Row for Freedom: Crossing an Ocean in Search of Hope
210
Row for Freedom: Crossing an Ocean in Search of Hope
210eBook
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Overview
The Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge is known as The World’s Toughest Row. Very few have completed the three-thousand-mile race from the Canary Islands to Barbados—fewer than those who have climbed Mount Everest or gone into space. But thirty-two-year-old Julia Immonen and four or the women were determined to not only complete the challenge, but to become the fastest all-female team to ever do so.
Row for Freedom chronicles that dramatic journey, detailing the grueling, peril-filled crossing that broke two world records. It weaves together Julia’s search for hope and purpose against a background of relationships scarred by violence. As Julia’s physical and emotional treks unfold, you also learn about the plight of the thirty million victims of the modern-day slave trade that serves as the motivation for her row.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780718021535 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Christian Publishing |
| Publication date: | 12/19/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 210 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Bear Grylls is the author of several books that have sold more than 11 million copies worldwide, including the bestselling Mud, Sweat, and Tears. He starred in National Geographic’s television series Man vs. Wild for seven seasons and currently works on his NBC series, Running Wild with Bear Grylls, where he takes celebrities such as Julianne Hough, Marshawn Lynch, Shaquille O’Neal, and Don Cheadle out into the wilderness. Bear is an adventurer known for many exploits, including crossing the North Atlantic Arctic Ocean in a rubber boat, climbing Mount Everest, and running through a forest fire. He is also a dedicated family man to his wife and three sons.
Read an Excerpt
Row for Freedom
Crossing an Ocean in Search of Hope
By Julia Immonen, Craig Borlase
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2014 Julia ImmonenAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-2153-5
CHAPTER 1
Childhood
When I was six years old and it was minus twenty degrees Celsius outside, getting dressed was an epic adventure. We started with the thermals—top and bottom—two sets each. They were never very pretty, and I wanted a pink set, but Mum said that it didn't matter since nobody was going to see them. Still, I wanted something nicer than the off-whites that Joy, my older sister, and I wore day in and day out.
Next came two pairs of socks. Add a wooly jumper and pants. Then two pairs of mittens, a cowl, and a hat, and we were almost ready to go. Just needed the snow trousers, warm coat with hood over the hat, and boots. After fifteen minutes we were finally ready for one of us to say the words that made my amazingly patient mother's smile grow even larger: "Tarvitsen vessan."
"Really, darlin'?" she replied in her soft Scottish lilt. "You're sure you need the bathroom?"
And so began the ritual of undressing and then dressing again either one of us. Or maybe both. Life in Finland was never fast, especially in the winter. We had to go slow and steady, making sure that we were prepared whenever we stepped out of the house. And my mother was always extra careful with two small girls.
I was born in Jyväskylä, a small city in the middle of the country. It's cold there, but nothing compared to the weather farther north, which is where we moved when I was three. It was there, in Lapland, on the Arctic Circle in the magical city where Santa Claus lived, that my mother learned how to dress us to survive the elements lying in wait outside the door.
When she dressed me, I let my body go floppy and gave in to her hands as they put limbs into sleeves and added layer upon layer of warming fabric to my skin. Mum was always patient, kind, tender, and loving with us. She seemed to have all the time in the world for us, and when she challenged Joy and me to see who could get dressed faster, we never felt as though we were being hurried along to make her life easier. She was just trying to show that even something boring like getting dressed could be fun. It was a simple lesson to learn, but one I've never forgotten.
Those times when my hands flew into a frenzy in an attempt to transfer my clothes onto my body before Joy could transfer hers left another mark on my character: they nurtured my competitive spirit. Sometimes I won and sometimes I lost, but I'm not sure that the result was always the most important thing. I enjoyed the thrill of trying to be the best I could be. And perhaps that was when I began to learn that if I pushed myself a bit, I could do more than I imagined.
Finland was not my mother's home. She was born in Scotland but signed up for a new life when she met and fell in love with my father, a man born and bred in Finland. Within eighteen months of meeting him she had seen every area of her life change—country, language, culture, and climate—all so that she could join the man she pledged to spend the rest of her life with, for better or for worse.
She was used to change. As a younger, single woman, she left the west coast of Scotland and traveled a lot, living and working in both Canada and Pakistan before meeting my dad and moving to Finland. Yet moving up north meant more than a change in climate. We moved from a city with a university, an airport, a railway, and roads with proper sidewalks to Rovaniemi, a town of a few thousand people, some basic stores, a church, and not much else.
