Hannah Stowe, MOVE LIKE WATER: My Story of the Sea
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[1:03]Hannah Stowe is the author of Move Like Water, My Story of the Sea.
[1:08]Hannah lives in Dresden, Germany, writing, painting, and sailing, her own boat named Larry.
[1:14]FYI, it was recently a New York Times editor's pick.
[1:18]Welcome Hannah.
[1:19]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss.
[1:22]Move Like Water, My Story of the Sea.
[1:25]And memoir, thank you so much for having me.
[1:27]And so, honor to have you on.
[1:29]First of all, beautiful story in so many different ways.
[1:32]Can you tell listeners a little bit about why the memoir and tell them a little bit more
[1:36]about your whole aquatic existence, so to speak.
[1:41]So, I grew up in Pembroke Street in West Wales, which is a peninsula, so it's surrounded
[1:47]by the sea on three sides.
[1:50]The weather there is quite a big factor of living there, so you get these really strong
[1:55]south-westities, which is a tropical maritime wind, which blows, I guess, north-east.
[2:00]So, sort of from the Azores up towards the UK.
[2:03]And it's this warm wet wind that Britain was kind of this whole salt slick with it.
[2:08]So, you kind of grew up being quite immersed in the water whether you wanted to be or not.
[2:13]So, it's only coastal national park.
[2:15]So, the marine life there is really abundant.
[2:18]And what growing up there, I kind of took it for granted because you just think that's normal
[2:22]and that's what everyone experiences.
[2:24]I'd walk on the coast path and there'd be seals in the water and breeding on the beaches.
[2:28]I'd watch them have their pups every year and probably early summer.
[2:32]There'll still be some late pups being born now, even in the autumn storms, it's not going
[2:36]to sweep in.
[2:38]Growing up there, it just was really that the marine life was all around you.
[2:42]And I guess that was sort of coupled with my upbringing.
[2:45]And then when I got to award the age of, well, from 16 onwards, I do remember feeling
[2:50]like this huge itch to travel and adventure and explore.
[2:56]And I just got obsessed with the idea of seeing what was over the horizon.
[3:00]And so, I started working on a tourist boat when I was 18, which did trips around Ramsey
[3:06]Island, which is a RSPP reserve, which is a charity for birds in the UK.
[3:11]So, I started working there but really soon afterwards started sailing and my first sort
[3:16]of big breakthrough was on a boat off the coast of Canada, which was a sailing boat.
[3:22]And we were doing research for someone's PhD on northern vodelnose whales.
[3:27]So, I was there to sail the boat, but doing the research was really amazing.
[3:32]It's definitely like a life-changing trip after I started studying marine biology.
[3:40]And then I combined the two things, so working as a sailor and studying marine biology
[3:44]started doing some of the cetaceans like wild, often a progress research based on sailing
[3:49]boats.
[3:50]And I was having all these experiences, which were really wild to me.
[3:55]It was like living in blue planet or like some nature documentary, but also so removed
[4:01]from anything anyone in my family had done.
[4:03]So I was writing these letters home all the time, so it sort of came from there.
[4:09]And then also another scientist that was working with, I used to keep these journals,
[4:14]which would like research and yes, travel journals.
[4:18]And I used to illustrate them and it was just for me, but one day I was going through
[4:22]one of them and he saw it and he was like, what are you doing with this thing?
[4:25]You should publish this, man.
[4:26]That's kind of how it started.
[4:28]Wow, amazing.
[4:30]Tell me what the rest of your family when you were writing the letters.
[4:34]Tell me about that and nobody else was interested in what lurked beyond the horizon.
[4:38]I think they were very interested, but if I go for my mother's family, like my grandmother
[4:44]was from the most working class family, which I think is like blue colors, the equivalent
[4:50]in the U.S.
[4:51]So she left school at 14 to work because she had to.
[4:54]And then she doesn't have a passport.
[4:57]She's never left the UK, I think she sort of lived within her horizons, my mom's an
[5:04]artist and illustrator and writer also, but she sort of went a bit further and then
[5:10]I feel like she sort of expanded this sphere a little bit and then just in how she brought
[5:15]me up, I think she really just gave me the confidence to like all delusion to do whatever
[5:21]I felt like I wanted to do and I feel like, you know, my mom's lived on the coast, like
[5:26]she she lives where I grew up, but she's never been to see in the same way.
