Susanne Pawlik's debut novel 'Weiterschwimmen' traces a mother's grief and healing through daily swims after her daughter's death
After her daughter died of cancer in 2017, Susanne Pawlik turned to a daily ritual of swimming 40 laps. Her debut novel, 'Weiterschwimmen', channels that experience into a story of mourning and recovery.
The diagnosis
In the summer of 2017, during a family holiday, Susanne Pawlik's world collapsed. Her novel's protagonist, Bea, discovers a lump on her daughter Karla's stomach while applying sunscreen. "Plötzlich war sie da. Die Beule an Karlas Bauch. Beim Eincremen. Links, direkt neben der Niere," Pawlik writes, drawing closely from her own life. What follows is a daily existence split between hospital and home, filled with stoma bags, disposable syringes, oxygen equipment, and board games in the sickroom. The child, once full of energy with "feinen Löckchen auf der Stirn" and constant motion, fades.
Grief begins before death
Pawlik insists that mourning started long before her daughter died. "Bei der Diagnose fing im Prinzip schon eine Art von Trauer an," the 55-year-old author said. "Man verabschiedet sich vom Gedanken an ein gesundes Kind, von der Normalität. Meiner Meinung nach wird über diese Art von Trauer viel zu wenig gesprochen. Alle denken, getrauert wird erst, wenn jemand gestorben ist."
The ritual of swimming
Swimming became a lifeline. Pawlik's character Bea, like the author herself, prefers a forest swimming pool just across the border in Austria, where nobody knows her story. "Wo ich einfach nur die bin, die morgens ihren Kilometer schwimmt," always on the outer lane. The appeal lay in the cold water's ability to reconnect her with her body. "Dass man seinen Körper wieder spürt, sich selber wieder spürt. Und auch dieses sich körperliche Auspowern, weil man im Kopf so ausgepowert ist," she explained. The 40-lap routine provided structure and a mental flow state. "Für mich war es lebensrettend, weil es mich immer wieder gesammelt hat."
'Swim of Consciousness'
The book's foundation came from small notes Pawlik wrote during her years of grief. She calls her method "Swim of Consciousness," a play on James Joyce's "Stream of Consciousness" from 'Ulysses'. "Beim Schwimmen kann man nur andenken. Da kann man nicht Gedanken zu Ende spinnen, da kann man sie nur spüren. Man kann sie aber nicht zerdenken," she said. "Analytisch kann man unter Wasser nicht sein, nur emotional." The novel alternates between narrated passages and short, poetic two-liners that roll in a breaststroke rhythm. Each pool visit is marked with air and water temperatures, like the old chalkboards where the lifeguard would wipe away one number and write a warmer one.
A path back to life
The result is a debut that traces how a mother rebuilt the will to live. Pawlik, from the Upper Bavarian Inn Valley, found that writing and swimming together pulled her through. The novel does not offer easy consolation but documents a process: the slow, repetitive, physical act of moving through water until hope begins to surface again.
