Jan. 9, 2024
Aquatic Activist and Masters Swimmer: Hasna Muhammad Inspires, EP 244
Want to know what an aquatic activist is? What Hasna Muhammad is doing to encourage the hugely under represented Black Women Swimmers? Then dive headfirst into an episode that promises to saturate your spirit with inspiration and courage as we're joined by the extraordinary Hasna Muhammad. Besides being a passionate masters swimmer, Hasna is a visual artist, writer, and educator whose work focuses on family, social justice, education, and the human condition. Her photography has been exhibited in various cities in the United States, and has a successful book, Breathe In the Sky: Poems, Prayers & Photographs.
Her narrative weaves through the lanes of competitive swimming, artistry, and a fervent quest for social justice for swimming in the black community and a strong butterfly swim stroke, offering a powerful testament to the strength of human spirit. Hasna's voice isn't just one of triumph; it's a catalyst for change, echoing the stories of finding solace and strength in the waters of swimming, perseverance and community.
Learn about Hasna's life, from her young days in the pool to her high impact "Swimmer Girl" Moth performance. She inspires us with her relentless determination to return to competitive swimming, despite societal expectations and personal hurdles—like hair maintenance and injury recovery. Hasna's narrative shatters stereotypes, encourages body positivity, and serves as a resounding call to action for black women (and black people) and older adults to embrace the freedom and joy of swimming without succumbing to societal constraints.
So, whether you're poolside or oceanside, let this episode be your invitation to immerse yourself in the transformative power of swimming.
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
Chapters
00:01 - Swimming, Stories, and Social Justice
14:19 - Swimming and Overcoming Obstacles
26:10 - Swimming and Aquatic Activism Joy
33:37 - The Power and Pleasure of Swimming
Transcript
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Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo hosted by two world record-holding athletes.
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Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your hosts, kelly Palace and Maria Parker.
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Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo Podcast, the podcast where we talk about things that are interesting and important to master swimmers.
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I'm your host, kelly Palace, and, as usual, I am co-hosting with Maria Parker.
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Hey Maria, hey Kelly, it's great to be here with you today, great to see you.
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As always, we are in for a treat today as our guest, hesna Muhammad, who, besides being a passionate master swimmer, is a visual artist, a writer, an educator, whose work focuses on family, social justice, education and the human condition.
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Her photography has been exhibited in various cities in the United States and she has published a book Breathe in the Sky Poems, prayers and Photographs.
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Maria, what else can you tell us about Hesna?
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Hesna is an education activist who provides professional preparation for individuals and organizations that focus on diversifying executive, educational and civic leadership forces.
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Hesna was born and raised and still lives in New York, where she and her husband raised three children and has recently earned a second place finish in her age group in the women's 50 backstroke.
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The meet was the Diversity in Aquatics Historically Black Colleges and Universities Celebration Swim Meet and Water Safety Festival at Morehouse College a few weeks ago.
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We can't wait to talk with Hesna about her amazing life and love of the water.
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Hesna, welcome to Champions Mojo.
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Oh, thank you.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm so excited.
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We're delighted.
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Yes.
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So, Hesna, we have to tell you how we found you and how we call it.
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We stalked you on Instagram and got you, because you're pretty famous for everything that you've done besides being a swimmer.
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But we did get you through a recommendation and we kind of know, in life we get a lot of great things the recommendations from our friend and former guest on the show, Jeff Cummings.
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He reached out to us to tell us about your moth storytelling performance, which was called Swimmer Girl, and that story brought me to tears.
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I remember listening to it on a Sunday morning.
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Yeah, it was just beautiful, Maria, how did you like that?
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It was beautiful.
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I don't know how long I'm going to keep saying this, but I'm still a new master swimmer myself.
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You did such a beautiful job painting the picture.
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I was in my own locker room doing my own thing.
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I just learned about Kelly just taught me this that I have to shower and get my hair wet before I put my swim cap on.
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That was in your moth thing, but it was really beautiful.
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Yeah, just great.
