I'm Oprah Winfrey.
Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
Like so many of you, I watched Diana Nyad's first tentative steps returning to land after more than two days at sea.
I watched with wonder and amazement.
Who is this woman and how did she do that?
What does it take to swim 110 miles straight?
It was a dream that began when Diana was just five years old.
Her father told her that her last name, Nyad, meant champion swimmer in Greek, and that would become her clarion call.
She began swimming competitively in school driven and focused, sometimes practicing more than six hours a day.
In 1978, when she was only 28, Diana attempted the 110-mile marathon for the first time, but rough seas forced her to quit.
A year later, after setting another world record, she announced she was done.
For more than 30 years, she did not swim a lap.
Instead, she forged a new path with a career in sports journalism.
But in 2007, after her mother died, Diana began reevaluating her life and that unfinished business of the Cuba swim began tapping her on the shoulder.
So at 60, Diana returned to the water, more fiercely determined than ever.
She'd try it another three times before finally, in her fifth grueling attempt, against all odds, on September 2nd 2013, Diana Nyad stood victorious.
So when I first heard you finished...
I wanted to talk to you immediately.
It just filled me up because I just became a swimmer a couple years ago and not that good at it.
Just, you know, okay.
I couldn't even imagine what it takes to do something for 53 hours straight.
And I recognized, as I know you do, that you had to transcend your humanness and go beyond that to something else.
Is that true?
Yeah, you know, I think, the people who have studied.
If you could empirically study the will.
But when we look at people in war and people in true survival, there is something beyond what the body is capable of.
We do all these measurements, couldn't possibly ride up the Alps, couldn't possibly.
Well, you know, the will is so undefinable and can push you so far beyond.
You know I've had sports scientists the best of them write me and say this I'm sorry to tell you this is humanly impossible.
And I write back and say to them, you have no idea then.
You're just doing your little studies on what the heart can do and what the lungs can do.
I'm talking to you what the spirit can do, and that's not measurable.
Well, interestingly enough, before you attempted this, Did you not put together the team that would do all the measurements and all that?
Did they say that it could be done?
Didn't everybody say it couldn't be done?
All of them.
All of them.
Cannot be done.
Go somewhere else.
You know, swim something lesser.
It just cannot be done.
And I just said...
I still believe, call me crazy.
I don't wanna go to 90 keeping trying this every year, but I believe we're gonna make it across.
So when you had the failed attempt at 28, this is what's so incredible.
Yeah.
You had this dream since you were how old you know.
Really, that came to me at 28.
I was finishing marathon swimming.
I'd swim around manhattan island and that was a kick in the pants, and all these other swims.
And then i was starting on to getting jobs, with wide world of sports and everything.
I thought i'm 30, it's time to move on, make some money um, become an adult and sport is for the young.
And i'm about to retire.
So i just got out the nautical charts of the earth's surface uh, on my new york apartment.
When i saw cuba, My heart took a leap and I said there's nowhere else.
You know, the Earth is four-fifths water.
So you could go to the Maldives and Guam and the Straits of, you know, whatever.
But I saw Cuba, and I thought, it's in my heart.
It moves me.
The forbidden country, the beautiful land of Cuba, the two nations that should reunite.
All of it just moved me.
And I thought, there's nothing else.
Nothing else could spark me to this.
It's Cuba.
Okay, so I love that shot where they, that your nephew did this beautiful film.
Yes.
Yes.
The other shore.
Yes.
But I love that part of the film where the first time they're taking you out of the water.
Your lips are swollen.
You can barely stand up.
They're dragging you out.
And you're saying, well, I don't want to quit.
I don't want to just quit.
After 42 hours.
After 42 hours.
Yes.
Yeah, and that's what I mean about the spirit.
Not a pretty sight.
Yeah, there we go.
There we go.
You know, it's going to be great for me, though, because I'll be in all the before pictures.
You know, you've got nowhere to go but up for the after pictures.
And so even then, you had that kind of drive and determination.
At 42 hours, you'd been sick and vomiting and cold and all of that and still didn't want to quit.