It was a simple life. When summer came around and the temperatures rose enough for the snow to melt, we played outside constantly. For months it seemed that the sun never set, giving us endless opportunities to pursue our adventures. Dad played with us in the backyard, and we learned to skate and ski long before we rode bikes. We made snow angels and stared in silent awe as the low sun glistened on the snow. We had no money, yet the outdoors entertained Joy and me free of charge. I always felt a little sad when fall began and the sun began its retreat; for just a few hours each day we'd see it struggling to show itself under the weight of all the night that sat in the sky. When winter won out, the sun vanished entirely, and the night lasted the season. Outside would become dangerous once more.
It couldn't have been an easy life for my mother, being far away from her home and family, learning how to survive the cold, and working out her place in the community. She faced more than her fair share of struggles, but the toughest one was living with my father.
My father was a preacher. He moved around a little, starting out by working with young people and gradually moving up the ladder to run his own church in Rovaniemi. Some people might have turned up their noses at the idea of working for a church above the Arctic Circle on the edge of civilization, but as I remember it, he was never happier than when he was in the church building, pacing up and down the front on a Sunday, speaking of God and the struggles within all of us.
I almost feel as though I have had two fathers: one from my early childhood in the cold and chill of our homeland, then another in my adopted homeland of England. Most of the few memories of my father from our days in Finland are good ones. He was in the yard making bigger snow angels than ours, building epic castles, laughing his big laugh, and smiling his big smile. He doted on us, loved us, and cared for us.
He loved and cared for cars too. Finland has long been the home of motor sport, and my father was a devoted follower. I still remember the way his eyes changed as he got behind the wheel. I liked seeing him happy. It made me smile too.
Although these are most of my early memories of my father, there are others of his anger and shouting. His face would set in stone, his eyes growing cold as the winter moon. Before long, I learned to fear him, to fear his impatience when I couldn't ride my bicycle without training wheels when he thought I should be able to, to fear his frustration when I let him down. He hit me only once. I was fourteen and he caught me hanging out with boys who were smoking, but the damage to our relationship was already done.
If my father's touch sometimes brought danger, my mother's hands brought only gentleness and caring. Her hands tucked us in at night, and her hands smoothed away our hair an hour or so later when she returned to tell us that the noises we heard from the living room were nothing to worry about. We missed her hands when Dad was at the front of the church and we were crouched behind the seats with our coloring crayons and paper, while Mum was sorting things out at home.
It was not until recently that my sister, Joy, and I found out what was really going on. Mum told us how poor we were. The church salary was so small that at one point she took a nine-hour train journey south to beg the church leaders for a little more money. She told us other stories that did not surprise us but made us cry and wish that we could have changed what happened. Those noises at night were something to worry about. Our mother remained at home while our father was in the pulpit because she was trying to hide the black eye he had given her the night before. In time none of this surprised us. My later childhood grew accustomed to the rhythm of fists on flesh and china on brick. But I suppose we girls thought that our family was normal. Normal? These days I know there's no such thing.
Finland was a child's paradise. Everything revolved around outdoor living, even when the temperatures crashed low and the weather was wild. Finland was my blonde-haired, blue-eyed home, and I loved it. But when I was six, we left.
I don't remember much about our two-thousand-mile drive to our new home in England. It would have been an epic journey, all of us packed into our bright orange Saab. I do remember that once we had driven the length of the Baltic Sea and passed through more countries than I could count on one hand, England did not feel at all like Finland. There were too many people, not enough open space, and not one single other bright orange Saab to be seen. Finland felt far away.
We settled in the suburb of Slough to the west of London. Even though the Queen's residence, Windsor Castle, is only a few miles away, Slough is the butt of jokes. It is the setting for TV shows that laugh at British mediocrity and the kind of place that regularly appears at the top of lists of the worst places to live in the UK.
None of that would have bothered my parents. They're the least materialistic people I know, and coming from Finland with its lack of a class system, neither of them likely considered that Slough was any worse or better than anywhere else. Proximity to Heathrow Airport was important to them. They wanted to be able to provide hospitality to Finnish missionaries passing through London on their way to or from whatever exotic location their work had taken them. For years our house was full of the excited and the weary, all of them telling their stories. I guess it was exciting. It helped take my mind off what was bothering me.
