TRUSTING THE FALL BY MADELYN HARVEY

I’ve been a swim lesson instructor for five summers now, specializing in teaching children swim team starts. Learning racing dives is scary and difficult. And on your first try, 10 times out of 10, you’re going to fail. Fail hard. Like Mega-Belly Flop Hard. And you’re going to fail on your second try. And many, many tries after that. 

 There's a kind of elegance to it. And a stupid amount of trust.

 First, the swimmers trust me that I’ve taught them well enough and am keeping a close watch to ensure don't hurt themselves, that trust is the easy part. 

 The harder part is trusting themselves. They have to trust their body that it knows what to do to get the right angle of entry into the water. They have to trust themselves enough to believe that this time, this time they'll enter the water just right.

 But the part where I see my kids have breakthroughs is when they trust the fall. They have to jump. They have to hang in the air in a moment of suspension, weightlessness, reaching. 

Trusting the fall, that’s the hardest part. The moment they do that, that’s when they get it right.