‘I wanted to be who I was before’: how skateboarding helped me handle grief

On the first day of a skateboarding retreat in the Sussex countryside, a 23-year-old with no fear of death turns to me and asks, “Isn’t that what skateboarding is? Nearly getting your teeth taken out and coming back for more?” We’ve just watched a passing child (almost) take a board to the face – twice – before asking to have a go. That dance, of getting hurt, but getting back up, is at the heart of the sport. It takes a particular kind of determination to take hits at the rate skateboarders do and get back up, and I’m here to find that stupid fearlessness inside myself again.

The setting is serene: deer run past, birds chirp, bugs rustle in the trees. If you can enjoy the sounds of wheels and metal crashing into wood, it’s near-meditative. It’s a world away from the noisy streets where I grew up skating just outside Leicester, or where I live now, in Brighton. The retreat, run by Sheffield-based skateboarder and gardener Danielle Gallacher, provides space for adults to escape their responsibilities and skate with a supportive community. We can also enjoy a wild spa, foraging workshops and wholesome meals. It exists at the intersection of skateboarding and wellness, a space rarely explored, but clearly desired.

What am I doing here? I skateboarded through my childhood and adolescence, but grew away from it as I got older. The sport’s mental health benefits are well documented. A recent study by Instinct Laboratory and Flo Skatepark linked it to stress reduction, escapism and increased confidence. For a child growing up in an unstable household without a lot of money, it was a cheap way to get out of the house and process some of my bubbling anger. In 2017, at 24, I got back on the board briefly. Skateboarding as a grownup can be dangerous, but it felt worth the risk.

Lucy Adams, progression project lead at national governing body Skateboard GB, tells me that skateboarding builds self-esteem in all ages. For people who don’t have much money, it can be accessible – you don’t need to book a timeslot or buy much kit, Adams says. “As an adult, there is slower progression, but it’s enough to have those little wins,” she adds. “That’s what drives people to go back to it.” Finding time to learn and play is rare – but important – as we get older.

Skateboarding also builds resilience: an ability to get back up and try again, even when you’re hurt. However, in late 2018, I had an injury that was hard to come back from; I came flying off the board and wound up with a broken elbow, a fractured wrist and a battered leg. It hurt for a long time, and I was embarrassed. The easiest way to not get injured skateboarding is to never step on a board to begin with, but if you’ve felt that feeling of cruising along or pulling off a trick, that’s easier said than done. I once asked an older skateboarder how to avoid falling. She laughed and said pain was part of the package, a payment to be made.

For a while, I thought it was enough just to watch other people skate. But trying to avoid risk entirely can be a slippery slope. Because I injured myself by sticking my arm out, I avoided other things I enjoyed: hikes, ice skating, roller skating. Over time, I tried to reintroduce these “risky” things into my life, but in the summer of last year, I was forced back into my shell. The man who raised me, my grandad, called just weeks before he was due to walk me down the aisle to tell me he was dying. I spent the rest of the summer either with him or in hiding, slowly becoming scared to do anything. His death, in July last year, devastated me and obliterated my sense of self. Thanks to him, at my best I have always been an active, curious person with a drive to try new things. At my worst, I am a hermit crab. For a while, I was just the crab.

Over the past few months I have started to incorporate risk into my life again, but I still missed skateboarding. While skaters tend to be supportive, I was too scared to walk into a park and try, but the Skate Retreat offered a place where someone would literally and figuratively hold my hand. I wanted to leave my comfort zone, to be the person I could be before my grandad died, more like the person he was. He was an insatiable traveller, perennially curious. He left me his photo albums, thousands of images he’d captured in India, Thailand, Mexico… My mind was made up when I saw that the retreat fell on the exact anniversary of his death.

On the day I arrive, there are skilled men dominating the ramp, so I chicken out and chat to other women in the hot tub and sauna. Most are over 30, some are married. Everyone, it seems, thought there might be a moment when they decided not to come. We’ve all taken time away from partners, kids and families for this thing that makes no sense to people out in the grownup world.

Later I hang by the ramp and watch. I’m always struck by how ritualistic skateboarding is – when someone pulls off a trick, even if they fall, everyone taps their boards on the ramp, whooping and yelling. It might not look it, but there’s an etiquette. People take turns, film one another, cheer even when the trick doesn’t look like much. It’s a loudly supportive environment, one I didn’t realise I was missing.