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I think it spoke to me as a newbie, even though my experience is different than yours, feeling a little bit odd and wondering if people know that I don't know what I'm doing in the pool.
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So it was beautiful, Thank you, Thank you.
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So can you share with us what moth storytelling is, how that particular story was the one you wanted to tell and why, and a little bit of the background on that, because I think that is really interesting.
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Well, the moth is a storytelling organization where they invite people just like you and me to tell stories that are true as the best of our memories, and we have to tell them in a short amount of time, like 15 minutes or so.
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And I was lucky enough to have a situation occur that was, in my mind, worthy of telling a moth story.
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I was invited as part of an organization called Daughters of the Movement.
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My parents were activists and actors and prominent in civil rights movement of the late 20th century and the early 21st century for our moth and there are other like-minded legacy holders and we got together as daughters and were invited to tell moth stories at the Schoenberg Center for Research and Black Culture in Harlem.
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And I didn't know what I was going to say.
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I didn't know what story I was going to tell.
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And then one day in July, I went for a swim, as I always do, and I encountered this young lady who looked like me.
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She was 12 or 13, but she was an African-American young lady and I was very excited to see her and her father.
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And when I got into the locker room, there she was.
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So not only was she there, not only did I see her, but she was also going to be swimming in the pool.
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So, without even talking to her, I had an experience with this young lady that brought me to think about some of the obstacles that African-Americans have gone through relative to swimming in this country, some of the history of it and my own sense of wanting to share my swim experience with someone who looks like me.
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I haven't seen this young lady since, but I know she's still swimming out there and that there are more of us.
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But that encounter with that young lady encouraged me to do a few things.
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It inspired me.
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It changed my life actually.
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First of all, it made me want to find other African-American black female swimmers and I'm not talking about wading in the water and splashing around, I'm talking about people who swim the competitive strokes on a regular basis, and so I set out to find my swim community.
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I also decided that I was going to compete.
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I was going to compete in the state senior games and the national senior games.
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I was also going to teach black women to swim the adult learn to swim program, go through that and become a lifeguard.
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And this was all because of an encounter I had with this young lady on a Sunday afternoon in Connecticut.
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That story resonated with a lot of people and the Mawtheads are a national, perhaps international, presence and they invited me to tell my story four more times around the country, from Fargo to New Haven, and everybody connected with it.
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Some people did cry, other people were encouraged to swim, they shared their fears of the water, or the swimmers really found my description of swimming something that they could relate to.
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So I have since then started to write a book about it and I'm chronicling my process of becoming a competitive swimmer, teaching other people to swim, becoming a lifeguard, etc.
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So that has taken over at least a third of my life, swimming and documenting what's been going on with me.
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It was an amazing experience I shall never forget and one that has changed my life Way.
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We'll look forward to promoting your book.
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When you get it out, Let us know and tell all our listeners about it.
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And this sounds like you're going to Chronicle Journal your own story.
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And if you helicopter up, as Maria always loves to say, if you do that and you look at why there aren't more, especially master swimmers, you would think, once people get adult confidence and adult abilities, that there would be more master swimmers.
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But I agree with you.
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I have been in master swimming for 35 years and I cannot think of a black woman that I've seen at a swim meet.
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I cannot think of one.
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Yeah, and that's tragic, first of all because it's so much fun and it is good for us.
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It's good for our health and healing.
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I don't have to convince you all of the healing power of just being in water Certainly pool water, but natural waters also and a lot of folks are missing out.
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I grew up swimming.
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I don't remember really learning how to swim.
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I was in camp and I was swimming and I started swimming short distances and then there were long distances and then I'm lapping and it's.
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I'm a swimmer and I never encountered the historic obstacles that many black people face when it comes to swimming.
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I did not encounter that at all.
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I grew up in Westchester.
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There was a swimming pool in every direction, maybe 20 minutes away, and, if I dare, I could swim in the Long Island Sound or even in the Atlantic Ocean with a two hour drive, and I never even considered that.
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I did know, though, that there were obstacles.
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There was all kinds of discrimination and violence, pouring acid into pools.
