Life can throw up any number of challenges. Bringing up four children. Starting and closing businesses. Trying to understand the universe. Learning to ride a motorcycle AND, apparently, learning to ski at 50. When I started internet dating again this year, I found a partner who had only one request of me: that I learn to ski. It seemed reasonable at the time. So, while we have been starting a Community Interest Company www.suicidegriefsupport.com, holding retreats, going on holiday and while I have been writing my memoir, Apple Pie in the Bath – coming soon – – I have also been learning to ski. Fortunately, my partner Mike is a ski instructor. Even more fortunately, he decided not to teach me himself. Well done, Mike! Learning to let someone else take control When you are a strong woman who has brought up four neurodiverse children, mainly as a single parent, it can sometimes be difficult to listen. You become used to being the person who sorts things out. But through exploring myself and writing my memoir, I have been thinking a lot about surrender – about sometimes allowing life, other people and perhaps the universe to take control.. It was time to practise what I preach.
“Pizza, chips and a huge amount of courage.”
So in June I arrived at South Wilts Ski Club. Mike had already bought me a pair of custom-fitted ski boots for my 50th birthday. Possibly the most unromantic 50th birthday present ever.
Even putting them on was an adventure. Add a pair of skis and suddenly everything about your body feels wrong. Walking feels wrong. Standing feels wrong. Getting onto the travelator feels frankly ridiculous.
The first lessons: unfamiliar equipment, unfamiliar movements – and the reassuring safety bar.
And then I spotted it: THE BAR. A lovely, big, long safety bar at the bottom of the slope. Something I could hold on to. Something that reassured me I could stop. At 50, that feeling of control – or perhaps the illusion of control – turns out to be rather important. My natural safe position was backwards: squatting when I really needed to lean forwards. Unfortunately, leaning forwards made me go faster. I didn’t like that either. Thus began the battle of mind over control.
Then came the snowplough. If you want to turn left, press with your right foot. If you want to turn right, press with your left. Simple – except thinking it and actually persuading your body to do it are two completely different things.
So we went up and down, up and down. Make a pizza shape with the skis and you slow down. Make two chips and you speed up. With enormous patience from the instructors at South Wilts, things gradually started to happen.
South Wilts very kindly supported some of the cost of my lessons when I explained why I was learning and told them about the retreat we are running next year. That allowed me to have more one-to-one instruction than I might otherwise have had, and it made an enormous difference. Thank you for your kindness. By my third and fourth sessions, I was actually skiing. Slowly. I emphasise slowly. It reminded me of driving a car on your own for the first time. You have to learn all the different parts and hold them all in your working memory. But when some become automatic and you have to hold less, it becomes much easier.
Progress at South Wilts: more independence, but the safe space was still there.
I started to realise that learning to ski was teaching me how I learn. I have a busy head. I need multiple inputs: something for my brain to concentrate on, something I can hear and something I can physically feel. I also need feedback.
Most of all, I needed time to learn and not try to make it perfect straight away. My nervous system needed time to adjust.
Mike describes skiing as being like a Christmas cake. What everyone sees is the icing – the skier coming beautifully down the mountain in the conditions under foot. Underneath the icing, are all the ingredients: balance, body position, the steering elements; pressure, edge, rotation and co-ordination and rythmn to name but a few!
Initially, all those words flew straight past me while I concentrated on being less terrified than I looked. Gradually, though, the ingredients started making sense.
Knowing how you learn in life helps enormously when you are trying to learn something like skiing. And, as you will read in my book, surrendering control is both a mental and a practical attitude.
Practice what you preach, I guess.
Then somebody took away my bar
At the end of August we went to The Snow Centre at Hemel Hempstead. Real snow. We booked a whole day and sensibly started again from the beginning.
This time I was at least connected to my boots, which were connected to my skis – although the skis still appeared to have a bit of a life of their own. There was, however, one significant difference. There was no bar.
On real snow at Hemel: no safety bar, and a genuine milestone – skiing down independently.On real snow at Hemel: no safety bar, and a genuine milestone – skiing down independently.
Being in a group was different from one-to-one tuition. It highlighted something I had already discovered: feedback matters. When you cannot yet judge your own performance, timely feedback can make an enormous difference.
One woman in our group had skied as a child and was allowed to ski down independently. I was the only other person allowed to do it. There I was, on actual snow, snowploughing down the slope on my own. No bar.
Were there some bad habits creeping in? Absolutely. Was I given feedback about them? Absolutely. But I did it.
Mike has another analogy for learning to ski: a tree. The trunk represents correct development. Keep learning and practising correctly and you travel up the trunk towards mastery. Stop learning or being taught and you can head out along a branch – until the branch ends and you have to unlearn the habit and find the trunk again.
Hence one of Mike’s favourite sayings: perfect practice makes perfect. I am determined to stay on the trunk.
And one of my favourite sayings: practice makes permanence. The more I practice, the easier a new skill becomes.
Taking the stabilisers off
A couple of weeks after Hemel, I returned to South Wilts for one final session. The slope had not changed. The travelator had not changed. Even my beloved safety bar was still there.
Only I had changed.
I could balance a ski pole across my arms while skiing. I could move from left to right with increasing confidence and – something I would never have believed during that first lesson – with some speed. The bar was still there. I just didn’t need it in quite the same way. Just like in our retreats, we offer support and containment within a group that can give us stability whilst we heal – just like the bar. One guest has been on two retreats now and said that coming back has helped her realise how much she has progressed in six months. She has realised that she does not need the containment as much as she did the first time. Just like me and my bar. Evenso, the stability of the containment remains for her through the connections she made on the retreat which she can lean on whenever she needs to.
“Sometimes surrender means trusting yourself enough to loosen your grip on the bar whilst knowing it is still there if you need it.”
Next stop: Tamworth in October for two more days on snow. After that, the mountains. I owe an enormous thank you to Craig, Josh & Henry at South Wilts Ski Club, and to everyone for their for their patience, encouragement and generosity. And, reluctantly, perhaps Mike deserves a thank you too. Those ski boots may have been spectacularly unromantic – but I’m beginning to think he might have been onto something.