How record-breaking swimmer Diana Nyad found strength and healing in the water

I was so, you know, known around the world, really, for finally stumbling upon that beach in Key West

after trying that Cuba Swim Expedition dream for 35 years and failing four times

I would imagine the oration that I would give on the beach if I finally did make it to the other shore

but the truth is it didn't happen that way. I was stunned by the emotion of it all, by the physical duress of it all

And the first words I said to those screaming people on that beach were

we, meaning all of us, should never, ever give up. When I was 14, I didn't know at that time that my talent as an athlete

was going to be swimming over the curvature of the earth, you know, with a steel trap mind

And I was dreaming of the Olympics. I quite, you know, dedicated myself to that vision

Every single day got up at 4.30 in the morning, Christmas Day included. There was never a day I

didn't get up at 4.30. I got to swim practice first because I wanted to be first. I wanted to

work the hardest. And my coach thought I was going to be one of the best in the world. He was my

champion and I was his champion. I'm somewhat reluctant, you know, to dwell on, oh, the poor

me and the things that happened to me. And on the other hand, I can't live anybody else's life but

my own. And I can't have this psychological makeup of anybody else but myself. So yes

I went through trauma and that first attack, that first sexual molestation by my coach

This father figure of mine it was devastating isn strong enough It was a debilitating moment You can say it wasn my fault

It wasn't my fault. It doesn't matter. You're a child at the time and you take it as your fault

It's just what the syndrome is of shame. I told my mom she either didn't believe me or it was much too much for her to take

And so I started to escape. I started to be somewhere else

I started to be someone else. But swimming was my safe place

When I got in the pool or out in the ocean, all my fears went away

I was absolutely safe. Nobody could touch me. Nobody could talk to me, look at me sideways

I expressed my anger out there. I would stop in the middle of a set of 400s and slap the water and go underwater and scream, you know, at the top of my lungs

and when I was 17 I knew by the time the last 100 meter backstroke before the Olympic trials was

coming that I didn't have the speed and I was walking down that pool deck with the weight of

the world on my shoulders the sexual abuse had now gone on for three years I had been silenced

I had been shamed and so the weight of that was enormous and a friend of mine Suzanne came and she

felt something and she shook me and she said, I know your chances are slim, but don't let this

hundred meter backstroke go without giving it all of your soul and your heart and your body

I tell you what, when you finish this race, I want you to close your eyes, close your fists

and say it and mean it. I couldn't have done it a fingernail faster. She said, I guarantee you

you do it that way. There's nothing more you could possibly do. No matter what happens

you have no regrets I didn make it I was going on to the rest of my life not this esteemed Olympic trials And I walked across that pool deck It was a starry night in Florida I took my heavy swim bag and put it on the deck and I said to myself

no matter what you do, no matter where you go, you live every day of your life, so you can't live it a fingernail better

Many decades later, I was getting close to 60. I had this great job traveling all around the world, covering the biggest sporting events

interviewing all these people, chasing their excellence. And I am not feeling like a doer anymore

I'm watching all these people chase their dreams and I'm not chasing any dreams of my own

And I was with my mom one day. She had Alzheimer's and she said to me, I was the worst mother in the world, wasn't I

and I knew what she meant. And I said, no, mom, I lied. I said, you were the best mother in the

world. And she cried and I cried and we held each other. But I knew that was the day I forgave her

for not being there for me younger, that she just couldn't do it. She wasn't capable

And that was the day she asked for forgiveness. And when my mom died, something sparked even

bigger to say, well, mom was just 82 when she died and now I'm going to be 60, only 22 more years

What am I going to do with those? I'm going to go back and chase that maybe impossible dream

Everybody else had found it impossible so far. It had meant much more to me, that swim. It always

has, always will, than another notch in the endurance belt. And when I got back in and I

I hadn't swum in 30 years. It took tremendous discipline and even agony

It's grueling out there, all those long hours, and not to mention what the body goes through with a roiling sea and a powerful sea but also what the mind goes through to be in a state of sensory deprivation you don see well with your goggles you turning your head 53 times a

minute to breathe with a tight cap on you so you're in a state of the interior of your mind

very quickly in just seven eight hours not to mention 50 60 non-stop hours swimming

But the truth is, the water itself, the water itself was very healing

I wasn't any longer swimming with anger. I was swimming with awe of this blue planet of ours in the middle of the Gulf Stream on a summer's night

You can literally see two billion stars above you. It's so clear out there

There's no other orb in all of the universe that we know, at least today, that's blue

We have water and we have DNA and animals and vegetation. We have life

And so I felt that out in the ocean. I felt a connection and you feel the surge of tides under the steam of your own body

under the engine of your own will. And you feel the lift of the waves sometimes rather than the crash and the barrier of the waves

So I don't know if there's anybody who quite feels the depth of emotion of what I do when I look out at that horizon

That's the way I want to go through every day, just an unwavering, awake, alert commitment to feelings and to thoughts

And to be quite poetic about it, I want that last day to come, that last breath

and for me to say, I did it all. I did it all so I couldn't do it a fingernail better