Put Your Feet Down Into Deep Water

There is nothing more foreboding, nothing that I hate more than putting my feet down into deep water. How can I possibly fathom what lies beneath? 

A prehistoric shark? A stinging jellyfish? Something… worse. Perhaps a severed arm floating in the murk.

Stretching down, it feels like the water will swallow your face. The vastness seems endless… until it doesn’t. When I put my feet down into deep water after the pummeling of a storm, I felt them scrape against a rough surface—a firm foundation, a place to stand and rest.

Whether the storm is literal or metaphorical, we all need a foundation—something other than ourselves—to stand on and rest. Victor Frankl wrote about this in Man’s Search for Meaning. He observed the suffering in concentration camps, and noticed that those who survived with their souls intact found something other than themselves to provide meaning and purpose. Not tidy answers. Not pat explanations for their suffering. Rather, an ineffable sense of Love - something beyond themselves - that sustained them through profound suffering (Frankl, 1946/2006) 

I am fortunate that my 2025 looked nothing like Frankl’s 1945.

Viktor E. Frankl Institute of America. (n.d.). The life of Viktor E. Frankl. ViktorFranklAmerica. https://viktorfranklamerica.com/viktor-frankl-bio/

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Still, in 2025 I found myself in a place where my usual self-care routine—exercise, journaling, and boundaries—stopped working. Perhaps you find yourself there too. What kept me afloat was counterintuitive. I needed to stretch my feet down into deep water.

Instead of my usual habits, I took my own advice around second-order change: “If what you are doing isn’t working, try something else” (Diaz, 2025, 104). For me, putting my feet down into deep water looked like this: 

I needed to stop:

• Stop swimming, stop running, numbing, escaping.

Stop scrolling reels of cute otters snuggling with their pups, political news - let’s call it what it is - political GOSSIP, and memes mocking teenagers’ texts - what’s your algorithm?
I needed to stop allowing my mind to circle circle circle in reactivity, what ifs, and problem solving mode - I’m so good at problem solving mode.

I needed to go deep:

• Let subterranean thoughts and feelings float to the surface—fear, grief, frustration, doubt.

The terrain is familiar, long explored with a great therapist, but the work is not finished. It is never done.

Practically, putting my feet down into deep water looked like this:

• Sitting in stillness in the precious few quiet moments of the morning, and letting whatever needs to rise bubble to the surface.
  
  
• Opening my hands, a gesture of receptivity and surrender, signaling I am ready to face whatever emerges. Rather than my default mode: expending mass amounts of energy holding down the darkness like a large beach ball underneath the water, I allow whatever needs to rise to come into the light and presence of LOVE (my firm foundation).
  
  
• Turning my hands over, surrendering unsteady thoughts and emotions to Love.

Now I can feel the sand beneath my toes. Grounded, not because I controlled the waves, but because I stopped resisting them. I inhale through my nose, and exhale slowly through pursed lips, ensuring the exhale is longer than my inhale. 

Then I open my eyes and look around. I remind myself to put on my “writer-lens” and notice my surroundings to describe them. This serves as a form of grounding that feels meaningful to me. The mundane became enchanted: navy velvet curtains, imperfectly hanging over my windows, dark academia aesthetic intact—imperfection embraced, perfection surrendered.

Then I move my body—not as a self-care checkbox, but to inhabit my midlife self fully: discovering tight shoulders, upper back, hips. Stretching through the tension that forms from clinging to the illusion of control. 

All of this takes 15 minutes. Afterward, I am ready—not just superficially, but deeply—to step back into the water. To smile authentically at the people I carry with me, knowing my energy has been restored not by distraction or habit, but by facing the depth with my feet grounded on my firm foundation.

What will you do in 2026 to put your feet down into deep water?

Works cited

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning (R. W. Lively, Trans.). Beacon Press. (Original work published 1946)

White Diaz, E. (2025). Discover, connect, respond: A practical approach to trauma-informed instruction. Seidlitz Education.here to edit.