Book Description

Most people who knew Catherine Garceau during the early years of this century were struck by just how much she had going for her. The tall blonde with a body to kill for had won a Bronze medal at the 2000 Olympic Games as part of Canada’s synchronized swimming team. But no one knew that Catherine, having lost her main outlet for her obsession with perfection, was floundering in her post-Olympic life. Performing in Las Vegas and building a career in business and marketing weren't fulfilling. In fact, part of her felt she was losing it all: her athletic body, her high-achieving mind and most humiliating, her image of excellence. Now, in Swimming Out of Water, Garceau goes beneath the surface of her life. From the lens of a life-changing experience she had while hiking in the Red Rock National Park outside Las Vegas. Stuck on a cliff, alone, for twenty-four hours, she flashes back to moments of fear, failure, loss, triumph, and breakthrough, which all decorated her journey with valuable lessons. Written in the journal she took with her that day, Garceau realizes and reveals the negative effects of sugar and many chemicals found in our food and environments, including the chlorine she had bathed in for so many years. Alas, with no one coming to her rescue, how did she get herself up from the ledge? How has her dream of a chlorine free swimming evolved? And how has she turned the stubborn eating disorders she faced into programs to help free other women from emotional eating? Birthed from the edge of the Red Rocks and brought to completion in her continued years of integration, education and healing, Swimming Out of Water's raw nature takes on the transparent quality of water, the very element Garceau is here to both defend and embody. Spend this day on the rocks with her...and discover the grace of swimming out of water.