Ali Truwit says it’s possible to turn trauma into hope.
Roughly a year after losing part of her leg to a shark attack, the Connecticut native from Darien is set to compete for Team USA in the Paralympic Games in Paris starting Aug. 28.
“I am so excited and just really can’t wait to wear the American flag on my cap in races,” Truwit says. “Wearing the American flag … to me, stands as a thank you to the everyday American heroes all around me who have worked so hard this year to save me and are helping me rebuild my life.”
Truwit’s life was upended in 2023 while on vacation in the Turks and Caicos islands.
She had just graduated from Yale University, where she competed as a Division I swimmer, and was snorkeling with a friend when she was attacked by a shark.
“It ultimately bit my foot and part of my leg off,” Truwit recalls in a conversation with Connecticut Public’s “Disrupted.” “We screamed for help, but no help came. And so we made the split-second decision to swim for our lives.”
The pair swam roughly 75 yards in the open ocean, “me, bleeding profusely still, and both of us knowing a shark was still circling – to get back to the boat to save ourselves,” Truwit says.
They did get back to the boat. A friend applied a tourniquet, which helped to save Truwit’s life before she was airlifted to a Miami hospital. There, on her 23rd birthday, doctors amputated her leg below the knee.
Truwit started swimming as a young kid. And for years, she says the water was a source of peace and comfort – a place where her mind focused only on the present.
But following the attack, the water was dragging her back to the past.
“Returning to the water after that, I was really fearful,” she says. “The last time I had heard the sound of water, at that point, I was swimming for my life. So I was scared to get back in.”
But through a strong support network of family and friends, Truwit says she made a decision: The attack took so much from her, she was going to fight and take back what she could.
“And so I worked to get back in the water,” she says, first by stepping into her backyard pool, and, eventually, starting to train again with her longtime swim coach.
“It was definitely very up and down,” she recalls. “There were those days that I didn’t have that peace and comfort, but I knew that it was within reach. The more I showed myself I could, the more I found that peace and comfort again.”
Turning trauma into hope is “really what helps you get through nightmares,” Truwit says.
“My community made all the difference in my recovery,” she says. “Be as vulnerable as you can. Let people help lift you back up. They’re there, they want to help. Let them.”
Learn more:
