The girl stood on tip toe on the narrow knobbly rock, one hand holding on for dear life, the other reaching for the ledge above.
The ground plummeted some 5 metres below.
Her friend holding the ropes sat not far above her, urging her on.
She had about one metre left to climb. She just needed to get over the ledge, the tricky obstacle in her way.
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I don’t consider myself especially brave.
Yet I’ve been called that a lot recently.
It all started with my solo trek down the length of New Zealand.
But I definitely didn’t feel brave when I stood at the northern tip of New Zealand about take the first step.
In fact, I was a total bundle of nerves and riddled with self-doubt and fear. I’d never done anything like this before. Who was I to think I could walk 3,000km (1,864 miles)?
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Almost four months on a cosy 28-foot boat with the love of your life, dealing with temperamental weather and an ocean as changeable as a teenager’s mood swings is one of those experiences that make you look at life and your place in it.
I don’t know if I’d go as far to say I’m stronger or that it was a transformational experience – during the sail I often compared to my 3,000km (1,864 miles) walk down the length of New Zealand, which really did change me as a person – but the sailing challenge made me sit up.
These are some of the things I learnt.
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Ok, so it’s not a volcanic mountain per se, but the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland is still volcanic in nature, being the result of an ancient volcanic fissure.
And it’s pretty fricken cool.
Continue readingI always felt there was something wrong with a previous relationship.
I was right – it was emotionally abusive.
Only I didn’t realise it at the time.
I thought it was me that was setting the relationship all skew whiff – I was blamed enough times to believe it.
But my friends knew something was off.
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We’d been sailing all night and were coming up 17 hours on the water.
It had been a night darker than coal; no moon, thick dense cloud. I couldn’t even make out the bow of the boat.
The wind had been keen and the waves had whooshed. It was anyone’s guess what they looked like beyond the ghostly froth of bubbles that stirred as the boat ploughed through the water.
It felt like the waves were big. It felt like we were going fast.
Come the grey of morning, we were exhausted and the sea was a confused mess, as if it was throwing a temper tantrum at the injustice of the early start to a new day.
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One of the defining features of my previous relationship which was emotionally abusive was the sense that there was something wrong with me.
There were a lot of things I never seemed to get right – the time in the morning I brought his cup of tea, how I peeled mushrooms, pureeing soup instead of leaving it chunky, not caring about him enough.
And it was always my fault when he got angry about it; a classic abusive trait.
But really, my only fault was that I took it personally. I took his claims that I was to blame for his attitude to mean there was something wrong with me – that it said more about me than it said about him.
When I set out on sailing around Great Britain with my current and amazing partner, fundraising for the UK Charity SafeLives, which works to end domestic abuse, I spoke to the girls at SafeLives and we talked about triggers.
Could there be anything during the adventure that might trigger feelings associated with my previous experience of emotional abuse?
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It’s two weeks into the adventure of sailing around Great Britain and I’m adjusting to being on the water and living in a 28-foot space.
I’m a newbie to this sailing game so it’s been a full-on introduction to the rigours of sailing.
Here are five things I’ve learnt so far:
Continue readingIf there was one word to describe the realisation that I had been in an emotionally abusive relationship, that word would be shame.
It would quickly be followed by the word weakness.
How did I not realise I was in an emotionally abusive relationship? How weak was I to get into this sort of relationship and to stay so long? What does that say about me? What will other people think?
For several years, those two words have hung around me like a bad smell.
I no longer want to give them power, which is why I’m talking about it now and why, during our upcoming sail around Great Britain, my current (and amazing) partner Mark and I are fundraising for the UK charity SafeLives, which works to end domestic abuse. You can donate here.
Continue reading“So, how are you feeling about your big sailing adventure?”
That’s the question I’ve been getting as the countdown to the start date of the big sail around Great Britain gets closer – just nine sleeps now!
And my answer?
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Katrina Megget 