Introducing Kelley S
We are proud to begin introducing our Catalina Channel Relay team members. Kelley is an amazing woman and strong advocate for the power of swimming as a critical aspect of living an alcohol-free life. Ambassador, advisor, and friend, she lives her best life in San Diego!
Hi all, my name is Kelley S. and I am an open water swimmer in San Diego, California. As an iSwim4 team member, I am here to share my story about the parallel of my swimming and alcohol-free lifestyle. It is important for me to share this to help others who may be struggling, and it is also cathartic to do so.
I am a lifelong water woman who has loved the ocean since childhood. I discovered my passion for distance open water swimming in 2008, in the lakes of Austin where I was a student at the University of Texas. My mom (also an open water swimmer) would venture down from Dallas to visit me, and we would compete in local races together. I started competing in ocean races when I would go out to San Diego to visit my grandma during the summer. When I was a Senior in college in 2011, Katy Dooley (my friend and teammate on the Longhorn Aquatics Masters team) was training to swim the Catalina Channel. I would join her for her training swims in Barton Springs and Lake Travis. I also read “Swimming to Antarctica” by Lynne Cox. The seed was planted that I eventually would swim the Catalina Channel – but it seemed like such an unattainable goal at the time.
I moved to San Diego in 2011 and started training in the ocean regularly. I swam my first (unofficial) marathon distance swim that winter, with my friend Tom Hecker, who was training for the Cook Strait at the time. Over the next few years, I completed a Mainland to Catalina Island relay, Santa Cruz Island to Mainland relay, the Semana Nautica 6 mile race, and additional unofficial marathon distance swims with my pod. The prospect of a solo Catalina attempt still seemed overwhelming as a young professional trying to establish my career and personal life, and I wasn’t ready to commit to that level of training.
I also discovered a love for wine when I move to California, from all regions spanning from Santa Barbara to the Russian River Valley. It was fun at first, taking trips to wine country with my new friends or going to “Wine Wednesdays” at our favorite local place after yoga class. Things took a very challenging turn in 2017 when my mental health suffered. From 2017 – 2019, I wasn’t swimming regularly. I suffered from multiple bouts of severe clinical depression. I didn’t even identify as a swimmer anymore – in fact I totally lost my sense of self. I was self-medicating with alcohol and it wasn’t fun anymore. I took 2 leaves of absence from work between 2018 and 2019 to seek mental health treatment, and I recovered. My mom and I went on a Swim Trek trip in Greece in September 2019 and I rediscovered my love of swimming. Despite all of this, alcohol was still weighing me down.
I tried time after time to reduce my alcohol intake to a “moderate” level, of a glass of wine or two on the weekends. Then I would have a stressful work week and say “screw it” and open a bottle on a weeknight. Then I would have a bottle open so I “might as well” finish it the next evening. Then I would try to reduce my intake again. Then I would have another stressful week and say “screw it” again. It was a vicious cycle. I didn’t realize it at the time but my alcohol intake was also depressing my mood and heightening my anxiety, which was counterproductive to all of the hard work I had done to improve my mental health. Despite the short-term relief I felt after a few glasses of wine, it was contributing to the problem all along. My therapist had suggested that I consider total abstinence from alcohol however that didn’t really seem like a viable option to me for a long time. First, I didn’t identify as an addict or as an alcoholic. At the same time, it felt like too much of a loss to give up alcohol. I didn’t want to give up wine tasting or cancel my wine club membership from my favorite winery. I didn’t want to forego a glass of nicely paired wine with dinner out. So, I kept trying to “moderate” my intake.
Finally in December 2019 I was at home visiting my parents for Christmas. I received a call from my partner, Rick, who was still in San Diego that our beloved pet parrot Tiago had unexpectedly passed away. We had suffered the tragic loss of Rick’s mom in 2018, so this was a double hit and another huge blow. So, I drank just enough to keep me comfortably numb from the moment I got that phone call from Rick until I made it back to San Diego. The day before I flew home, I had tickets to see my favorite band Against Me! in concert at my favorite venue- Mohawk in Austin, TX. I was devastated and considered not going to the concert, although ultimately decided to go because I thought it may be a cathartic emotional release, as their music helped me greatly over the years in my recovery from depression. The show offered not only that, but more. Against Me!’s singer Laura Jane Grace lives an alcohol-free lifestyle and is outspoken about mental health. Laura dedicated their song “Haunting, Haunted, Haunts” to an individual in the crowd and exclaimed that it was their first sober show. I was intoxicated but heard her message clear. The seed was planted. Over the next few days, I continued to contemplate the idea of sobriety. Then on January 2, 2020, I decided to stop drinking entirely and embrace an alcohol-free lifestyle. That was the solution all along, and I never looked back.
What great timing: my sobriety was solidified just in time when the COVID pandemic hit. Sheltering in place was scary and uncertain, but at least I wasn’t sitting at home drinking. Spring of 2020 when the beaches re-opened for active use after the initial pandemic shut-down, my friends Kat, Jaki, and I started swimming together. We kept each other going during that incredibly uncertain time and made an end of summer goal to swim a marathon-distance swim (7 miles from Swami’s to North Torrey Pines beach). My first marathon-distance swim in 6-7 years. It was so successful and exhilarating that we planned a second long swim, 7 miles from North Torrey Pines beach to La Jolla Cove. I was hooked again, and I felt that same motivation and sense of self that I had felt years before when I first started ocean swimming. Kat moved to France, the pandemic raged on, and Jaki and I kept swimming. Team Dumpster Fire (our clever moniker reflective of the general state of the world) was born, and we decided to train for Anacapa in 2021. In the back of my mind, I entertained the idea that if Anacapa went well, I would train for Catalina in 2022. I swam from Anacapa to Oxnard on September 11, 2021, and Jaki on September 13, 2021.
Without any hesitation I started anticipating my Catalina channel crossing. I was ready to commit to training for the swim that I had dreamed of for so long. But that was just the start. I went on to swim Around Coronado and the Catalina Channel in 2022, and 20 Bridges around Manhattan and the Length of Lake Tahoe in 2023. The Length of Lake Tahoe completed my California Triple Crown (Anacapa, Catalina, and Tahoe Length). In 2025, I will attempt the English Channel, and hopefully complete my Triple Crown (Catalina, 20 Bridges, and English Channel). I have an Against Me! flag that I proudly display from the pilot boat of all of my swims for motivation, and sing myself their songs during my long swims. Things came full circle as I recently had the opportunity to meet Laura Jane Grace after one of her shows, and share with her how her music and words have helped me over the year with my mental health, sobriety, and swimming. She was genuinely kind, gracious, and interested to hear my story which meant the world to me.
In short, none of this would have been possible if alcohol was still weighing me down. Sobriety is a radical choice to make and the ultimate act of self-love, and I am never turning back. Thank you for reading, and I can only hope that you find something in this that resonates with you as well.
-Kelley S