Aos 17, o treinador de remo anunciou que um dia de descanso era inútil

W hen I was 17, my rowing ♠ coach announced that taking a day off was unnecessary. That one time of the week that I left school at ♠ 4pm and watched Neighbours was now gone. I think that's probably why, when I gave up rowing, I stopped doing any exercise ♠ at all. I'd had enough. Exercise for me equated to diehard commitment and someone shouting at me all the time. ♠ So I did nothing. Which in retrospect was a bad idea, because there were times in my life – getting ♠ RSI when I tried to write a book while holding down a full-time job or having a baby and getting ♠ swamped by anxiety – when exercise would have helped enormously.

De volta à equipe

It was when I had come out of ♠ the baby years, moved to a new area, but worked from home, that I felt the pull to be part ♠ of a team again. But I didn't know how or in what sport – there was no way I was ♠ going back to rowing.

There are plenty of "back to..." sessions for various sports – hockey, football, lacrosse – but having ♠ never played any of these, I was daunted. Then one day a neighbour knocked looking for a sub for her ♠ netball league team. I'd been OK at netball at school, so I said I'd do it. It was during that ♠ game I realised all the latent competitiveness that had pushed me at school to become a junior world rowing champion, ♠ was still very much there. And when I got rid of it, through sport, it took the pressure off other ♠ areas of my life.

Amizades na equipe

Friendships on the team differ, we don't know each other's backstories

O valor da competição

This is ♠ not the cliché of school sporting types – these adult teams are made up of strong, determined women of varying ♠ ages, shapes, sizes and fitness who are there simply to compete in a game they love with people they respect. ♠ It's something I thought I would never do again and in the grand scheme of things it's a very small ♠ change – less than an hour a week – but it has categorically improved my life, perhaps even built up ♠ my inner strength.

O jogo como fuga do stress

On top of that, there was the actual physical release of the exercise, ♠ burning through the adrenaline of the shock and dispelling the cortisol from the stress. By the end of the game, ♠ I was still gutted, but I had some perspective. I can't say whether I was more resilient than if I ♠ hadn't taken up netball. But what I can say is that the game itself, and the act of playing in ♠ that team, allowed me to escape the realities of life for enough time that I could calm down and rationalise, ♠ so what felt devastating before was less so after. Which I suppose is exactly what emotional resilience means.