Women Who Swim

The purpose of this post is to see if we can arrive at an inspiring and actionable contribution to women’s social-spiritual potential. This topic would normally travel a route which passes by direct political matters, feminist theory, and so on. And it’s not that this post isn’t about those things, it’s just that my intention is to arrive at social-spiritual power by way of stories, symbols, and swimming — from which we work backwards to derive appropriate action.

Specifically, this post is about Trudy Ederle, the sea, post-God spirituality, and the symbol-story complex which all together point to a society which doesn’t just value the social-political-economic conditions of women, but also their enlightenment.

The following is a look at the real life of Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle, and how her experience, though exceptional in some ways, is perfectly common in others. The recurring pattern is what most interests us — as in, what makes Trudy an archetype of women’s spiritual and social power, or at least the drive towards that reality? Glenn Stout writes about young Trudy learning to swim with her sisters:

“She was floating, a strange sensation that was at once utterly new yet strangely familiar, a sensation that caused her first to gasp and then squeal, delighted to be suspended in the water, her arms and legs free to move about… Then, with Helen and Margaret often…