[5:31]She's never like been out of the sight of land and it's something that she'd really
[5:35]love to do.
[5:36]She hasn't been hugely well in the last few years, but she's just had a surgery and
[5:39]recovery and one part of that is going to be coming on my boat with me, we're going to
[5:44]take her in an adventure.
[5:45]Oh, that's so nice.
[5:47]Oh my gosh.
[5:48]I loved what you wrote about all of your work and all of that and what really hit home
[5:53]for me and that I couldn't stop thinking about was your own personal physical journey,
[5:59]your injury, your recovery, your relationship to pain and the way you wrote through that,
[6:03]which I found incredibly gripping and just I felt so badly for you and was like, oh,
[6:10]my gosh, get another opinion.
[6:12]Like I wanted to leap through the book and get you to the right hospital and all that.
[6:16]Can you talk a little about what happened and where things went wrong, what you would
[6:21]do differently?
[6:22]I don't know.
[6:23]Maybe not that you could have done anything differently.
[6:25]It was the system, of course, but just so frustrating that this happened to you and how
[6:30]you feel about the whole thing.
[6:32]It's quite wild.
[6:33]So I had a spinal injury in 2017, I fit into our six or seven years ago.
[6:40]I was surfing and I basically, my back got squished by a wave and I knew I'd hurt myself,
[6:47]but I didn't really know how much and I always thought like a spinal injury would be super
[6:51]traumatic and you wouldn't be able to walk, which in some cases is the case, but in
[6:55]other cases is not.
[6:57]I knew something was wrong with me, but I kept going to doctors and I kept being really
[7:00]dismissed.
[7:01]I mean, one doctor just, she didn't even do any physical examination of me at all.
[7:06]She just said, well, you look pretty healthy.
[7:07]I'm like, yeah, because the problems in my spine, like not in my face.
[7:12]Oh my gosh.
[7:13]I think this is a global problem, but I think I only really know about the UK healthcare
[7:18]system, but it is not set up for women to be believed with conditions they have.
[7:25]It's almost like you have to prove how bad things are for you to just get basic care.
[7:32]And you know, this doesn't really seem to be getting any better, but basically I had
[7:39]fractured a vertebrae, I had a herniated dehydrated disc and I had one surgery, when they
[7:46]eventually took it seriously, I basically went from being told you're fine, go away to
[7:51]all you actually need surgery, like straight away, which was quite a, I don't know.
[7:57]I think part of me knew that, but it was also by shocking experience.
[8:02]I think I was 23 or 22, like very early 20s, and it's just not something that you expect
[8:09]to experience.
[8:10]And the funny thing is I was never, when I started writing the book, I wasn't 100% sure
[8:17]how much I was going to talk about it, just because it still felt like quite a raw experience
[8:22]for me and like quite a lot to unpick and unpack.
[8:25]But while I was writing the book, I'd only written one chapter and I actually re-injured
[8:30]my back again, which was only because it was never actually fixed probably the first time.
[8:34]So even after I had these like very invalidating experiences, I started going back to the
[8:41]surgeon who did my surgery and just saying I didn't feel right and he said, well, I can't
[8:45]see what the problem is, which should have been, I can't see what the problem is, so
[8:50]I'm going to investigate and find out, but it made me feel like, oh, maybe I'm the
[8:55]problem.
[8:56]So re-injured my back and all I did to re-injured it was, I was just turning over in bed.
[9:00]I was really lucky because I just finished a really long sailing trip and it would have
[9:04]been so like catastrophically bad if it happened like a week before.
[9:09]So while I was writing the book, I actually ended up, you know, I previously experienced
[9:14]definitely the worst experience of my life and I didn't expect it to happen again and then when
[9:19]I realized that is what was happening again, that was quite jarring moment. But I think it was
[9:23]good for the book because it sort of let me re-explore this the first time and then
[9:28]while I was writing the book, I ended up getting a second surgery and that has been a really
[9:33]positive experience. It's completely fixed now. I have a great neurosurgeon who actually was the
[9:40]the first person to apologise to me. He was the first person to take him to account like female
[9:44]hormones and how they affect your back and flexibility and things like that and it isn't crazy
[9:49]to me that this is the first person who's even considered this is a, you know, if you have a
[9:54]a monthly cycle, which you're going to have for a really long time as the first person
[9:58]actually considered.
[10:00]how that will affect mobility and things like that soon.