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There was the discrimination closed pools that changed the nature of the landscape of pools and pool use in this country because of prejudice, and I was aware of that.
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I understood that, but I never experienced it myself.
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As I said before, my parents were activists and we were on picket lines and we sat down for war, we boycotted food, we did all kinds of civil rights things, but I never participated in a wait in or a paddle out.
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And a wait in is where activities that took place when black folk purposefully broke the law, broke the rules and went into these waters that prohibited us and I had never really heard of that before.
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And paddle outs were those swim cultures that are using surfboards, for example, and you go out and you paddle and you make a statement with your presence in and on the water.
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I never participated in that part of the civil rights movement.
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I just finished reading a book by Kevin Dawson, the Undercurrent of Power, where he writes about the aquatic history of Africans and African Americans and the significance of the water in the Atlantic slave trade, and that was a history that I didn't know.
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I know a lot about history African history, african American history but it's that aquatic history.
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I didn't know All of this.
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Going back to my maw story, this young lady just encouraged me to learn more about that and the obstacles are real and I want to be seen swimming so that I can lessen the obstacles for other folks.
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I want you to see me swimming, so it normalizes it for you as another swimmer.
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Absolutely.
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At the Morehouse College event, where there are a lot of swimmers there, was that an exciting time for you to be swimming in a master's suite with people just like you.
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Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
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All body types, all swim abilities, I would imagine, all levels of comfort with the water, and at the swim meet we were all equal.
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We were there, we were having fun and when the sound to jump into the water was made, we did what we could do and it was fabulous.
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It was fabulous.
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I was very excited to be in an environment that reflected me and how I look and how I feel about myself.
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Morehouse is a school for men and unfortunately there was no women's locker room, so we had to use the coach's locker room, which is configured a little differently, and we were a little tightly packed in.
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But there was such a system hood there.
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I didn't have to explain, we understood, we saw each other as ourselves and it was a relief and a release to just be.
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How has the success and development of Olympic champions like Simone Manuel and Olympians like Natalie Hines, who are black women, out there, making our Olympic team and winning an Olympic gold medal?
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How has that affected?
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your view.
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It has opened my eyes because you hear about black Olympians, men and women, in all sports, and you hear it and it resonates and you just put it aside.
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But now that I've got a lens of competition on and a desire to teach and to share and to elevate the concept of swimming among black women, seeing these Olympians is motivating to me.
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I think that they are able to give so many people women especially that encouragement just by what they do and who they are, that vision of look at me, I can do it, you can too.
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And I think that's so important, especially for young swimmers coming up, but also for folks in my age group who may wonder whether or not they can do it, and I also get a chance to see what it's supposed to look like.
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Oh, that's how you, that's where you spoke, Jim Arn.
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If we all could look like Simone Manuel or Natalie Hines.
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Yeah, yeah, I want to just go backwards a little bit in your personal swimming career.
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Everybody should listen to the moth storytelling.
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It's really quite beautiful and, as you say, the description of swimming and the joy of swimming really resonates.
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But you were a swimmer as a young person and then you continued swimming.
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That doesn't happen with everybody, so I'm curious about how swimming was woven through your life, especially not just, like you said in your moth, not just the sunglasses and the sand swimming, but actual doing serious four strokes in the water in a pool.
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I'm curious about how that was woven through your life.
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We saw on your website you said you push yourself through self-inflicted barriers and find yourself full and fulfilled on the other side.
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So it'd be interesting to hear how swimming impacted that.
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Some of my self-inflicted barriers echo the barriers of many black women.
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When I was in high school I didn't swim because I didn't want to get my hair wet.
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I had an afro in those days and far be it for me to deflate my afro third period and have to go to math with my hair undone.
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So I allowed that vanity to supersede my desire to swim.
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I did swim when I was in college and I did it as a personal thing that I wanted to do, not on the team or anything like that.
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I wasn't really thinking of myself as an athlete at all.
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And as you say it today, I'm saying maybe I am an athlete now, but that was a time in my life, in high school, when I didn't swim.
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I also had many years in my life when my job was just time-prohibited.