After a rough sleep, the summer light wakes me early, so I head to the ramp. Even though I know what I’m doing, it’s been a long time and I’ve booked in with a teacher to get me back to “pumping” – going up and down the ramp using only my legs. While I’m proud of myself for trying, my progress is slow and I get frustrated, flashing back to that swollen wrist with every push. As I sit on the sidelines, more experienced skaters pull off tricks that make me wince. One asks why I’m so scared of pain and the answer is that I’m already in quite a lot of it. Adding to that is a scary thought, but then, why not have a little fun?

Skateboarding can be an extreme sport and a lot of people don’t understand why someone would risk injury. I would argue that it’s not much riskier than other sports. If you don’t skate, maybe you have your thing: skiing, football, climbing. Maybe you get hurt and people ask, “Why don’t you stop?” and maybe you think you will, for a while, but you probably won’t.

In the early afternoon, the heavens open and a tarp is pulled over the ramp. We go for a foraging walk, and a couple of the girls and I go into town to buy snacks. We can’t skate all day, but nobody’s spirits are dampened. We sit around the campfire, the rain so torrential it sounds as if the covering above will cave in. It never does. We can barely hear one another talk, but we do, about our real lives and our experiences skating and, of course, our injuries: dislocated shoulders, skinned knees, rolled ankles, broken wrists, concussions. In this space, it’s a point of pride. Every one of us got back up, whether it took days or years.

The image of the archetypal skateboarder – white, teenaged, male – is evolving, and beginners of all ages have started joining the sport. One attender, a web designer called Danielle, started at 40 when she signed up her son to BMX lessons at their local skatepark. After lockdown, she set up a weekly girls’ night, started a crew and now coaches beginners. She is here to meet people who love skateboarding as much as she does. “It’s a beautiful environment to learn in,” she says. “If I land a few new tricks that’s cool and a bonus.”

Laughing by the fire, I almost forget that a year ago my cousin, Elliott, woke me to tell me my grandad had died earlier that morning. When my phone connects to wifi for a moment I see Elliott has sent me some photos he found on my grandad’s laptop. They’re from my graduation. My grandad was the closest thing I had to a father, because his son was absent from my life. I invited my father to my graduation as an olive branch, but on the day he left my grandad to tell me he couldn’t make it. I didn’t care – Grandad was there. He took me for dinner, cheered for me and took photos that he kept until the day he died.

The laughter pouring from the dinner table stops me from crying for too long. These people, strangers until yesterday, have become friends. It’s funny – despite skateboarding’s obvious benefits to people and communities, it’s often attacked for being “antisocial”. Skateboarders are pushed out of public life, local councils install anti-skate architecture, residents complain if a new space is proposed. But skateboarders are a resilient community, fighting for and taking care of their spaces and each other.

That night, soaked to the bone and without any sleep, I chicken out and go home to regain the energy to skate. In the morning, the sun finally out, I arrive onsite to the clatter of wheels. For a while, I watch, and the collective joy when someone else lands a trick fills me with euphoria as if I’ve done it myself. The thing is, collective participation can ignite a need to actually participate. So I get back on.

No matter how hard I try, pumping isn’t coming easily. It feels unnatural and I lose momentum with every movement instead of gaining it. Eventually, somebody tells me to try something different – and it clicks. It took the advice of four or five people over the weekend, and I feel silly, but then I remember that camaraderie is at the heart of skateboarding. I’ve seen better skaters than me nail tricks that have been evading them with support this weekend. When everyone goes to lunch I practise alone, finally feeling the pride that can dissolve fear.

When I was growing up, my grandad let me learn through doing. I could climb, swim, ride my bike, skateboard. He might tell me to be safe, but he never hovered. He raised a wilful person who still always wants to play. When somebody dies, though, you can get very scared. The world isn’t looking out for you any more. All I could see for a while was mortality. Skateboarders are the antidote to that. They are not serious people, not stupid but silly in a way we could all do with being. I thought that to shed my fear all I needed was to get back on the board. What I really needed was to be around people who let their fear take a backseat to the things they love. I don’t want to lose that spirit again, even if it means ending up back in A&E.