[10:02]How does it affect mobility?
[10:04]So if you're concentrating around that time, you will be more flexible
[10:08]and I was always way more prone to hurting myself like in those periods
[10:12]because I'm hyper mobile anyway and then it was like causing more problems
[10:17]without really knowing to sort of take that out.
[10:20]So what does that mean during those times?
[10:22]No, you're a lot more careful.
[10:24]Yeah, I'm actually having a baby like next month.
[10:28]No, that's amazing.
[10:29]So I have a lot of the relax and I was worried about like my joints through this
[10:36]process but just knowing to be really careful, I feel completely fine.
[10:39]So it's great.
[10:40]Congratulations.
[10:41]That's really exciting.
[10:43]Can I read a passage or two about when you got hurt in your relationship
[10:47]to pain and healing and all that?
[10:49]So when you hurt yourself, I just wanted to read when this happened.
[10:53]For a minute, I was going carried along with the wave
[10:55]and then without intending to, I pulled back.
[10:57]I didn't feel in control of my body.
[10:59]It was too late and the wave took me with it anyway.
[11:01]Tumbling head over heels as the crest broke.
[11:04]Surfacing, gasping for air, eyes and nose streaming.
[11:07]I grabbed from my board and tried again.
[11:09]Again, again, I couldn't do it.
[11:10]I couldn't get it together.
[11:12]I was never in the right place.
[11:13]Up was down.
[11:14]Down was up as I was tumbled over and over.
[11:17]The water no longer held me.
[11:18]It's through me.
[11:19]I cat playing with a mouse.
[11:20]I did not know this water.
[11:22]I did not know this self.
[11:24]My pulse was racing.
[11:25]My breath fast, shallow panicked.
[11:27]My chest felt like it was being pressed inwards.
[11:30]I knew I needed to get to the shore and started to paddle.
[11:32]A large wave caught me from behind.
[11:35]I hadn't heard it coming.
[11:36]The noise inside my own head suddenly too loud for me to hear the water.
[11:40]I couldn't even fathom trying to ride it as the water crashed.
[11:43]It jarred me down hard into my board and held me there.
[11:46]My eyes stung with tears.
[11:48]I was burning lungs back ankle.
[11:51]I was rolled over and over until the water was shallowed
[11:54]and I was unceremoniously dumped on the shore.
[11:57]Wow, you're in it with you, reading that.
[12:00]Does it feel weird to just hear it or do you immediately feel like you're in it again?
[12:05]So that chapter of the book, I've only read it to edit it.
[12:10]Like, I've never read it as a whole.
[12:13]I think I wanted to write it in the way that it was.
[12:17]I feel like if my writing's ever good, it's very immersive.
[12:21]But if that means I'm also there too.
[12:24]So you trust my editor a lot, both my UK and US editors.
[12:28]Oh, it's just absolutely great.
[12:30]And I trusted them to tell me if anything was there that shouldn't be there.
[12:37]But when I was asked to read the audio book, I did say no,
[12:40]because I didn't think I failed to get through that chapter.
[12:44]Although your voice is amazing, I could just listen to you speak all day.
[12:49]Okay, so this is your response later to pain.
[12:54]This is just how you had to walk differently.
[12:56]My walk was slow with a slight lamp as I tried to keep up.
[12:58]My friends regular gate always have a step in front of mine.
[13:01]That half step seemed like a mile.
[13:04]It felt as if I was watching everyone else walk on with their lives while I fell behind.
[13:09]I tried to walk down to the water as much as I could.
[13:11]There were good days where I could make it and stare out over the winter sea.
[13:15]And I would remember my why, why I was still studying, why I got out of bed each day.
[13:20]There were bad days too when the walk was too far or too depressingly difficult.
[13:25]I felt like I was being given more and more to deal with,
[13:27]a tight ropes at higher and higher.
[13:29]And yet all my methods of finding balance, running, swimming, yoga, walking, all of my safety
[13:34]nets were being pulled away.
[13:36]The one thing I did still have were pens for my hands, paint, brushes.
[13:41]Every night I poured out all the things I could never find the words to say out loud,
[13:45]pages and pages written to myself, ep talks, the things I was grateful for.
[13:49]I couldn't sail anymore.
[13:50]I could hardly stand on dry land, let alone on the swell of the sea.
[13:54]I couldn't venture offshore into the world of the whale.