But that's what I mean, I think, about the spirit is larger than the body.
The body is pathetic compared to what we have inside us.
And then you didn't do a stroke in the water.
For 31 years, you were done.
I was done.
Burnt out enough already.
I'm sorry I didn't make Cuba.
It ate at me a little bit.
It was a treasure of a dream.
But, you know, you can only take so much after a while.
And I was, you know, starting to work in the big world of Olympic coverage and on sports and living a different dream.
And so I wouldn't have, during those 30 years, if you and I had been hanging out eating dinner, I wouldn't have said to you Oprah, just it eats at my soul that Cuba swim.
It represented the metaphor of who I am.
I can't let it go.
I can't live without it.
It wasn't like that, but it was more this little whisper.
It was this little whisper that, gosh, it would have been magic to do that thing.
Yeah, a little whisper.
And then did the whisper turn into a little nagging thing?
Well, it was more turning 60 that prompted the nagging thing.
My mom had just died, and she was 82, and I miss her.
So I started thinking.
My mom died at 82.
Does that mean really I have 22 years left and maybe those last two or three or four aren't gonna be too vital?
I don't know.
But the clock is like choking me now, and it wasn't so much.
What did I wanna do?
It was who I wanna be.
Whoa, that's what it was.
It's like that.
I really don't have it in front of me, but there's a Henry David Thoreau quote that really grips me hard and it says when you achieve your goals in life, it's not what that gets you, but it's who I am.
Right, right.
It's who I am.
And I needed at 60, I needed to say, forget about the ledger.
Are you in the halls of fame?
Did you make some kind of money?
I don't care about that anymore.
As you know, those things just, as you get older, who cares?
That's right.
Am I living the life that I can admire?
Am I going to leave this earth maybe as you do, leaving it a place where it's a little more just than it was and human rights have been fulfilled more than that?
Those are my values.
And never giving up and finding a way through your obstacles and finding your grit and your will.
Those are what I value.
And at 60, it wasn't about swimming.
And this swim for me has never been about swimming.
And I don't think to anybody out there it's about swimming.
It's about those values.
And you know what?
I am that person. swimming or not, and I proved it to myself, and that's why I did this swim.
Well, I think you know, when I watched the other show and everybody I know in the office who's seen it they were saying one of the producers said she was walking in the rain the other day and normally she would have complained but because she'd seen that she walked briskly and embraced the rain.
I mean in everything that you do, when you think about giving up or you think that you're tired.
What you showed us all is what a real warrior looks like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So were you not pleased with where you were at 59?
You didn't like the way your life looked at 59?
It's not so much that, but you know, I don't know why we take birthdays so seriously in our culture.
You talk to people from India, they don't even know when they were born.
So it's a little silly.
Yeah.
But you know we do these reckonings.
Where you're 40, You get up and give a speech with a glass of champagne and you say I want to do this and I want to be this and whatever.
I'm going to regret that.
And so I just wanted to get to the point where forget about it.
I guess I was doing the best I could with the skills I had at 20 and 30 and 40 and 50.
So no, it's not like I'm not proud of myself for those years, but who cares about them anymore?
They're in the past.
And I just wanted to start at 60 because I could.
What did it teach you about yourself, this experience?
You know a lot of things.
I used to and it could be from you know, going through childhood, teenage sexual abuse that I kind of had a classic response to that, which was a put on a suit of armor say I'm tough, I don't need any help I, I can muscle my way through everything in his life and I'm on my own.
I'm on an island, you know, nobody's helping me.
Yes, how I was, you know, I was struck.
I was struck in in the film.
You know, you were talking about one of your coaches.
Yeah.
And it was classic abuse.
Yeah.
Epidemic.
Epidemic.
Epidemic.
Classic abuse where you said, in the end, you said, I allowed it to happen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was struck by that because it sounded somehow like you were blaming yourself for it.
Yeah.
But don't we all, isn't that the M.O.?
?
You know, you know, doesn't every kid who's whose parents divorced think it's their fault?
Yeah.
