Hey, I've been a forum member for aaages but never posted much as I've been more active on the UkMerpod FB page than anywhere else. I finally made a post the other day the realised I had never introduced myself. Oops, better late than never!
Anyway, I'm called Emily and I'm based in Brighton in the Uk, where I run the local branch of NoTanx freediving club 2 nights a week.
I got into mermaiding about 2 or 3 years ago after feeling really disconnected from my body (if that makes sense!) after having a child and a chronic back pain issue for several years.
Basically I just felt afraid to move my body unselfconsciously and it was really affecting my happiness and mental health generally. I knew I had to address what i was feeling but didn't really know how - but I had this memory of swimming underwater as a child, and of accidentally doing the undulating dolphin kick, and of it feeling really natural and like I was really 'in' my body and in the moment. I really linked that idea to feeling like a mermaid, and just kept thinking how cool it would be if there was somewhere that people who felt like I did could learn to swim like that and start to feel better about themselves.
To cut a long story short I joined my local freediving club with the idea of eventually creating the place where people could learn to reconnect with their bodies through freediving and mermaiding. 3 years on and I run a body positive mermaid business runnign mermaid experiences in small private pools and have just started a collaboration with the head freediving coach at my club running monthly mer-meets and holidays. It's basically changed my life, and I really want others to get to have a similarly transformative experience that I've had. I'm a curvy mer and one of the things that I love about the mermaid community is how inclusive it is of people of all sizes and nobody has ever tried to make me feel like I shouldn't be doing this because I'm not super slim.
I would love to meet more body positive mers and especially people who are in the UK/South Coast/Brighton area
This is me at Dive4Life in Germany last year. I'm going back in a couple of weeks and I can't wait! I'm the one in the yellow tail.
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Originally Posted by Ransom
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