I was sold as soon as I saw the subtitle ‘…a memoir on grief, swimming and sisterhood’ of Freya Bromley’s The Tidal Year.

Much like Jessica Lee’s Turning, Bromley tracks her emotional state against a year of swimming. Where Lee focused on lakes around Berlin, Bromley decided to swim in Britain’s tidal pools – it was her way of managing the incomprehensible grief she felt after the death of her teenage brother, Tom.

Untethered by Tom’s death, Bromley struggled to recognise her grief, let alone express it. She found her way late to cold water swimming (having previously swum in lidos), and realised that swimming was the only time her head felt ‘clear’. After her first swim in a tidal pool, her curiosity about their history and importance to seaside communities was piqued, and she set about visiting all of Britain’s tidal pools in one year, with her friend, Miri.

Tidal pools are pools of saltwater left on a beach by an ebbing tide. I’d never swum in a tidal pool before that trip to Margate and the ability to enjoy the salt of the sea in a safe watery cradle was sublime.

The draw of swimming in tidal pools is patently obvious (although maybe not to Bromley at the time!) – the pools offer sanctuary in turbulent and unpredictable waters. The book details the pools she visited, noting curious facts about their history and the now largely community-driven efforts to maintain them (side note: next time I visit the UK, tidal pools will be on my list).

But to the grief, and such an interesting and frank account of grieving. From the outset, it is clear that Bromley has no handle on what she feeling, and no idea of how to safely start examining those feelings.

It wasn’t uncommon for me to be angry when I felt misunderstood, and it wasn’t uncommon for me to be misunderstood when talking about grief, so I suppose for a few years I’d been quite an angry person.

She compares her grief to that of others, which only results in her feeling more isolated –

Nothing triggered me more than hearing people talk about their pets’ death… Losing her dog was incomparable to the loss I had suffered and yet I couldn’t stop myself comparing… I felt rage, but mostly I felt jealousy. I was jealous that she’d felt able to ask for the time and space she needed. I was jealous that she’d had all these words to articulate how she felt. I was jealous that people acknowledged her grief. I was jealous that she had asked for help and that people had helped her. I was jealous because what Annie showed me was that I’d wasted time I could’ve been loved and cared for, being alone and misunderstood instead.

I occasionally remind my bereavement clients that there is no such thing as ‘grief Olympics’ – no one is doing their grieving ‘best’ or more skillfully. Someone’s pain doesn’t beat another person’s pain –  you’re just both in pain. And you can’t do someone else’s grieving for them, you can only do your own. And if you decide to deny your grief, well, that takes an enormous amount of energy, and it will always find its way out. This memoir explores all of those things, and the swimming bits give the reader respite.

Bromley comes to understand elements of her grief – her tidal pools project gave it focus, a way to memorialise Tom, although this had not been her intention (it was her escape, after all).

One of the many strange things about someone you love dying is that they’re both everywhere and nowhere.

And the memoir concludes with Bromley’s acknowledgement that her grief isn’t ‘going away’. That it is something that stays with you, and that you adjust around it (I often refer clients to this wonderful illustration by Mari Andrew). Bromley recalls that soon after Tom’s death she is told –

…grief is not linear, it doesn’t just get better and easier, it snakes back and forth throughout your life. One day, she’d said, you might get married or have a baby and those days will be very difficult. You’ll have new relationships with your grief at those times. It might hurt or heal in new, unexpected ways. You’ll carry it with you all your life.

I was predisposed to loving this book (swimming! grief! friendship!) but overlook my bias, and know that it’s beautifully written and extremely engaging. You can also listen to Bromley speak about tidal pools in her podcast, The Tidal Year.

4/5

While in Cornwall, Bromley discovers a local specialty, Stargazey Pie. Isn’t it weirdly magnificent?!