Katie Cahn is brutally honest, especially when it comes to her personal struggles. Not just the fact that she survived cancer or that she grew up without a strong male role model or that her family battles addiction. She’s honest about the fact that being a mom is hard; that being a wife is hard. That it takes effort and therapy and a little bit of fishing for her to succeed at these roles that demand so much. Not that she gets to fish as much as she’d like—she’s honest about that, too.
“I probably haven’t fished in three months,” Cahn says from her home along the edge of the Chattooga River in the Southern Appalachians. “I used to be able to take my daughter to the river and fish because she would sleep, but now she’s three and a half so she wants me to play Elsa and Anna with her in the sand.”
Cahn grew up paddling the Chattooga, where she did stints as a rafting guide. She has also led fishing trips with the non-profit Casting for Recovery, which teaches cancer patients and survivors how to fly fish. But fishing is not Cahn’s job. It’s her release.
“I think fly fishing is the most meditative thing I’ve ever done,” Cahn says. “I can wash the rest of my life out for a period of time when I’m on the river and get back to being who I am. If I strive to find that time for me, even if it’s just a few hours, or a day, I get to be Katie again. Not a wife or mother. Just Katie.”
Cahn believes this sort of transparency will help other women cope with their own struggles and hopefully normalize the notion that a woman should take time for herself. She believes fly fishing could help more women rediscover themselves after years of putting others first.
Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz1Hlog1dAA
Watch the full edit here: https://www.outsideonline.com/video/fishing-for-mental-health/