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The Guardian Archive Long Read

Hello, I'm Wendell Stevenson. I'm a writer and I'm the author of Cold Comfort,

How Cold Water Swimming Cured My Broken Heart that was published in the Long Read in 2021.

What drew me to the story was really the sea and the experience of being in the sea.

And over that winter, the first winter when I was cold water swimming, I was also keeping a journal.

I remember being in touch with editors at the Long Read. And I said, I want to do something about

why cold water helps and helps people feeling low and with depression and other

ailments like inflammation. And I described to them why I had started doing it. And I think it was

Claire Longrigg, who's kind of brilliant, said, this is a personal essay, Wendy. We just want you to

write about what happened to you. So that's how it happened. And then I thought, hang on a second,

I've got this journal I've been keeping. This is almost perfect. So it was a very natural

evolution from swimming to writing to condensing that into a story. When I wrote the article,

Coldwater swimming was really taking off and becoming a real trend, almost a fad,

particularly in lockdown. I think a lot of people with a bit more time on their hands went swimming

and went to the coast and started getting into the sea. And I think there was a friend of mine

who slightly rolled her eyes at me and she said, oh, another middle-aged woman writing about how

cold water swimming has helped them through their travails of life. It's, rolled her eyes at me and she said, oh, another middle-aged woman writing about how Coleswater

swimming has helped them through the travails of life. It's interesting that this has continued.

And I see, I live in Brittany in the north coast of France and I see every year more and more people

in the sea. I still swim when I'm here every day. And I think that as much as it's a fad,

it's a sort of rediscovery of being outside and

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