Breaking Waves by Emma Simpson: Sneak Peek
Posted on 2025/03/26 , tagged as Breaking Waves, Emma Simpson, Extract, Spring Read, memoir
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26th March 2025
Breaking Waves by Emma Simpson: Sneak Peek
A warm, reflective and uplifting memoir about healing wounds, reclaiming a voice and discovering freedom through the open water.
‘If you enjoyed Freya Bromley’s The Tidal Year, you’ll love this. Perfect for those of us who need cold water to heal.’
Emma Gannon, author of Olive
After a period of immense pain and lost in grief, Emma felt the instinctive pull of the water. This expanse of mystery represents the unknown to so many, but it’s also a space to heal and soothe the soul for those that brave the wild waters.
This unexpected source of strength also offered a glorious sisterhood of women with their own remarkable stories to share. Interweaving these inspirational tales with her own experiences of birth, chronic illness, body confidence and so much more, Breaking Waves is a love letter to womanhood and the open water.
Take the first daunting dip of your toe into this community with the below extract!
‘I signed up to do a 500-metre swim. Not the kilometre, mind, that would have been silly. This was terrifying enough.
On the day of the event I was nervous yet excited. I knew this would challenge me both mentally and physically, and it brought back inklings of my previous sense of fun and adventure. They were feelings that had deserted me while I was unwell, although I hadn’t realised their absence until just at that moment. Having donned my tummy-control Marks & Spencer swimming costume and sparkly flip-flops, I affected my best Dickensian jaunt and made my way to the departure point on the rocks, before realising that, clearly, I must have turned up to the wrong event, because everyone else was dressed head to toe in rubber and they were all wearing swim hats. What. The. Actual. Fuck. Swim hats?? I hadn’t possessed one of those instruments of torture since the excruciating hair towelling days of school PE. I can’t say it really occurred to me that I might be the one inappropriately dressed until I began to absorb the looks from the other participants, ranging from pity, ‘oh bless her, she’ll get so cold’, to indignation, ‘oh my God, the integrity of this event has just gone through the floor’, to almost famous, ‘they’ll interview me and I’ll say I saw her just before she drowned, I’ll pretend I spoke to her!’ Awkward doesn’t even come close.
One thing that grief does do, however, is stop you giving a damn what other people think, because it really doesn’t matter, so I pretended that I had turned up like that intentionally because I was so hardcore. In reality, without a wetsuit I only had my blubber to protect me, but I figured that would suffice, so I shed my flip-flops and joined the shuffling penguins towards the entry point.
Within seconds, I experienced an exquisite pain in my feet – why were we entering the sea here? Walking through the jagged, craggy rocks, slime-covered stones and deceptively evil shingle? Why weren’t we going in at a sandy point? Why was no one else swearing?! Aah – because they all had bootees on. Of course they did. With their smugsuits and swim hats there was a whole wardrobe no one had told me about (and dryrobes weren’t even a lucrative twinkle in their inventor’s eye at this point). There was nothing to do but get on with it, so enter the sea I did, carried by my excitement and terror, the Jaws soundtrack looping in my ears as I hit the water. Once in I allowed myself to surrender – to the feeling, to the sensation, to the experience. In the deep water, unprepared, untrained, with seaweed bouncing in and around my legs and breaststroke my only way to stay afloat, I felt exhilarated. I took in my surroundings and marvelled at my own courage. I felt alive and connected to something for the first time in such a long time. The grey blanket of numbness that had encased me since Brian’s death threatened to shift, ever so slightly. I looked around and just grinned – until that let a bit too much water into my mouth – at which point I got a bit more serious and swam to the exit point.
At the exit steps I was aided by some volunteers, handed my beach towel by my sister who shared the emotion of that moment, and my two daughters ran up to me just so proud and excited by my adventure. My endeavour had lit something up in them too. Their faces filled with awe and admiration are something I will never forget. I looked back at the water and felt so happy that I had conquered my fear, and while feeling slightly faint and a bit punch-drunk, I also started to feel the first steps of a spiritual healing. Something awoke for me that day. It wasn’t a big distance that I had crossed – just 500 metres – but it began to span an emotional gulf.’
Breaking Waves: Discovery, Healing and Inspiration in the Open Water by Emma Simpson publishes 27th March 2025.
