Diving Deep to Learn From My Ancestors
One writer’s epic journey of self-discovery starts with conquering a simple fear: learning how to swim.
I dunk my face into a pot of cooking water. Three months ago, I had visions that my ancestors, the ones at the bottom of the Atlantic, told me I should find them. I envisioned their faces mangled with cuttlefish tentacles and tangled in sunken ship hulls.
With my head in a pot, I can feel the ancestors — I call them water spirits — peel the skin off my face like a ripe orange dangling from a tree in the spring sunlight. The water spirits shuck layers off my skin.
“Now, blow your bubbles,” Natalie, my swim instructor, says from the screen of the iPhone propped on the salt shaker.
A Canada native, Natalie is a professional diver and singer. She and her Mexican husband, Ivan, are among the snowbirds, musicians, chefs and yoga enthusiasts who travel to Akumal, Mexico, from November to April to escape the northern chill.
Until 65 years ago, no one was “from” Akumal. Pablo Bush Romero, a Mexican businessman, historian, writer and archeologist, founded the town in 1958 as an enclave for diving enthusiasts. Mexicans migrated to the small town between Cancun and Tulum to work at the resorts, restaurants and tourist attractions popping up along the Caribbean coastline in subsequent decades.
“People run to or away from something when they come to Mexico,” my friend Jen explained.
In my case, it was both. I moved here less than a week after my mom died from stomach cancer. I had no immediate family except for Grandma Lula, who lived in a nursing home in Philadelphia. The rag doll girl in me who mourned the loss of my family needed a way to remain connected to my lineage. Little did I realize I’d have to put my face in a pot to do it…
This is an excerpt from a piece that the talented writer and filmmaker Kerra Bolton recently published with our friends over at Memoir Land. Please head over to Memoir Land to keep reading Kerra’s full story, “The Water Spirits Will Carry Us.”
We’ve been so inspired by Kerra’s quest to learn to swim, dive and map sunken slave ships with Black marine archeologists — which is why we teamed up with her to help other writers explore their own family and ancestral stories.
Starting this Thursday, Kerra will be guiding a small cohort of Narratively Academy students on their own journeys in one of our inaugural classes: Writing With Your Ancestors: Infusing Memoir With Family History.
P.S.: If you’ve been wanting to sign up for this class but can’t afford the full cost, we’ve reserved two half-price scholarship seats, which are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you’re interested, email academy@narratively.com.