Coming Up For Air
What to Do When You Feel Like You Are Drowning
When I was about five or six, I had my first experience with the sensation of drowning. Well, at least the first that I can remember. My mother actually remembered an incident from when I was an infant, which could have imprinted on my memory, but this one I still remember to this day.
It was a dream. A past life memory, maybe? Who knows. Past life memories are interesting, but not provable, so I am sticking to the narrative that it was a dream.
I was my six-year-old self, and I was standing next to a body of water, that seemed to resemble a large pond or perhaps a lake. My sixty-three year old self can’t remember how I ended up falling into the lake, but I do remember the sensation of not being able to breathe. I gasped for breath that would not come. Terror gripped me as my vision turned upward towards the top of the water, which quickly seemed to grow further and further away. I looked around with helplessness as the water grew darker and darker, as I fell deeper and further away from the daylight that illuminated the waves above me.
The sheer terror and the inability to breathe woke me, as I gasped for breath and jolted back into my bedroom and my body.
This dream has repeated itself multiple times in various scenarios throughout my life, as well as the experience of actually almost drowning. in this past six months, I have dreamed three times of a similar scenario, with various outcomes.
As a child, my mother attempted multiple times to secure swimming lessons for me, to no avail. I felt the brush of death by nearly drowning numerous times over the years. The last time, when I finally decided that swimming was not in the cards for me, happened about fourteen years ago. My extremely pregnant daughter saved my life by tossing her six-year-old son towards the shore and jerking me out of a deep hole in an ocean-like body of water, after my attempts to show off my recent accomplishments from a private adult swim coach suddenly turn a downward turn. Luckily, my grandson had arm swimmies on and was fine. Hours later, my daughter allowed herself to have a full-on panic attack after dropping me off and tucking her own son into bed.
This post is not necessarily about swimming, conquering your fears, or healing trauma, or even whether I might have drowned in a previous life, although all of these could be possible threads of consideration from my stories.
Collectively, we as a human race are gasping for breath. We are being bombarded with stories of tragedy, heroism, loss, violence, and the inhumane treatment of humans by other humans. There is the temptation to live our lives happily oblivious to the suffering of humans, animals, and the planet, believing that at any moment help was on the way to rescue us from the toxic waste that we are wallowing in. If we open our eyes and really look around us at what is happening, or worse, have been the victims of the abuse and suffering, we can easily feel disillusioned and hopeless.
I guess I understand the concept of the Christian rapture, which is a teaching that states that at any moment Jesus will return and take us away to heaven, leaving those who have not gotten ‘born-again’ to suffer at the whims of the devil. It is easier to hope for some outside force to come rescue us than to realize that we are responsible for saving ourselves.
When we become deluged with information so terrifying that we feel helpless to save ourselves or others, that overwhelming sense of hopelessness very much resembles the sensation of drowning.
Added to the suffering and the inhumanity to man that we are witnessing on the streets of our communities and on the news, many of us are navigating personal challenges as well. We may find ourselves exhausted from trying to make sure those we love are taken care of, possibly without any appreciation or support, while perhaps working a full-time job, paying bills, and perhaps sending out the energy of Divine Love into our communities and the world.
Water is symbolic of emotions, intuition, and our connection to the spirit world
When someone says: “I am drowning,” and they are nowhere near actual water, that person is most likely referring to the sensation of being overwhelmed by emotional overload.
Recently I announced that I was stepping back from teaching classes for awhile. This is most likely temporary, but I found that there just wasn’t enough of me to go around. On the first day of January, we experienced a death in the family. The subsequent shifting of family responsibilities, added to everything else I was already doing, completely overwhelmed me. Because I am a ‘recovering’ people-pleaser, I tend to take on more than I can reasonably handle. Taking care of young children and trying to assist family members in navigating their own struggles has repetitively resulted in finding myself a target of their wrath and resentment. So I am currently navigating some sort of ‘reset.’
A couple of mornings ago, I was jolted into consciousness after an intense dream, to find my six-year old grandson was already awake and ready to go, much sooner than my sixty-three-year-old brain was ready to take on that much energy. The cats needed fed. The birds were squawking, reminding me of the empty bird feeder. We had been cooped up inside for several days due to frigid temperatures and an entire week of cancelled school. Yesterday’s laundry was still in the dryer and dirty plates still in the sink.
What saved me?
A husband who banished me to my meditation room with my cup of tea.
A Facebook post by one of the monks walking twenty to thirty miles a day through ice, snow, sub-zero temperatures, protesters, all the while carrying 20 to 30 pound satchels and cloaks.
He said this.
Suffering comes when you identify something in your life that is not the way you prefer it to be. You resist that circumstance and want it to go away. Your emotions about that less-than-ideal circumstance overwhelm you (creating the sensation of drowning.)