And doesn't every kid who goes through sexual abuse, they don't have that that intellectual reason.
But that's what the abuser counts on.
He counts on that, if he gets you in and can convince you that you should do it and you don't tell the first time.
Yeah.
It's harder to tell the second and third because you must have liked it.
Oh, yeah.
And you believe all those things that you don't understand.
And this is the most important thing in my life.
And you will never make it as a swimmer.
You need to do what I say.
And he's up on a pedestal.
But I, for years until very recently, did blame myself.
So it's a classic example.
And it's an epidemic.
And you know what?
I'm here to do something about it.
Not about him.
Who cares about him?
I'm here to talk to young people.
And it's not because girls.
Boys are going through to what are the statistics now?
I know.
One in four girls, one in six boys.
One in six boys.
I'm here to say, you can, you know, at a young age, you see it, you just say, no, get away from me.
Even if you don't have a strong parent, which I didn't.
May my mom rest in peace at that time to go to.
You just say yourself, I know this is wrong. get away from me, you know?
And I didn't have that kind of leadership, but I'm not blaming anybody, you know?
Often people say to me, you know, who do you admire in life?
It's just people who decide that they're going to live a good life.
And I met this woman.
I told the story of my sexual abuse on stage one time at a corporate talk.
And sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
It's just my life.
And I don't suffer through it.
I'm no victim.
But I tell it because it's real and because it is an epidemic.
Just to put it out there.
So one night I talked about it.
And later that night I was invited to this dinner.
And this woman, older, she had already retired as a professor.
I think it was the upper 80s.
But she had the light of life in her eyes.
She was still burning strong.
And she reached across the table to get something that night like this.
And her sleep pulled back.
And I saw the numbers etched in her forearm.
And I said, you're a survivor.
And so she told me about it.
Three years old, Poland.
Gestapo's came in, got the family.
The father said, I'm not going.
You can shoot me right here.
I'm not leaving my home.
I'm not going to that gas, whatever you're taking me to.
Shot him right there.
She remembers it at age three.
The mother and six-year-old were taken that way.
She never saw them again in her life.
At three that day became the SS officer's concubine and was forced to do the whole thing for two and a half years.
At three, I started weeping at this table.
And I said first of all, I feel so ashamed that I brought up my little story on stage tonight about what I suffered in my life.
And she said, don't ever say that.
Every human being on this planet has their pain and their heartache and it's up to all of us to find our way to back to light.
And she said to me she was adopted by cousins in Paris and that mother, so now she's six.
After they were saved, the allies came in.
The mother came to her in the garden, and the little girl told her everything.
And this woman said to her, look, darling, hold my hands.
You will never forget this experience.
You can't.
It happened to you, it's real.
But put it in your soul deep, deep down and don't let it live on your skin, because this is a beautiful life.
And almost all the people on this planet are beautiful, loving people.
And you're gonna know them and you're gonna live a beautiful life filled with joy.
And that helped me her night, Telling me that helped me more than anything I've ever heard about the whole sexual abuse thing.
Fine, it happened, you got anger, that's fine, but don't let it ruin your life.
This is your life, not his life, you know?
So those are the people I admire who have had real tough roads, but they have found a way to still live a beautiful life, you know?
I'm so moved by that story.
Yeah, yeah.
In August 2013, Amidst a crowd of devoted fans and brimming with confidence, Diana made her fifth attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida.
Though she had trained diligently for months, many believed it was impossible, a dream Diana would never realize.
And while most of the media had lost interest, Diana set out to achieve the dream that had eluded her for 30 years.
What are you thinking as you're going out into the water?
What are you thinking?
You know the reason the disappointment of not making it the four times was so crushing is because I didn't leave any room for that.
I was in absolute, unwavering belief.
Yeah um, you're not filled with fear, you're not filled with oh well.
Well, maybe i might not make it.
So if i don't, let me see how can i put it together again for next year.
You know, you are making it, you believe, and when it's over, and you're, and you're pulled onto the boat, and now you're chugging into key west you, just you, you're stunned because there was no room for that and there can't be.
