Roni Essex
Freediver, Spearo, Creator
Share this on
Roni Essex
Freediver, Spearo, Creator
Kimi Werner is one of the world’s top female spearos of all time. Born and raised in Hawaii, she got into freediving and then into spearfishing, as her father used to hunt in order to provide for his family. Fast forward a few years later, Kimi became the United States National Spearfishing Champion and that’s when fame and sponsors came into play. She wasn’t happy though. The ocean, the place where she chose to find herself, became the grounds to win competitions. And the fish, the food that her father harvested to sustain his family, turned into competition points. That’s when she decided it was time to slow down.
"When I returned home to Hawaii, people were really proud of me. They wanted to take my pictures, they wanted to write articles about me, and they started to highlight my other talents, like cooking and painting. Soon my art started to sell and it felt like all of my dreams had come true. And it wasn't the publicity. It was just that for the first time in my life, other people were believing in these crazy dreams of mine. I was so overwhelmed with gratitude and I didn't take it lightly. I attributed all of this beautiful support to winning, and so that's what I put my focus on.
I entered every tournament I could and I made it my goal to win but after about a year and a half of doing this, I realized that once again I wasn't happy and my heart just wasn't into it. With every title I won, it just felt like there was one more I have to defend, and any time I came in second, I actually felt embarrassed. I felt like I was coming in dead last, but what really got me was that when I would go on my own personal dives to get away from it all, I was looking at fish as points. And that didn't feel like me.
"Once again the need to speed up became my truest indicator that it was time to slow down. The whole reason I got back into diving was to slow down, it was because I truly believed that going back to a simpler life was not a step backward. And so I knew I had to walk away and I knew that I would let people down, and I did let people down. I was called a quitter, a waste of talent, and a disgrace, and these words seriously hurt me and they broke me for a while. Because I didn't know who I was anymore or what I wanted without all of this.
But I found out that I still do want to dive and I still do want to travel, but just not necessarily to compete. I want to travel to see the different cultures of the world and to learn from them. I want to see what kind of fish they have and how they eat them. I want to shoot just a couple fish and eat them over a fire with just a couple of friends or, better yet, catch a fish and give it back to the local community, to the people who need it the most. And through doing this, I realized that I hadn't lost everything, and I hadn't let everyone down. In fact, I gained more. I gained more supporters and better sponsors. It turned out that people as a whole could relate more to fish as food than they could to fish as trophies. But besides just being able to keep the support, more importantly, I was able to keep myself. And I truly believe that we all have the power to slow down and make more conscious, more meaningful decisions, that can not only improve our personal lives, but that can change the world".