[13:57]So in my little room, I painted it, the seas, the stars, the skies, the spray.
[14:04]Really beautiful.
[14:06]You're a beautiful writer.
[14:07]When I started writing, I think most people write when they're a kid.
[14:13]And then I'd stop and then yeah, start it again at that point too.
[14:19]And what about the actual painting?
[14:21]Do you still doing that?
[14:23]How much does that help with your narrative and creativity in general?
[14:28]Yeah, I think I'm quite a visual person and sometimes the images come first.
[14:35]So the book of first came out in the UK and for the UK edition, like I ended up
[14:42]waiting for the cover of the UK edition, I went, oh, beautiful.
[14:45]So for people listening, the US cover is more illustrated.
[14:50]I'm just like a watercolor of a whale with drops and birds and a boat in the back and
[14:54]very, you know, I can't explain anything.
[14:58]This is why I think about the UK cover is much more visual and like a white background
[15:04]navy bottom with just this giant whale bursting out of the water.
[15:07]Yes, so there's a humpback that I painted and this one's also illustrated.
[15:12]And I think the images came first, it's just another way of communicating, isn't it?
[15:17]I think sometimes you have to be like all my smarter than using words because you are
[15:22]trying to I think it's also I like having the words and the images together.
[15:26]I think just because it's nonfiction, it doesn't mean that you have to sort of separate these two
[15:30]things. Yeah, but with regards to like actual painting, I was doing the cover for the book UK
[15:37]one right before my second surgery, which you probably shouldn't have done.
[15:41]And it was really painful to do it.
[15:43]So I've had like a bit of a mental block around painting suits for over here,
[15:47]which is kind of frustrating.
[15:49]And I'm hoping I will get through it as I'm going back.
[15:51]Oh my gosh.
[15:52]Is there a place where you have all the illustrations?
[15:56]Well, I've actually just put them on.
[15:58]I have just finished redesigning my website.
[15:59]So I just put them on yesterday.
[16:01]Yesterday.
[16:02]Okay, one last paragraph.
[16:04]This is about healing.
[16:05]I have since had a lot of time to reflect on healing.
[16:08]I now know that recovery is rarely like any of the triumphant comeback stories that are portrayed
[16:13]in the media.
[16:14]The reality is a visceral, gritty struggle of progress, uncomfortable lessons and setbacks,
[16:20]and it is unclear when the process ends.
[16:22]For me, there was the physical side of healing, the side that needed surgery,
[16:25]a side that five years later means I still need injections in my spine,
[16:29]and I will always need physiotherapy.
[16:30]And now, of course, we know you had a second surgery.
[16:32]Okay, but there is also the mental side, which is less often spoken about,
[16:36]as well as the part where physical and mental combine.
[16:39]For me, I think healing is like a garden.
[16:42]You have to choose the right location for the right plants,
[16:45]the place where they can grow.
[16:46]You must provide sunlight, water, and nutrients.
[16:48]You must prune with a gentle hand and rip out any weeds that will inhibit and stifle.
[16:53]It is not a linear process.
[16:55]It comes in cycles, in seasons, with dormant periods.
[16:58]And you need to give it time, which was the hardest thing for me to understand.
[17:01]The pace of my life had always been extreme.
[17:03]I had reached out for anything I ever wanted, worked for it until it was mine.
[17:07]I did not understand how to be slow, how to be still.
[17:12]I totally relate to that.
[17:13]Oh my gosh, it's so hard for anybody to just take their normal life and be like,
[17:19]oh, okay, so this happened and now I have to change everything and I'm reliant on this
[17:23]for my mental health and my physical health and now it's all gone and it's out of my control.
[17:29]I don't know, maybe I'm just projected to that.
[17:31]No, I think, although, so like from that point, I didn't know that I was going to have
[17:37]the second surgery and yeah, I actually found out that I was definitely going to have it
[17:42]like the week after I hunted in the manuscript, so yeah, it was quite strange timing,
[17:46]but I think that, you know, when you think about like difficult things and if you would have
[17:52]the time to do it again, like you're hardly ever given that chance and that's one thing I'm really
[17:57]pleased with my with my second recovery is I have just given myself so much time.
[18:01]I gave myself a year before I started saving again and just, I don't know, I think you just have
[18:10]to trust in that process.
