Written by Jillian Best

3-4 minute read

The beginning of one of the biggest challenges of my life started in the dark.

I was standing in the water at the edge of Lake Ontario at 11:00 PM, the air had a coolness and the water a bit cooler. My crew was gathered on the boat beside me, quietly preparing for the long night and day ahead. The lake stretched out into darkness, and somewhere on the other side was the shore I hoped to reach.

I stood with my hands on my hips, mentally preparing for what was ahead. I took a breath and took my first few strokes.

The cold hit immediately, it was a bit shocking, but after a few minutes the rhythm started to settle in. Stroke after stroke, the shoreline and lights of Niagara-on-the-Lake behind me slowly disappeared.

And somewhere in those early hours of swimming, I found myself thinking about a very different beginning. At that time, it was 5 years earlier, when I woke up after my transplant.

I remember lying in that hospital bed feeling like a completely different person.

Not just physically. Something inside me had shifted. I knew I had been given a second chance, and I had a powerful realization: I didn’t want to go back to living the way I had before. I wanted to live with intention. I wanted to give back to the transplant community that had saved my life. And I wanted to surround myself with people who lifted me up.

I didn’t have a plan yet. But I knew I wanted my life to mean something.

One of the moments that stays with me most from that time was coming home from the hospital in the spring. After years of being sick, of hospital rooms and uncertainty, I remember being outside and seeing the grass turning green again. Trees were budding. Early spring flowers were pushing their way up through the ground.

Everything was waking up after winter.

I was emotional in a way that’s hard to describe. It felt like I was part of that revival somehow. It was like my body and nature were healing at the same time. After everything that had happened, it was a reminder that life has a way of returning, even when things feel completely broken. The spring always brings me back to those moments.

Not long after my transplant, I found my way back to the pool.

Swimming had been a big part of my life growing up, and getting back in the water after my transplant felt familiar. But it quickly became something more than exercise. The pool became the place where I rebuilt my strength both physically and mentally. It was where I slowly started trusting my body again.

Lap by lap and day after day, I began to realize that I was capable of more than I had thought.

Eventually that love of swimming led me to the transplant games. I’ve now competed in multiple Canadian Transplant Games and have competed at four World Transplant Games. Being surrounded by people from all over the world who have lived through a transplant each with their own story of survival was incredibly powerful.

Thousands of transplant recipients at the opening ceremonies at the World Transplant Games in Perth, Australia 2023

There’s something special about being around people who just get it...it was actually life changing.

In 2020, when the world slowed down and most events were cancelled, I found myself looking for a new challenge. That’s when the idea of swimming across Lake Ontario began to form.

At first, it sounded a little crazy. I hadn’t swam more than 5 km at once before I decided to do this.

But training for that swim became one of the most transformative experiences of my life. Long hours in open water give you a lot of time to think, and during those swims I kept noticing how much the process reminded me of the transplant journey.

Waiting for a transplant is a lot like swimming across a lake.

You can’t always see the other side and progress can feel painfully slow. Some moments are calm, and others feel overwhelming. And sometimes the only thing you can do is keep moving forward, one stroke at a time, trusting that eventually you’ll reach the shore.

That swim also taught me something else, and I feel fortunate to say, that when enduring the hardest moments of my life, I’ve never been alone.

Some of my crew watching me swim across Lake Ontario.

Just like my transplant, there was an entire team behind that swim. People navigating the boats, watching the conditions, encouraging me through the toughest hours. Their belief carried me just as much as my own determination did.

In many ways, that swim became the spark for something bigger.

Out of that experience, the Move for Life foundation started to take shape. I stepped into the role of founder and director without really knowing what I was doing, if I’m being honest. But from the beginning I was surrounded by people who believed in the mission, and together we figured it out.

Over the past few years, our Move for Life team has accomplished things I never could have imagined when we started. We’ve helped fund life-saving programs like A-NRP at the University Hospital in London where I received my transplant. We organized and completed a 1,600-kilometre relay around the province of Ontario. And a couple of summers ago, I swam 30 kilometres across Lake Muskoka to raise funds to send kids affected by transplant to camp.

That project means a lot to me. For kids who are transplant recipients or waiting for transplants, life can look very different from their peers. Sending them to camp gives them the chance to just be kids, surrounded by others who understand their experience. My hope is that those friendships and memories stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Another initiative that grew from our team is the Walk n’ Talk event.

What started as a simple idea, a five-kilometre walk where people could gather and have open conversations about organ donation, has now been running for three years. Watching it grow has been one of the most rewarding parts of this journey. What began locally has now expanded to Saskatchewan, the other side of Canada, and there’s potential for it to grow into other provinces as well.

Seeing that movement take shape makes me incredibly proud of the Move for Life team. It’s proof that small ideas, when shared by the right group of people, can grow into something meaningful.

Alongside all of this, and soon after my transplant, another big shift happened in my life. I made the switch from working for someone else to working for myself.

That decision gave me something ownership of my time which I’ve learned is so valuable to me. It allowed me to prioritize my health, my family, my nonprofit work, and my love for swimming.

My master’s swim team has become a huge part of my community. When you work for yourself you don’t always have coworkers in the traditional sense, but the people I train with every week have become that for me. We wake up early, we train hard, and we push each other to do things that are uncomfortable.

And there’s something powerful about standing on the starting blocks beside people who haven’t had a transplant and realizing that I can still compete.

I can still push my limits. I can make it onto the podium. I can swim just as fast and sometimes faster than others in my age group, and sometimes faster than the boys ;) .

To some people that might seem trivial, but to me it’s a reminder of what this body and mind is capable of.

The strength I feel today didn’t come easily. It comes from everything my family and I have experienced…organ failure, the transplant process, and now watching my sister go through her own transplant journey.

But those experiences have also taught me something powerful: resilience grows in the hardest places.

This year marks ten years since my transplant, and it feels like I’m turning another page. Not leaving the past behind, but growing into a new chapter. Recently I began a course to become a life coach because I feel like the past decade has taught me so much about resilience, purpose, and the power of community.

I want to keep learning. I want to keep growing. And I want to help others discover their own strength and potential.

Through all of it, I’ve been so fortunate to have supportive friends and family, but (aside from my parents) one person has been there beside me from the very beginning—my husband Zach. He’s been part of this journey since before I even became sick. Over the years he has supported every swim, every fundraising idea, and every new chapter we’ve explored together. We’ve traveled the world for competitions, faced challenges that tested us both, and grown through it all.

I truly can’t imagine this life without him.

Ten years ago, when I woke up after my transplant, I didn’t know where this path would lead.

What I know now is this:

Every transplant journey deserves something waiting on the other side.

Hope.

And through the work we do with Move for Life, that’s what we’re trying to build because every transplant journey should have hope waiting on the horizon.

10 Years Later: What my transplant has taught me about living.

Mark’s 100 Mile Mission: A Testament to Resilience