There can't be.
This final run, you were more prepared because what did the jellyfish teach you four years ago?
I feel like I took that variable out.
We had the world's leading expert on the box jellyfish.
The box jellyfish kills more people than it does shark bites every year.
You're very lucky to live through it.
Good God.
It's otherworldly.
You go into paroxysms of paralysis, and your heart and your lungs stop.
It's not a matter of mind over matter.
You're done.
And I did.
Something in the will took over, and after first massive stings, you can see the marks there?
Yes.
Every little point on there is a harpoon.
Right there, those marks right there have 100,000 harpoons in them.
And every one of those whips a venom into your cardiovascular system and stops you.
So you're swimming like this.
You're breathing.
I was yelling to Bonnie, I'm on fire.
I'm on fire.
Help me.
It was life or death out there.
So they're trying to shoot you.
They're shooting you in the water.
Adrenaline.
So that you can zone, so you can keep breathing.
Yeah, and you keep breathing.
And I went for 24 more hours, you know, so courage.
Who are you?
When I read that and saw that, who are you?
Well, that's what I say.
I don't even think that's conscious.
You decide beforehand you want to do this and you will do it.
But you've been stung and you can barely breathe.
And now you're not swimming like this.
Yeah, yeah.
You're swimming like this.
Yeah, you're debilitated.
Do you put your mind someplace else?
No, you're in crisis.
You know, you put your mind somewhere else when you're feeling well.
Like this time, that first day, those first 10 hours off Cuba, I was happy.
I was just gliding along the surface.
I was feeling part of this universe.
I was looking down at a blue that a painter can't even imitate.
In the Gulf Stream, the team I see them on every breath taking their spots and doing their jobs and we're just clicking like a well-oiled machine and it was beautiful.
We're pros.
While swimming is a solitary sport, Diana is hardly alone when she attempts a marathon.
She's surrounded by a dedicated team of 35 people, including kayakers navigators, physicians and jellyfish experts.
At the helm is Diana's business partner and best friend, Bonnie Stoll.
We have tattoos.
I never thought I'd have a tat, but now I'm like in the young group.
I have a tattoo that says Ishan Denshan.
I have one here.
She has one here.
And it means one heart, one mind.
And I tell you, once we're out there for 40 hours, we don't talk anymore.
She goes like this.
And I come over and I look in her eyes and she goes like this.
Give me five more minutes.
Go on, let's see, do you have five minutes in you?
Let's not talk about the whole thing.
We may quit in five minutes, but show me you've got five more minutes in.
You go on.
So you know it's deep, it's a deep thing, but I was gonna say my mantra this year And they have to be honest.
Some of you, onward.
Just plow onward.
But this year, it was find a way.
Find a way.
It doesn't matter.
I love that.
And you know what?
That's what people resonate to.
Because I can talk about people.
Find a way.
People working through their teenage daughter has become a hormonal nightmare.
And they might commit a homicide over the next.
But that's your daughter.
Find a way.
If it's important to you, we can all.
We can get there.
And so that was my thing this year.
Jellyfish, seasickness, pain, cold.
Find a way.
As we all know, Diana found a way.
To prepare for her fifth and final Cuba to Florida swim, Diana took every precaution to protect herself from the box jellyfish.
She wore a lycra suit, booties, and a special silicone mask.
She remained vigilant not to fall victim to the stings of the past.
It was difficult to swim in, but I never would have gone back this year without it.
It was my savior.
There you can see I have a suit.
I have surgeon's gloves.
I got booties.
All legal.
You're not allowed to wear neoprene.
That was Lycra.
And that the face is silicone.
And, you know, it's difficult.
It's burdensome.
You're taking in salt water.
It rubs huge lesions on the inside of your mouth.
But who cares?
No jellyfish can get me with that on.
And so this year I came back and I knew the jellyfish were no longer an issue.
Let's talk about this.
Last run.
You said the first 10 hours you were happy, i was, i was uh.
But you learn, it's like a little microcosm of life.