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I was a public school district administrator in different districts in the Hudson Valley and that time commitment did not allow me to swim.
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And even if I did swim, it would mess up my hair because I had curls and all of that kind of thing.
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That was an obstacle for me.
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I also had some injuries.
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I had two shoulder huffery tears done on two different years.
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I was kept out of the water at least a year for each of those shoulder surgeries, so there were some real and perceived obstacles keeping me out of the water.
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I'm at a point in my life now where I'm in control of my time and I really don't care what people think of what my hair looks like anymore, and other areas of my life have come into balance, where I am thinking of myself a little bit more, and thinking of myself first, and doing so without having to apologize for who I am, where I am, what I do, and so that has enabled me a level of freedom that makes me available for swimming, and I am at a point again in my life where I want to do what I love.
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I want to spend time doing the things that I love, and I love to swim.
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So I got back into the pool on a regular basis.
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I wanted to improve, I wanted to get better.
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You talked about those Olympic swimmers, male and female.
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You look at them and it's like how do I do that?
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How can I bake that undulation?
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How can I get my arm this way?
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How can I increase my speed?
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And the answer is you swim, and you swim some more and you get a coach and you have people sharing information with you, and that inspired me to join a master's team here near where I swim, where I get the opportunity three times a week for a coach to really help me move forward.
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Unfortunately, I had an injury this past August.
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I had a little bit of a setback in my training and I'm going to go back even farther than that.
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After the story with the young lady and I decided to compete, I knew that I would need a coach, someone to help me prepare for the state games and the national senior games, and I wanted someone who looked like me.
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So, even though I live in New York, I found an organization called Swim Bike, run for Life and it's an organization for triathletes, and the coach agreed to take me on just as a swimmer, because I don't bike and I don't run, and she has, through Zoom, meetings and assignments and sometimes I go to Atlanta and I swim with her and with that team.
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So I have my coach who's preparing me for those games and then those competitions, and then I have my regular coach here in my area, but I can't swim with them yet because I just started doing the butterfly my back was injured.
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So the only two strokes I could do was a freestyle and the backstroke.
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And that's why I competed in the backstroke in the Diversionier in Aquatics Swim Meet, because those were the only two I could do freestyle and backstroke and I didn't even expect to play as in the backstroke.
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That was incredible.
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But anyway, I'm now at the point where I can start the butterfly and I started the butterfly again last week and then I'll be able to do the breaststroke.
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And once I can do all four strokes I'll go back to my team here in Connecticut Y and hopefully it'll coincide with my preparation for the state senior games.
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So, hesna, if you were going to dispel some myths.
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So if there are black women or just black people out there listening that think swimming's not for me.
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I know the hair is something that I always hear about.
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For black women, the hair is a problem.
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What other myths?
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Because, as I'm a 62-year-old woman, there are so many myths out there for aging.
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Oh, you can't do that because you're 62.
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You can't do that because you're a woman.
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So what are some myths that you can just say blow them up, because get out there, ladies, and let's do this.
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I think the biggest thing that women need to get over is body image.
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A lot of times you're very self-conscious about how your body looks in a bathing suit.
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A bathing suit reveals all and does not leave much to the imagination, and I think women are self-conscious about that.
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I think one of the ways to do that is to realize that nobody is really looking at you.
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I love that.
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You need to just get in that water and do what you do, because nobody is looking at you and people have a preconceived notion that you have to swim elegantly and fast and flip and dive and all of that right at the beginning.
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And you don't have to.
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You just have to go into the water and have fun and be comfortable and you can start where you are, just standing in the water.
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Just start there and then walk and then jump and float.
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I do think that people have a legitimate seer of the water.
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Perhaps there was a trauma in their childhoods near drowning or someone they knew nearly drowned, and I'm sure that those types of traumas are real obstacles for people and I would encourage those people to get some type of assistance in talking through that, because learning to swim is the best way to save your life in water, and it doesn't even have to be deep water or dangerous water.
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It could be very calm, cool and beautiful water where you injure yourself or you drown.
