It's a way to push yourself - A plunge into the ocean at the end of the earth

I'M WEARING A BARBIE-PINK bathing suit, but there are no palm trees in sight. The snow has just stopped falling and I can see broken chunks of iceberg inching toward the ship I'm on. The ambient temperature is 29 Fahrenheit.

- CELESTE MOURE

As I step to the edge of the gangway of Atlas Ocean Voyages' World Voyager, panic sets in. The air whips against my bare skin. The water below is a dark azure, its depths unimaginable. It's my turn to jump, but I stand frozen in fear as a flurry of intrusive thoughts take over. Then I think about how bereft my Antarctica experience will be if I don't do the hard thing that I've come all this way for.

I turned to cold water immersion therapy during the pandemic as a way to cope with the stress of losing my job and the anxiety of watching my two preteen kids sink into their own versions of despair as the weeks of virtual schooling turned into months and then a year. Some days I struggled just to get out of bed. I spent hours endlessly doomscrolling on my phone. That's where I discovered the very thing that would pull me out of my depressive funk: ice baths, the benefits of which are said to include lifting one's mood, improving memory and alertness, and relieving anxiety and stress.