You have a great day, everything's all said, you love all the people in your life, and then the next day someone wrongs you and you feel betrayed and you've got to deal with.
So you don't ever coast.
You don't ever take it for granted people say this in their relationships and their marriages all the time.
You don't just say oh, this is going to go forever.
Unless you're working on it constantly, it's not gonna go forever.
And it's the same with this swim, it's just like that.
I was happy as a clam the first 10 hours and bam, the night hit.
The jellyfish mask went on, the waves came up to two to four feet and I'm rocking out there and thinking how will I last for three days?
Which is what this is gonna take, two to three days.
And I went to Bonnie and she said, Just make it through the night.
Just let's get to dawn.
Let's get to the sun comes up.
Find a way.
Find a way through the minutes, the hours, and get to dawn.
Then we'll talk about the next whatever we're going to make it through.
So I just got through that night.
This is what is impossible to even comprehend.
Because I know what happens when everyone, you know what happens when you don't get enough sleep.
Yeah.
There is no sleep in the 53 hours.
There's no sleep.
No.
And tell me, at what point do you start to become delusional.
At what point?
At 10 hours in, you're still happy?
No, still happy.
You know, it depends what you're going through physically and what drains you.
But for me, it always seems to be at around 30 hours.
I don't know.
I've done many swings now.
And what are you eating?
Are you eating, were they feeding you peanut butter?
Yeah, real.
I learned to not just eat all these compressed marathon foods, you know, and astronaut foods.
They just take butter pasta.
Bonnie will take fingerfuls of buttered pasta, and I'm like a trained seal out there.
I open my mouth, I tread water, and I gobble it down.
They'll give me peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
Pauline, my other trainer, makes for me.
So I eat real food, too.
It absorbs the salt water in the stomach.
It makes you feel normal, you know?
If you can.
Because what does all of that salt water do to your body?
You're sick as a dog.
I would think so.
Even though Diana eats every 90 minutes while in the water, she can lose as much as 30 pounds during a marathon swim.
Salt water is a huge challenge.
After so long in the water, it essentially becomes poisonous as the body absorbs way too much salt.
It causes swelling, sores, dehydration, vomiting, and even impaired judgment and hallucination.
As the hours were on, it can become increasingly difficult to stay focused and alert.
That's the thing that drives people literally crazy when they're out in the water.
You hear these stories of people who are trying to survive after being stranded in the water.
They lose their mind because of salt water.
Yeah, yeah.
So what mind games did you play with yourself?
I've read, heard you sing songs to yourself.
I have a playlist of about 85 songs, and they're my generation.
So you're not listening to music?
No, no, I don't listen.
It's all in my head, and I hear it.
I hear it as if I can hear every guitar strum, and I can hear all the harmonies.
So if I get to the end of that song and sing it a thousand times, I've got nine hours and 45 minutes to the boom, to the beat.
So all those songs help me.
Not only do I like the pleasure of Neil Young, Janis Joplin, you know, Simon and Garfunkel.
That's my generation.
That's my music.
So I get a little black eyed peas.
But you know, when I sing those songs, not only do they help me, but they're metronomic.
You're suddenly meditating.
You're off somewhere else.
You're thinking about the.
You know how could the universe been created?
And I've said I'm not a religious person, but when I left this time, I finished reading Stephen Hawking's revision of his book on the history of the universe.
And he says and most astrophysicists believe, but it blows.
I read the sentence and I lie in bed just saying That blows my mind.
And when I'm out there.
There's no better place to think about that stuff when you're under the stars and out in the vastness.
So he says that all of this matter in this universe, it used to be at one time in the size literally, of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a penny.
Now, come on.
And one day it just couldn't take it anymore and there was a nuclear fusion and it went pow and it became this
And the Earth went over there next to the sun, and then life happened.
So you know, I'm just when I'm out there, I'm saying no reply and I'm counting German and French, but I'm also at that 30 36, 40 hour I'm going off to.
So this universe used to be, and now it's, and how long would it take to get there?
And what is it, you know, where is it all going?
And where are we all going?
Do you feel one with the ocean at some point?
