Holding my breath
It’s surprisingly hard to dive into the water elegantly and leave very few bubbles. I had also not considered that staying very still underwater (not letting any air our my nose, as we are naturally inclined to do) means water got into my nose. It was almost impossible to stay still, fighting the urge to come up for air. Jump, hold breath, repeat.
Still, that’s what I found myself doing one Tuesday September morning, the first rush hour commute I had done in 19 months. I was in an underwater filming studio where we finished filming the final shots for my recent TV documentary that I had been producing for the past few months.
I had about six shots to get through, both wide and close ups (so 12 shots total) and each take had to be repeated a few times. That’s a lot of diving into the water, fully clothed. We then also threw some printed diary pages in, which disintegrate quickly and, as you can probably imagine, are hard (impossible) to ‘read’ underwater. A diver was in the pool with me the entire time, and she helped position the pages (as above(.
The documentary is a visual representation of a few of the topics I had explored in my book. It has a science base but is also a personal way into the topic looking at three main themes: bodily change, brain change and societal influences.
Somehow putting personal words onto a page doesn’t feel as confrontational as having some of these thoughts broadcast to the world visually. Still, it was a hugely rewarding experience and producing it was fairly symbolic of some of the themes I was exploring - i.e. trying to film with my kids on a windy beach in the Netherlands was not entirely straight forward.
All that to say, it is now online here too in three bite-sized chunks, in case you want to see what I mean about my underwater adventure.
My book The Motherhood Complex is out now.
It’s available on Hive, Waterstones, Foyles or Amazon and all other stores. It’s also on e-book and audiobook. Read it? I would love to know what you think, or even better, leave me an Amazon review (you can do this regardless of where it was bought)- this really helps first time authors like me. Not in the UK? Free shipping abroad here.
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