Even though I was six when we moved, it didn't take me long to work out that we were different from the English. Nobody said anything, but I knew that our house wasn't as nice as other people's, my clothes were not quite the same, and our car was just plain weird. I moved from a country where people liked nothing better than to go outside and enjoy the elements, to a place where the number-one pastime was shopping and doing up the house.
In some ways being different was fine. Many of my new friends were African, West Indian, or Asian, but they knew how to show that they belonged. They wore the right brand of sneaker, ate the right type of lunchtime snack, and got picked up in the right kind of car. I was desperate to belong and powerless to resist. Soon I begged Mum for expensive sneakers and dived onto the floorboard whenever our Saab drove anywhere near my friends.
I used those sneakers well, though. I loved sports, taking part in whatever activities I could. It didn't matter to me what games were being played during lunch break, or whether there were no other girls involved yet; I'd throw myself in, running faster, twisting sooner, and dodging whatever outstretched hands were trying to tag me. And when it came to sports day, I'd be the child taking part in every single event that I could, especially on the track. Sprinting just felt like breathing to me.
As the years passed, money became increasingly important to me. I wanted to be like my friends and go on family vacations to Florida, but we were stuck in a ritual of making annual trips to Finland and Scotland to see relatives and loved ones. Those summers in my homeland were good times, but they didn't stop me from wanting to belong and fit in when I got back to England.
Eventually I stopped inviting people to my house. Whenever someone asked, "What does your father do?" I made his career path sound more glamorous than it was. When Dad spent his days messing around with cars in the garage, I said he was a chauffeur. When he got work as a Finnish translator, I told people that he was in publishing. When he announced that he was going to set up a new business selling water filters, I was ready to say that he was an entrepreneur.
The truth was that Dad was struggling. In Finland he was professionally confident and content, but in England life never seemed to get going for him. His business ventures failed, leaving Mum with massive debts and a garage full of useless water filters. In Finland he was an athlete and a preacher, a man with a reputation and well-known talents. In England he was just another guy with big dreams who never managed to deliver.
I don't think Mum loved England either, but she never had the time to think about it. Once we moved to Slough, she became the primary breadwinner, and she worked hard at her job as a dietitian in addition to caring for me and Joy. When we went to sports clubs, Mum took us. When we ate, Mum cooked the meal. And when the house was in chaos after the latest round of houseguests was off on its next adventure, Mum cleaned up after them.
We weren't poor, but we knew when money was tight. All we had to do was look at our plates. Instead of the usual healthy diet of whole wheat pasta, steak, or steamed fish, we'd tuck into the only meals she could afford: fried eggs, beans, and fries. Mum was the only one who wasn't smiling.
I grew to know the rhythms of my childhood. I liked the way the house felt when it was full of visitors with tall stories and loud voices, and I loved the times when I could participate in sports, especially on the track. I learned to see Mum for the inspiration she was, and Joy and I loved to help out whenever she cleaned house. I liked the way the place looked when it was tidied, dusted, and vacuumed, even though it was never quite as nice a house as I wanted it to be. And most of all, I loved the times when Mum, Joy, and I sat on my bed, the door closed, and talked about anything and everything. In between our giggles we'd hear Dad creaking the floorboards just outside, trying not to make noise but desperately wanting to be allowed to join us. I never let him in.
My earliest memory of Dad's losing it is vivid. It was late December, a few days before Christmas. We were dressed up, headed for a caroling concert at Royal Albert Hall. Our pleasant outing suddenly turned into a nightmare as Dad drove and Mum tried her best to navigate through the London traffic. We must have gotten lost because Dad suddenly shouted at Mum while reaching out and grabbing her by the hair, yanking it down with all his strength. Joy and I were shouting and crying in our seats. Instead of fighting back, Mum turned to us and calmed us down. "It's okay," she said. We quieted down, but we knew it wasn't okay.
Months passed between Dad's outbursts. Life settled into a routine of work and school and clubs and activities and Finnish missionaries sleeping on mattresses on the living room floor. But after Joy and I had gone to bed, we'd hear the sound of a coffee cup breaking against the kitchen tiles. It wasn't all bad. I've met people who experienced far worse. Sometimes I'd hear Dad's volume rise and I'd sprint down the stairs to come to Mum's rescue, but I'd find Mum and Dad laughing. The sense of relief was immense.
