in nature, surrounded by gumtrees and visited by robins and wrens; close to some of the world’s best beaches and a short drive to a town with good coffee. You sleep in warm bell tents, eat beautiful, nourishing meals and gather with other women to do morning pages and guided relaxations. We talk about reading, writing, books, confidence, clarity, ideas, doubt and the joy of creativity. At night there is wine and fire and the clearest, starry sky.

If you’d like to join the waitlist for the two retreats we’re running next year (both will be in May), it’s open till Monday midnight AEST.

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other things

• the second series of Rivals is brilliant (I thought multiple times: I bet they had so much fun styling/filming this). If you’ve watched it, can we talk about that scene where Monica and Lizzie are sitting at the table, sipping brandy and getting to the truth of the matter? Superb!

• I’m flicking through so much non-fiction for research at the moment that my novel reading is nothing but haphazard. That said, I’m currently enjoying The Searcher by Tana French (literary crime) and I’ve reserved A Woman in the Polar Night and Death and the Gardener (both memoir) at the library after Kate and Tricia recommended them at the retreat

• I’m really looking forward to reading Anna Goldsworthy’s essay The God We Made: The threat and promise of AI, in Quarterly Essay. Her memoir of motherhood - Welcome to Your New Life - is one of the best in the genre (and believe me when I say I’ve read most of them)

Lastly, a poem shared by Kate Bown who instigated our ocean swim, and is now a friend for life:

Six Women Swimming Naked in the Ocean - Barbara Kingsolver

An even dozen, as it happens,

changeable as the lunar egg

and milky like that, breasts

that have waxed and waned

answering the tides and tugs that

rule the world: men and children.

These bosoms have heaved

with passion and impatience,

but here in the midnight ocean

they just float

like jellyfish. Lifebuoys. Bottles

flung out with no message inside.

We tumble and crash like so much

sandy laundry, sing out names,

keep an eye on each other

by means of our headlamps,

twelve shiny melons. We

have been called so many things,

have come from so many places.

Earlier in the beach house we were all

such different people—modest, illustrious,

or provisional—forgetting we had this

standard equipment to bind us.

And once unbound, to carry us away.

Till next week, take care x