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So the best antidote to that is learning how to swim.
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So I would say, do what you can to overcome your fear.
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My sense of overcoming fear would start with talking about that fear, then trying to have fun in the water.
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Be with a trusted person who does know how to swim and who doesn't pressure you or push you beyond your desire or your ability, someone who has patience with you and make a decision that water is healing.
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Water is good for you and swimming not only can save your life but can bring you better health and give you a sense of fulfillment and strength.
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So if we go back to black women and hair, that is also a real obstacle.
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It does have a lot of historically significant bias attached to it.
00:23:53.278 --> 00:24:16.279
Black women's natural hairstyles aren't usually the hairstyles that are acceptable or deemed to be beautiful, and what we need to be able to do is to embrace our hair, however it looks, when it's wet.
00:24:16.279 --> 00:24:19.220
We have new products out now.
00:24:19.220 --> 00:24:36.670
There are swim caps for women who have long locks or other long hairstyles where they can fit the hair underneath the cap, and those are welcome and helpful to women who have long hair or big hairstyles.
00:24:36.670 --> 00:24:45.949
The most important thing, though, is to be able to accept your body image, which includes the image of your hair.
00:24:46.781 --> 00:24:47.847
Yeah, that's the fix.
00:24:47.847 --> 00:24:49.496
The authentic self.
00:24:49.496 --> 00:24:50.279
That is the fix.
00:24:50.279 --> 00:24:54.279
So, Hesla, you are doing so many wonderful things.
00:24:54.279 --> 00:24:57.279
To be an advocate, be a role model, that's what we need.
00:24:57.279 --> 00:25:06.505
We just need to see people that are doing things that we think we might want to do, and the more we see people that are doing that, the more we're likely to do it.
00:25:06.505 --> 00:25:08.865
So that is wonderful.
00:25:08.865 --> 00:25:20.750
Our last question, before we do a sprint around of fun questions is there anything that we have not asked you that you think you would like to share with our listeners?
00:25:21.820 --> 00:25:23.003
Relative to swimming.
00:25:23.003 --> 00:25:28.949
I know for me at my age I have to be forgiving of myself.
00:25:28.949 --> 00:25:47.424
For example, when I do injure myself and I can't do the butterfly or I can't swim that mile or that hour, I have to forgive myself and just realize that perhaps there'll be another opportunity and keep it moving.
00:25:47.424 --> 00:26:09.388
So often I can get down on myself because I didn't swim today or I didn't swim that long or I can't swim all of the four strokes right now and it does get on you and you have to be able to overcome that and come back around and you'll be able to swim again eventually.
00:26:09.388 --> 00:26:34.259
I know that there are obstacles for some folks relative to the cost of swimming in a pool, for example, where you have to have a membership or you may have to drive to the pool, you have to buy equipment, you have to have a bathing suit and a gym bag and the flip-flops and all of the things you just can't put on your sneakers and run outside.
00:26:34.259 --> 00:26:50.250
So for some that is an obstacle and that's understandable, and I do believe that there are organizations that are out there that can help folks who need swim gear to get that swim gear, and if that's someone in our audience.
00:26:50.250 --> 00:27:13.692
Perhaps they can just Google it and find that information I have found in several swim teams and organizations such as Swim Bike, run for Life, diversity in Aquatics, evolutionary Aquatics, groups of women and some men who are joyous when it comes to the water.
00:27:13.692 --> 00:27:31.053
They are getting into natural bodies of water, man-made bodies of water, and releasing themselves of the weight of their body, of things that might be troubling them in their minds.
00:27:31.053 --> 00:27:35.090
Because you really do have to be in the present when you're swimming.
00:27:35.821 --> 00:27:36.182
I do.
00:27:36.182 --> 00:27:44.279
I can't listen to music, I can't run my grocery list in my head, you know, because you come into the wall or something.
00:27:44.279 --> 00:27:54.348
You have to be present when you're swimming and I think that's such a joy and an excuse not to be working and not to be on.
