I have been a passionate swimmer throughout my entire life, and was chosen in 1965 to receive training as a potential swimmer in the Munich Olympics. However, the funds for this training never arrived, and thus my career as an Olympic swimmer got shortcut before it even got started, due to the fact that I lived in a very isolated small community in the Black Forest.
As it turns out, to this very day, I have had no formal coaching in swimming - the sea herself has been my mentor, teacher and sanctuary.
While pursuing an undergraduate and then graduate degree in Dance Therapy, I made sure to work summers in and around water with children in Canadian summer camps in Ontario, where I received my B.F.A. from York University in 1978.
I have always been attracted to span distances in lakes and oceans, and have done exploratory solo swims, unaccompanied, in Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Ghana, Togo, Senegal Benin, Cameroon and the Gambia.
My work in Dance therapy has brought me onto 3 continents, and soon after I received my MA from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, USA, in 1983 I began teaching internationally, last at the Universidad Latina de America in Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico.
Swimming has become a necessity besides it having always been a passion, after a massive thrombosis permanently shut off circulation to 2 of the big veins in my left leg.
Being buoyancy neutral, when I swim in the ocean, I enter a state of well being and bliss , especially since now life on land, under the influence of gravity, is often painful.
As my Tikkun Olam, Hebrew for "offering to the world", I am using my disability as my greatest asset to help our ailing planet.
I hope to inspire with my swims the creation of marine sanctuaries worldwide.
I recently became reaquainted with an old friend who found me on Facebook. She sent me some pictures from that era. I am pleased to share them with you, Renate at 18.
Renates' friend Helga Bosse, from germany, who had as her best childhood friend the sister of renate's best childhood friend! renate and helga met on Cape breton Island in 1975! An uninterrupted friendship of 35 years!