[18:11]I'm actually about to finish work for like maternity leave, which is really difficult because
[18:16]I know I'm going to have to turn down things in that time that I will want to do and it's so hard
[18:22]to like trust that they will come round again, but I'm really trying to lean into that and
[18:28]yeah, just trusting that things will come up at the right time and taking this space because
[18:32]you can never get the time back.
[18:35]Well, you may feel differently once you have the actual baby, I'm just going to throw that
[18:42]out there.
[18:43]Things might not seem quite as enticing as they seem now or maybe more so.
[18:48]So everyone experience is still really, but you know, this is going to sound ridiculous,
[18:52]but you're so young, you have your whole life in front of you, but there's going to be
[18:56]eight million other opportunities and you're very, very talented obviously in many ways,
[19:00]so I have no doubt.
[19:02]But this is what I think there is no rush in like sometimes you're sort of made to feel like
[19:07]you have to do this and this by like a certain age or whatever.
[19:11]But that's what been my biggest change recently.
[19:13]Like there's no rush.
[19:14]There is no rush.
[19:15]You already published a memory, but how yeah, 28, 29 held you, 29, 29.
[19:21]Yeah, you're good.
[19:22]You're ahead of the game.
[19:24]I finished it like the end of the book, I'm 25 and I was like, it's kind of a weird thing to do,
[19:30]right now, 25.
[19:32]Well, I mean, I think memoir has changed a lot.
[19:36]It used to be, you know, basically like autobiography, like a more of my health experience.
[19:41]Now it's just a long personal essay essentially.
[19:43]It's sharing a piece of your life.
[19:45]That's really important and you don't necessarily need to do it at any age.
[19:49]I mean, I will say it took me until I was 46 to publish my own memoir, but there you go.
[19:55]Well, it's like I had all of it in my head and that feels a lot better than it's not in my
[20:00]but somewhere else. Yes, it's very therapeutic. So are you writing any more in your
[20:06]spirit? I know you're not painting, but what great about let's are are you using at the moment?
[20:11]Yeah, so I'm actually like contracted for my second book at the moment, which is going to be
[20:16]about the female history of seafaring, which I think kind of it's a nonfiction again. And like,
[20:24]this has been, I mean, two things. When I pitched the book, this wasn't a plan, but I think it's
[20:30]going to have a element of the motherhood and how that's going to be in that sort of transition in
[20:36]my personal narrative in the book, along with, yeah, looking at some of the sort of pioneering
[20:41]women in the past who've gone to see and change that landscape whose stories we don't necessarily
[20:48]get told. So it's going to be a lot of digging around in maritime museum archives and some travel
[20:54]and hopefully some sailing for me as well. So that's amazing. What advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[21:04]Well, I would like to give this to myself, but it's like don't take things too personally. Like
[21:10]you don't need everybody to like your work. You need one acceptance. You don't need 10.
[21:16]And then I think just find your own way like I always read things saying, oh, you should try and
[21:21]write five minutes every day, but my writing actually gets worse if I do too much. So like just
[21:26]find what works for you. Yeah. And I think have to just be a bit thick skin. Is there a place in the
[21:33]world body water someplace you are longing to explore? Yes, I'll try and see. And that's going to be
[21:40]hopefully the sort of central ground of my next book. So planning, I don't know. I'm planning
[21:48]trips, but I don't know. Well, it's going to manifest itself right now because I'm assuming
[21:52]about how this huge change in life. So yeah, we'll get that somehow somewhere somehow.
[21:58]Yeah. Well, you will not be moving like water. You will be moving like a very slow glacier
[22:06]with like a thousand penguins on your back. Something like that.
[22:09]Hannah, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on mom's no time to read books, especially as
[22:14]a seem to be mom yourself. And thank you for sharing your pain, your healing, your experience.
[22:21]I feel like you're going to be one of these famous examples of like the modern day woman sailor.
[22:27]I feel like I'm going to see you on the cover of Time Magazine in like 10 years and be like,
[22:31]I interviewed her. Yeah, I'm not for my phone. I'm just I'm just a home a lot of the time like
[22:38]hanging out with my cats. You know, I not be used to take any time off and now I have full time
[22:44]yeah, working it out. There are different seasons of life. This is just as you well know from your
[22:50]book. All right, well, congratulations. Lovely chatting. Thank you so much. Okay, bye bye.
[22:58]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have time to read books. Don't forget to
[23:02]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books. Also sign
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[23:12]on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[23:17]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.