00:27:54.348 --> 00:28:21.067
And I believe that I have found my swimmer tribe of like-minded people, women, many of whom are black, who love the water, understand its joy and can read its power and revel in all of the things that swimming and movement and water can bring.
00:28:21.067 --> 00:28:23.888
So that has been a joy for me.
00:28:24.863 --> 00:28:40.240
Like I said, I have been an activist all my life as a child in the stroller and I am now adding aquatic activism to my tool set, and I think that we should all do so in whatever ways that we can.
00:28:40.240 --> 00:29:10.930
This podcast is one way, because your listeners are out there and they're going to hang on something that you've said and perhaps, maybe even in this conversation, that's going to inspire them to take one step closer to the water, and that's what we want to get people in the water, to get people to feel safe in the water and to have fun and to know its healing powers.
00:29:10.930 --> 00:29:12.450
I think that's it.
00:29:13.477 --> 00:29:23.066
That's beautiful, and we mentioned Jeff Cummings at the beginning of the show, who introduced us to you, and we asked Jeff, how do we get more people of color into swimming?
00:29:23.066 --> 00:29:25.403
And I thought he gave one of the best answers.
00:29:25.403 --> 00:29:28.123
He said just invite them, invite them.
00:29:28.123 --> 00:29:31.281
I swim at a lot of different pools all over.
00:29:31.423 --> 00:29:41.758
We've been traveling a lot, so I always try to find this one practice and, like you said, there are a lot of black women that are in aqua-robics or that are treading water.
00:29:41.758 --> 00:29:46.281
They're not swimming, they don't have their sunblocks, they don't have their cap and goggles on, but they're in the water.
00:29:46.281 --> 00:30:02.084
And so, after Jeff came on the show and told us that I've invited several women to come to master's practice to say, hey, we swim Monday, wednesday, friday at 6 am, come to our practice, and they always say, oh, I can't do that.
00:30:02.084 --> 00:30:03.380
And I say, yes, you can.
00:30:03.380 --> 00:30:08.125
And so I think, if you get invited to something enough times, that what is the number?
00:30:08.125 --> 00:30:11.945
I think they say it takes seven times to change your mind.
00:30:11.945 --> 00:30:35.123
I think we just need to, as swimmers all the people listening and you I think we just need to invite people, and I love what you said about just stand at first glide at first, I think also talking about swimming, the way you talk about it as healing and joyful and gentle, and that's just a great entryway.
00:30:35.202 --> 00:30:37.479
Everybody wants to be healed and swimming is healing.
00:30:38.214 --> 00:30:41.464
And US master's swimming does have that adult learn to swim program.
00:30:41.464 --> 00:30:45.065
They're training coaches to train adult learn to swim.
00:30:45.065 --> 00:30:51.468
And we just did the top 10 countdown of our top 10 shows from last year, 2023.
00:30:51.468 --> 00:30:53.843
And one of our top 10 shows was Clyde Acbar.
00:30:53.843 --> 00:30:57.144
He's a black male and he learned to swim at 60.
00:30:57.144 --> 00:30:58.661
And now he's just loving it.
00:30:58.661 --> 00:31:00.079
He's very passionate about swimming.
00:31:00.079 --> 00:31:05.763
So are you ready to do some fun questions so we can get to know you even better?
00:31:05.763 --> 00:31:07.186
Sure, I'm ready.
00:31:07.186 --> 00:31:10.134
I'm ready to learn.
00:31:10.134 --> 00:31:11.800
What is your favorite sandwich?
00:31:11.800 --> 00:31:15.737
I'm going to say tuna, tuna, love it.
00:31:15.737 --> 00:31:18.140
What do you want that you should throw out?
00:31:18.140 --> 00:31:19.744
Not much.
00:31:21.759 --> 00:31:22.702
I use everything.
00:31:22.702 --> 00:31:27.606
I would say things that I don't use and I wouldn't throw them out.
00:31:27.606 --> 00:31:29.741
I would give them to goodwill, okay.
00:31:30.855 --> 00:31:31.378
I like it.
00:31:31.378 --> 00:31:33.181
You might be a minimalist item.
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