Freedom from suffering comes when you see the circumstance and decide not to resist it. Accept it for what it is. Realize that your peace is not dependent on your outside circumstances. Decide not to postpone your peace until all circumstances are ideal.
For me personally, my lesson is to be at peace, do the best I can, and be kind, knowing that everything in life is temporary.
I am hearing that sometimes clicking the link does not take you to the post I intended. If that is the case, here is what it says:
“Peace Begins with Accepting What Is - Peace is already with us, quietly waiting. But we have forgotten it because we are too busy struggling against what is, wishing things were different, refusing to accept our circumstances as they are.
When we do not accept what is—when we fight reality, resist our circumstances, insist that things should be different before we can have peace—we cannot live peacefully in this present moment. We struggle in our minds, trapped between what is and what we wish would be.
And with that struggle, we cannot walk forward. We become stuck, frozen by our refusal to accept, unable to take the next step because we’re too busy fighting the ground we’re standing on.
This is true whether we have a little or a lot. If we hold just a bread in our hand and accept that this is what we have today, we can be at peace. We can breathe. We can take the next step. But if someone gives us gold and diamonds and we cannot accept that it’s not more, we will always struggle, always suffer, always be unable to move forward.
It all depends on whether we can accept what is right here, right now.
Acceptance doesn’t mean we stop working to improve our lives. It doesn’t mean we pretend everything is fine or give up on change. It means we stop adding mental suffering to our circumstances by refusing to acknowledge them as they are. It means we make peace with this moment so we have the clarity and energy to move forward.
When we accept what is—simply acknowledging reality without resistance—something shifts. The struggle eases. Our minds quiet. And suddenly, we can see the path forward. We can take the next step with a calm heart instead of a turbulent mind.
Peace begins here, with accepting what is. Not fighting it. Not pretending it’s different. Just accepting it with mindfulness, so we can walk peacefully forward from where we are.
May we all find the peace that comes from acceptance. May we stop struggling against what is and start walking peacefully from where we are.
May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace.”
These monks walk despite the cold. They walk to remind us to be at peace even when people protest and claim that they are doing the work of the devil because they are not Christian. They walk and spread the message that peace comes from inside of us, not because our life is ideal.
Around 26-27 or so years ago, I had my last dark night of the soul. Everything that I believed fell apart in my lap. What I believed to be my purpose in life was ripped away from me. I lost my community, my identity, and much of my family. It was probably the hardest thing I ever experienced in my life, but it catapulted me into the life that I have created since then.
Dark nights of the soul may last a day, a week, a month, or several years.
Peace comes when we acknowledge that life is temporary. Nothing stays the same. Tomorrow is another day. Our job is to be at peace anyway. Be kind anyway. Do the best we can. My sense of joy is not dependent on anyone agreeing with how I do life. And just because my twelve-year-old granddaughter prefers hanging out in the basement to hanging out with me does not mean that I am a bad grandma. My well-being is not dependent on being liked.
If you are struggling, I hope something spoke to you today of how to feel better.
I would add an addendum to this post in also acknowledging that identifying and accepting all emotions as valid responses to life circumstances is key. It is okay to get angry. It is okay to feel sad, or overwhelmed, or just tired. When we resist an emotion, or deny its right to exist, this is just as bad as resisting our circumstances. We feel the emotions, we acknowledge our right to feel what we feel in the moment. We process those emotions. Then we return to the present moment, the screaming child, the long line of traffic, the teenage attitude, or the empty shelves at Walmart, and we breathe and we decide to be okay with what is.
The monks wake up every morning and decide that they are going to walk, often silently, some barefoot, some hungry, carrying twenty to thirty pounds on their person, through rain, and wind, and snow, and welcome whoever and whatever shows up for them. Most of them are eating one meal a day while walking ten to twenty miles a day for months. And they smile.
When we awake in the morning and welcome whatever comes without resistance, peace comes. This does not mean we do not take action when action is called for. This does not mean we allow people to abuse us or treat us shamefully. It does not mean we do not feel our emotions, or acknowledge that we have become overwhelmed.
I heard a different Buddhist I love say when we come across a rattlesnake, we acknowledge its right to exist, but we do not try to pick it up and hold it.
So be patient with me while I navigate the next few months of taking care of a six-year-old (his sister will be leaving soon) while doing my woo-woo thing while he is at school.
Thank you to all of you who have shown your support with your likes and subscribes. A huge shout-out to those of you who support me by becoming paid subscribers, especially since at this point access to my content is not dependent on paying for it.
I welcome your stories of how you are navigating these stressful days. I still believe we can co-create a happy and peaceful world, despite all evidence to the contrary. And if we cannot, then we can at least create peace within ourselves, despite anything going on in the world.
Blessings to you as you find peace amidst all the chaos.
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We are all navigating life the best we can. Let us be kind to each other. Let us stand up to injustice in a way that is loving and peaceful. Let us be here for each other.