A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving by Virginia Eubanks

A spirited, wise, often hilarious, profoundly moving story of one woman's efforts to survive caregiving, trauma, love, and the systems seemingly set up to fail us.

 

One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been brutally beaten just steps from their house. In the weeks, then months and years that followed, they faced a cascade of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance, inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, a second case. Eubanks had developed what is known as “collateral” PTSD, common among caregivers but rarely discussed.

A reporter and an activist, Eubanks turned to reliable sources to figure out how to heal: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn’t until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found advice that actually helped. Inspired by its lessons, she took a series of classes: kayak self-rescue, winter survival, map and compass, bushwhacking, first aid, lifeguarding. In a memoir as disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, Eubanks draws lessons from these experiences, her research, and interviews with everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. The result is a moving, hopeful, darkly funny story of two people caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. Built from cataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the networks of care that sustain our lives, reminding us that no one survives the wilderness alone.