May the Current Carry Me

slipstream toward entering the river with ease

all images by author unless otherwise noted.

(A note to begin. Recently I listened to a wonder-filled podcast interview of Ocean Vuong by Krista Tippet for On Being. Ocean had so many important things to offer about language, and about the care we use when choosing our words, especially in everyday speech. I’ve been thinking about this so much. I’ve also been thinking about the beauty of a more raw way of writing. Carefully crafted as far as trying to be honest, authentic and clear for the reader, but not quite as polished or explanatory—leaving room for some magic between the reader and the words. I’ve been trying a hybrid of fragments, poetry, traditional prose paragraphs, all blended into one form that I am calling Slipstream. New waters, but hopefully they will send ripples. The slipstream below, in particular, is a tricky subject for me to approach in my public writing, and this form felt much safer than the traditional essay—not as much explanation, more nuance, more mystery, but hopefully the essence is still very present. As always, I welcome your own words in the comments below.)

You can also listen to me read this piece (imperfectly!) from my desk in the woods:

Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash

It was such a surprise. I turned the corner to enter the path between ponds and heard her—a rhythmic yet faint sloshing of water, unmistakable footsteps. She was on the edge of the pond, beneath a black willow that arches over like it’s kneeling in prayer. I stilled myself, almost afraid to breathe. This was nothing short of magic, to be so close.

Tall and impossibly still, she stood in the shallows like a spirit in the reeds: watching, waiting, utterly at ease in her aloneness. I’ve come upon her unexpectedly so many times, in the pale blush of morning, or in the late light when the sky begins to fold itself into blue dusk, but never have I been able to watch her moored at the edge of pond for more than a moment; she lifts away before I can inch closer.

She never startles. She simply ascends with ceremonial grace and glides away in that long, prehistoric arc—the slow and steady rise and fall of wings. On this day, I was given the gift of several minutes…until my cell phone rang.

Before I could silence it, the great blue heron was gone.

Photo by Jack Bulmer on Unsplash

I always feel a kind of recognition when I see her. Still. Alone. Quiet. Infinitely patient. Attuned to subtle shifts in the world around her. A sentinel at the threshold.

Stillness is not the only teacher, though. Let’s consider another kind of energy.

An otter, gliding through cattails.
Not anchored, but fluid.
Not watchful, but playful.
At ease not in stillness, in silence, but in motion.

And I wonder: what does it mean to find peace there?

I’ve mostly believed peaceful ease looked like quiet mornings, solitude and deep stillness—like the long pause of winter. Maybe peace is also the willingness to be carried. Maybe it’s what happens when we stop resisting the current.

I’ve been noticing how much I brace.

Sometimes I think I’ve mistaken stillness for safety.

Photo by Ray Harrington on Unsplash

There are times when I am not gliding like the heron or the otter—I am frozen. Braced. Muscles clenched. Skin tight and itchy. Holding myself quiet and still not from serenity, but because sometimes being out and about feels like too much: the noise, the movement, the sheer unpredictability of being in my particular body in the world of that moment

No one prepares you for how much fear can live in the body—not just old emotional fear, but the quiet dread that comes from discomfort, from chronic pain or illness or simply the ache of not feeling at home in your own skin. How it shapes the way you move (or don’t move). How it keeps you from entering the water at all.

There’s a different kind of peace, of ease, I’ve been longing for: the kind that doesn’t require disappearing. The kind that lets me stay, even when I’m seen. For a long time, I’ve learned to manage life from the edges—watching, waiting, finding quiet ground where I could listen without needing to join in. It feels safer to be the heron: dignified but a bit removed, observing, never fully in the fray. I’ve begun to wonder if that way of being, comfortable as it may be, has also become a kind of armour. A way to avoid the discomfort of being in motion, of being visible, of being fully here, in this scarred yet hopeful body.

Because the truth is, I have not always felt safe or loved in this body. As a child, yes. As a teenager, yes. As a young, married woman whose body was not respected, treasured and adored—no. As a young mother whose body betrayed her when her first son was born so ill and soon dying—that might have been the final severance.

There are days when I move through the world as though everything might hurt me. Sometimes it’s physical—skin that flares into welts at the slightest rise in heat and humidity or even the wrong fabric touching me, joints that ache, vertigo even walking down a slight hill, an inner restlessness that refuses to be calmed. Just as often, it’s something harder to name: a fear that my body will betray me, or already has. That I will be too slow, too vulnerable, too much, or not enough.

And so I brace. I hold myself still. I control what I can. I don’t go into the water.

But oh, how I long to.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

I think of the otter—slipping through the cattails, trusting the water to hold her, letting the moment shape her path instead of resisting it. And I wonder what it might be like to live that way. To enter the stream of life not just with awareness, but with trust. Not with tension, but with fluidity.

To soften the grip. To stay in my body instead of the sanctuary of my mind. To let the current carry me sometimes, instead of always trying to outswim the fear.

My body.
It’s made of old beliefs.
Of vigilance and guardedness,
of surgeries, scars and healing,
of protection and of shame.

It is also filled with numinous light,
with gentleness, patience and tender love,
a kinship with all living things,
with the ability to see beauty
in the mundane, and that can transcend.

It whispers to me:

The heron teaches presence. The otter teaches trust.

We need both.

great blue, watercolour on paper, 11x14

I’m not in the stream yet.

Most days, I’m still moored. Still watching. Still bracing more than I’d like to admit. I haven’t learned how to once again glide through life like the otter, and maybe I never will—fully—but I’ve started to feel the ache of wanting to.

And maybe that’s something.

Maybe the first step isn’t motion—it’s recognition. Maybe peace begins with noticing the fortress I’ve been living in, and wondering what it would feel like to leave the gate open a crack. Not to leap right out—but just to imagine another way.

For now, I’ll stay close to the pond’s edge. I’ll keep listening. I’ll let the longing live beside me like a small, quiet guest.

The heron teaches presence.
The otter teaches trust.
I’m still learning how to hold both.

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Dear readers, a question for your own shoreline:

Where in your life are you still hiding in the reeds on the bank?
What would it take to loosen your grip?
And what if peace, or ease, is not something to find,
but something that finds you when you finally let go?

I’m floating these questions your way.
You’re welcome to answer below, or simply carry it with you for a while.

With tenderness, and gratitude,
K