The skills I learned in the woods and on the water were surprisingly transferable to surviving violence and traumatic care.

What unexpected survival skill do you possess? Comment below, and follow me here on Bluesky, and I’ll DM you an excerpt from the memoir!

The happiest surprise of writing the book was how much I learned about staying alive in the wilderness: I studied kayak self-rescue, winter survival, map and compass navigation, bushwhacking, monastic discernment, lifeguarding, wilderness first aid.

Hi Brian! Amazing to see you. Invite me back to Idaho!!

@brianmannadk.bsky.social explains why this series? Why now? (Hint: It's not to encourage women to have a bunch more babies) www.instagram.com/reel/DQZfk-k...

@fsgbooks.bsky.social @goldinagency.bsky.social @msjennajohnson.bsky.social

(8/8) 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.

(us.macmillan.com/books/978037...)

(7/8) ...her research, and interviews with everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. The result is a genuinely 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.

(6/8) Inspired by these lessons, she signed up for a series of classes: kayak self-rescue, winter survival 101, map and compass, bushwhacking, wilderness first aid, lifeguarding. In a memoir as disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, Eubanks draws lessons in kinship from these experiences...

(5/8) 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 practical advice that actually helped.

(4/8) ...inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, a second case. In her time tending to him, Eubanks had developed what is known as “collateral” PTSD, common among caregivers but rarely discussed.

(3/8) One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been attacked, 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...

(2/8) Only if you are a very able swimmer trained in open-water rescue should you approach drowning victims . . . Reach with a rope or branch, row out and offer the drowning person an oar. Do not get in the water.

But also:
No one survives the wilderness alone.

(1/8) A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving
Lessons in Love and Survival: A Memoir

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.

Preach.

4/4: Please, if you're able, help keep the public in public media right now.

adoptastation.org

It is especially crucial to support rural public media, as it often provides communities with their only local news and provide life-saving weather and emergency alerts.
ruralpublic.org

3/4: In many ways, it's the model I've been trying to live up to ever since. I see lots of quotes if Timothy Snyder's first rule of defeating tyranny ("Don't obey in advance."), fewer of the second ("Defend institutions.") Public media in the United States is an institution worth defending.

2/4: Watching college students and local community members rise to the occasion, sleeping on studio couches, caravaning down to LA to cover the aftermath firsthand, and getting information out to a community hungry for factual, accurate, humane stories made an indelible impression on me.