The Optimist Daily · 23 hours ago

Podcast Transcript May 22, 2026— (Guest Interview) She Calls Herself a Mermaid now: How Swim Sista Swim Is Changing Who...

Stephanie McKenzie has been swimming confidently since childhood, yet even as an instructor for Swim Sista Swim, she still feels a flicker of doubt walking into a public pool alone-still notices she's often the only Black woman there. This is precisely what founder Carol Burrell set out to change: a 10-week program that creates protected space for Black women to learn swimming at their own pace, complete with psychotherapy sessions, hair care workshops, and post-swim gatherings where participants support each other through tears and triumphs. The barriers keeping Black women from water run deeper than fear-from myths about bone density to harsh pool chemicals that damaged their hair, from inadequate time to dry it properly to the weight of being watched and judged in white spaces. What emerges when those barriers fall is transformative: women who couldn't walk over bridges now swim fifty laps and train as instructors themselves, grieving mothers find healing in the water, and as one participant puts it with quiet joy, "I am now a mermaid."