You just feel like there's no difference between your body and your stroke and the water and the surroundings around you.
I do.
I do.
I feel at home in the ocean, not in a pool yeah, not in the river, not in a lake, but the ocean.
I actually feel the tidal pull and i feel the moon pulling the tides out there and it's it's um, it's a, i guess, what mountain climbers feel when they get to the top of the mountain.
Not that they conquered it, but they're part of it.
Marathon swimming takes its toll on the body, the mind and the spirit.
For diana, a mix of dehydration, sleep deprivation and prolonged saltwater exposure produced a dreamlike state that took her literally out of this world.
So I loved that you started to see the folks from the Yellow Brick Road.
Oh, yeah.
That you saw the Yellow Brick Road.
You saw them.
Well, you know, I love The Wizard of Oz.
It's great, but it's not like my favorite musical of all time.
I don't have it like as my, you know.
Yes.
But I was looking underwater and I said to Bonnie Bonnie, I see the at night, I see the Yellow Brick Road.
It's like going along like this, and what's really weird is, wasn't the Yellow Brick Road like the Tin Man and the Lion?
But that's not who's on it.
It's like those little guys who had the knapsacks.
They were saying, hi-ho.
It's like those people.
And so she's not gonna spend time talking me out of an hallucination.
Why would she try to get me back to reality?
It's like when my mom had Alzheimer's, am I gonna try to tell her that we already had breakfast?
You know, who cares?
So she would say, she said to me, You follow them.
They are going right where we're going.
Just get right over them and go where they're going.
And I was going along going, I heard them, hi-ho, hi-ho.
And I followed them and I saw that for hours.
There was no doubt in my mind.
It wasn't like I was aware that's a hallucination.
I said, I see the yellow brick road and I see those little men walking along.
Okay.
Did you see anything else?
Well, this year I saw the Taj Mahal.
Now, that's another thing.
I've never been to the Taj Mahal, but I guess I've seen pictures of it.
But I was out with the shark divers.
There was a big storm.
And so we have no boats with us and they form a circle around me and I'm just treading water and I was hanging on by a thread.
I remember just... kind of going under, and they would say, let's do a little breaststroke.
Let's wake you up.
Let's get, you know, and I was getting cold too, so I would do breaststroke just following them.
And I said to one of them, do you see it?
Do you see, the Taj Mahal is over here.
And he said, yeah, yeah, I see it.
And, you know.
And I said but I mean it's so, aren't we like between Cuban Florida is.
At the time I was the geography and there was land.
I saw all the sand and the grass all around it.
And then I thought, what if I could get out and walk for a while, you know, instead of being on the water?
But there was no doubt in my mind that you saw the Taj Mahal.
It was there.
It was there.
Yeah.
So when you're, I mean after how long before your arms get physically tired like I can't move another stroke?
You know what, Oprah, I was so proud of myself this time because when I reached the beach, not a moment of soreness.
And you know why?
It's because of those 16, 18, 20.
I was going to say because of the training.
I did the training.
I didn't leave a thing behind.
So I knew that if it was going to be 80 hours, that this one was still going to come out and this one was going to come out after it.
That's amazing.
It is.
It is.
It is amazing.
So you're going to now swim for charity.
Yeah, you know, I'm going to get into a pool in Herald Square and swim for 48 hours up and down, with my heart focused on those good people whose lives and homes were wrecked by Hurricane Sandy.
And many of them, thousands, are still suffering.
So I was a New Yorker.
And I say, I'm not going to forget you.
I'm going to swim for 48 hours and remember you the whole time.
All kinds of well-known people and not so well-known wounded warriors, kids.
They're going to do a few laps, but we are going to give a whole pile of money, I hope, at the end.
So I'm not going to be a swimmer anymore, but I am going to swim up and down in a pool in recognition of the fact that we cannot forget our brothers and sisters, because we wouldn't want to be forgotten ourselves if it happened to us.
Yeah.
Our conversation will continue in the next episode.
You can listen by downloading Part 2.
I'm Oprah Winfrey and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
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