So that's me: a girl whose father was a fighter and whose mother was a survivor and who grew up in a village where you would freeze to death if you happened to get stuck outside without proper clothing. I guess my life was always going toward one of two extremes: safety or danger. So far, I've never figured out the appeal of a quiet life.
CHAPTER 2WAG
I always measured myself against other people, yet I never quite measured up. Our house was too old and too shabby. My grades were too mediocre. My family's status was never quite as good as it could be. Even though I loved sports, I became a teenager who seriously doubted that she could achieve much. So as soon as I was sixteen and it was legally possible, I announced that I was leaving school and doing things differently from the default path that the school was pushing. Instead, I was going to a vocational college to study travel and tourism.
Nice girls like me who went to a nice, high-achieving school didn't leave to study travel and tourism. The commonly held view was that my particular course was reserved for people who had no other options, the ones who couldn't stand the rigors of academic study. According to my teachers, I was embarking on a course you would take if you dreamed of becoming an international business executive but knew you were going to be a waiter or a chambermaid.
There among the trainee hairdressers and future hotel workers I made lots of friends. We learned how to do real jobs that would earn us real money, and I liked the idea of earning a decent wage as Mum did. Besides, they were fun, and I felt that I belonged with them. I'd never been at the top of the class before, but I found that I liked it a lot. And when I first met Ben, things got even better.
Ben was a bit of a legend. His brother competed in athletics at a national level, while Ben was a semipro footballer. He was at college a few days a week, but he didn't need to study. He was on the way to becoming a fully professional footballer. Sometime soon the big money was going to flow for Ben. Everybody knew it.
It wasn't the prospect of money that I liked about Ben, though. He was my first serious boyfriend, the one who was exciting to be around, full of energy and passion. He was charismatic and always the thermostat of any room he was in. Everything about him was different from Dad. Where Dad retreated into his thoughts and appeared to be shrinking with age, Ben was happiness and vibrant potential. Strangely enough, Mum told me that those same qualities attracted her to Dad. When they first met, he was the life of the party, and he made her laugh.
I was naive. I believed Ben when he told me that there were no other girls in his life, even though warning signs were everywhere. He and his friends drove a couple of hours down the freeway for their nights out, and I did not ask why. He became nervous whenever I asked to borrow his phone. More than a few times when I answered it, a girl apologized for having dialed the wrong number. Sometimes we'd be at a club, and other girls would come up and greet him with familiar hugs and kisses. I always felt uncomfortable, but I was so blinded by my love and naivety that I looked away. We were together a whole year before he made it official and told people about me.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Row for Freedom by Julia Immonen, Craig Borlase. Copyright © 2014 Julia Immonen. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Bear Grylls, xi,Author's Note: Why Write This Book?, xv,
Prologue: Fear and Fire, xix,
Part 1: Beginning, 1,
Chapter 1: Childhood, 3,
Chapter 2: WAG, 13,
Chapter 3: Broken, 23,
Part 2: Waking, 29,
Chapter 4: Deciding to Row an Ocean, 31,
Chapter 5: The Stories We Tell, 41,
Chapter 6: Are You Serious?, 49,
Chapter 7: Which Way Is Up?, 55,
Chapter 8: Unexpected, 63,
Chapter 9: Preparation, 67,
Part 3: Rowing, 75,
Chapter 10: How Are You Going to Cope?, 77,
Chapter 11: Forty-eight Hours to Learn It All, 83,
Chapter 12: The Acceleration Zone, 89,
Chapter 13: Stories in the Waters, 97,
Chapter 14: Things Fall Apart, 103,
Chapter 15: These Waves Are ..., 109,
Chapter 16: Rope and Glue, 115,
Chapter 17: Prayers to Michael, 121,
Chapter 18: It Gets Personal, 129,
Chapter 19: Something to Row For, 135,
Chapter 20: The Gamble, 141,
Chapter 21: Golden, 149,
Chapter 22: Not Quite Christmas Day, 153,
Chapter 23: New Year, Old Problems, 157,
Chapter 24: Change, 163,
Chapter 25: The First Person to See Barbados, 169,
Chapter 26: The Final Day, 177,
Chapter 27: The End and the Beginning, 185,
Chapter 28: The Missed Bottle, 191,
Epilogue, 199,
Five Things You Can Do to Fight Human Trafficking, 203,
Acknowledgments, 207,
Notes, 213,
About the Authors, 217,