I’m very young—maybe 4 or 5—swimming in the pool with Mimi on a warm summer day. Standing in the shallow end near the stairs, I watch as she floats on her back, her arms and legs spread out, water lightly lapping against her limbs, relaxed and weightless.
She plunges under completely before resurfacing.
Mimi looks at me, her eyes the same color as the water.
“Okay sweetie, time for you to try.”
“You sure? What if I get water up my nose and choke and drown?” I was born with some kind of internalized fear.
She smiles and shakes her head, “Why are you so worried about that? Nothing is going to happen to you. If you drown, I’ll be right here to save you.”
I agree, reluctantly. I wade over closer to her and she puts her hands on the back of my neck and the small of my back. I let my feet rise from the textured concrete.
“Alright, now just lean back and relax.” Mimi guides my body to the surface, but my unconscious reaction is to tighten. I struggle to let go of control.
“Don’t resist honey, you’re too tense. You can trust me. I won’t move my hands until you’re ready.”
I do trust that she won’t let me go; she never has before. So, I tilt my head back, water filling my ears and muting the world around me. I feel Mimi’s touch, holding me carefully between the water and the surface. The sun beams uncovered, stinging my face.
Her voice sounds warbled: “Focus on your breathing, just close your eyes and let the water hold you. Let go of the tension. I won’t let you drown.”
I feel her hands move from palms to fingertips under me, slowly releasing their grip. I breathe in and out and the water holds me, just like she says. I am weightless, buoyant.
My mind goes quiet. I close my eyes and feel the sun, an ombre of red and orange dancing behind my eyelids. The light envelopes me in a golden veil, dancing and sparkling in honeycomb patterns along the water’s surface. When I consciously realize I’m alone and without support, I stiffen and plunge under the water, nose filling with chlorine. I flail until I reach the surface, find Mimi and cling to her, coughing and panting in a slight panic.
“You were doing it!” Mimi shouts. “You had it until you got scared! C’mon, let’s try again.”
Falling back into her arms, I let the water fill my ears and the world goes quiet again. I feel her hands under my back and neck. I close my eyes and feel the warmth of the sun. Then I let go and I float. I become one with the water and trust it to hold me. I barely notice when Mimi releases her hands.
For the first time: calm, silence. Time stops and I am somewhere else.
*
Most Florida babies come out of the womb swimming. I’ve always been near the water. There are pictures of infant me floating in an inner tube and countless more swimming through my childhood at the beach and the pool, wearing some kind of colorful 90s swimsuit, hair matted to my face and skin freshly bronzed from the sun. After Mimi taught me how to float, the water became a place for me to fully relax, untense my muscles, silence my mind.
I’ve always felt more comfortable in the water than on land. On the land I stumble and struggle to keep my skeleton from falling apart. Water holds my body the right way. Each time I enter, water welcomes me into the palm of its malleable hand where I am safe to become a seamless whole with it. When I float, I feel light—there is no past, present, or future to weigh me down. It’s only the clearest version of me, buoyant and rippling along with the waves. Anything clinging to me is simply washed away. I’m born again.
I’ve often thought of the beach as my church—the sanctuary where I feel closest to God. My personal rule for any beach visit is that you have to be baptized—you have to go all the way in the ocean. Surrender under completely under to something bigger and more powerful.
My higher power is the water. That makes sense as a Pisces Rising.
Mimi taught me astrology from a young age and it’s something that has brought me a lot of wisdom and comfort over my decades of informal study. Most people know their sun signs (I’m born in August; mine is Leo), but rising signs are equally if not more important. The rising sign represents house 1of 12 houses in an astrological birth chart, our individual snapshots of the moment we are born into this world. The 1st house is the house of self, it is how we appear physically and our immediate personal expression. It the core essence of individual personality.
When I was born, the horizon was rising in Pisces, the last of the zodiac signs. Pisces is the two twin fish swimming around each other in opposite directions; as above, so below. The two fish are both represented and divided by an invisible line, one fin in the Earth Reality and one on the Other Side. The rulers of Pisces are Jupiter and Neptune, the gods of sky and sea. The horizon of my altar is where the sky and sea meet as one. That’s where I want to live—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—in the space where the waters fade into the heavens.
They say you become more closely connected with your rising sign as you age. It takes time to grow into your true self. I think I’ve only started developing into myself recently.
*
Being of the water can be a blessing and a curse. Water is just as blissful as it is destructive. I was lost from myself for a long time, tumbling under the waves of my experiences and emotions with no control, a helpless victim drowning in my circumstances. Still, I desperately tried to regain that control by clinging to bad habits and negative thoughts thinking there was no way other than to succumb to the storm that was apparently consuming my life.
I stopped swimming for a long time. Too self-conscious of my body, I decided that hiding it away from the world was more important than enjoying the feeling of peace in the water. I remember the first time I felt too fat in the bikini I was wearing. I was probably around 10 or 11 and I was so consumed by the thoughts of how I looked that struggled to enjoy the entire day. I started to scrutinize the other bodies around me—how much cellulite someone had, how close together their thighs were, if there was any loose skin hanging from their arms or bellies. Everyone around was a reflection of myself and I became obsessed with picking myself apart.
As a teenager, I starved myself thin but was more self-conscious than ever about my appearance. I would still go to the beach or pool, but I was always covering myself. I refused to get my hair wet and worried about my makeup melting off. I wanted to be pretty, I wanted to be liked. But I struggled to find connections with others where I felt safe enough to be seen. I got lost in a storm of self-pity and internal destruction all while assuming I could craft a version of myself pleasant enough to exist in the outside world. Hiding myself under various masks seemed safer than being who I felt I was naturally. I cared too much about acceptance. It’s sad because the truth is that I abandoned my true self being too worried about the external.
Water was always the connection I longed for. When I’m lying there floating, when the water fills my ears and the world quiets down, I don’t feel burdened by my body or my mind. My flesh and spirit become one with the water. I could simply dissolve into it as a million unseen molecules, somewhere further from this world and closer to the Other Side.
As I continue to try to get closer to my true self, reconnecting the water has been a key part of that healing process. I have the most amazing pool in my backyard and have spent so many days soaking in the golden sun and alternating with full dips in the cool blue water, honeycomb light patterns always dancing through the surface.
Solo beach dates are a norm for me now. I go bare-faced and I wear a bikini without caring what my body looks like. I let all my weight sink into the sand, and I thank God for once because I’m lucky enough to live a short drive from my sanctuary. I dive headfirst into the saltwater and feel the relief from my oceanic baptism. When I think about where I have wanted to be for so long, it seems I have finally arrived.
*
Revitalizing my relationship with the water has revealed so much about myself. It has become the clearest metaphor for my life. For decades, I was treading, swimming relentlessly uphill, fighting the current, clinging to rocks and logs where I didn’t belong. I immersed myself with people and situations that disrupted the flow, hoping I had found solid ground amidst the constant storm and rushing rivers.
But life is an endless process of becoming. The losses and sacrifices I’ve had (especially in the last three years) have transformed me both into someone completely different and the same as I’ve always been.
Now that I’ve learned how to work with my element, I go with the flow instead of treading against it. I no longer get lost tumbling in the waves of my emotions waiting for someone to save me from drowning. Instead, I breach the surface and ride the wave, trusting the water will take me to where I need to be and grateful for the experience.
I am both boundless and contained. I can fit the shape of whatever I need to be while still encompassing the whole of myself. I am complete on my own and one with all the others.
When I feel like there is no one there to catch me, I know I can always go to the water to be held.
The magic of the Other Side exists in the real world. It’s all about how you ride the current.