LEARNING TO FLOAT
My suitcases sat open on the living room for two full days, half unpacked, half being actively ignored, the way you ignore a problem you know is going to take twenty minutes but somehow still don't have twenty minutes for. This morning I finally hit a wall - not because anything was actually wrong, just the low-grade chaos of being back, partially still in Greece-brain but also needing to immediately function like an adult again. My husband and I spent two hours on a cleaning blitz. Laundry in, laundry out, kids’ toys and craft projects hidden away, suitcases finally unpacked, the house slowly turning back into a place we actually live instead of a place we're just passing through.
The jet lag is starting to wear off, but the group chat from our retreat is still buzzing. We’re all saying some version of the same thing: I'm having such a hard time coming back.
The comedown is real, because the week was a high - practically perfect in every way. Every morning, we woke to look out on insane, almost unbelievable natural beauty. One Reformer class ended, inexplicably and gloriously, in a full-blown J-Lo dance party. We climbed a cliffside monastery to meet a ninety-year-old monk, and then jumped straight into the Aegean with the kind of pure, undignified joy you mostly forget you're allowed to have as an adult.
It's funny how fast real life reclaims you. One day you’re Mariah Carey on her yacht, the next you’re back at your desk/taking care of kids/making dentist appointments/dealing with sick pets/changing the toilet paper roll/answering the emails that had the audacity to just sit there waiting the whole time. Life, very politely, waiting for us exactly where we left it.
The evening we arrived on Amorgos in our Opening Circle, I asked everyone to imagine standing at the water and leaving something behind them in the sand - the stress, the expectations, the stories we tell ourselves on repeat. On our last night there, we repeated the ritual, but the prompt was different: As you leave the shoreline today, what are you carrying home that weighs nothing?
My answer, I think, is the feeling of floating.
One afternoon we did a floating meditation in the pool - some heart-slowing breathwork, and then just letting the water hold you up while you lay on your back. It sounds simple. And yet I spent most of that time realizing how much of my actual life is spent trying to hold myself up. Studios. Parenting. Emails. Retreat planning. Carrying things that, it turns out, don't need to be carried by me alone, every single minute, forever.
Floating asks something different of you. It asks you to trust that you don't have to do any of the work yourself. Theres a fear that if I stop holding everything up, even for a minute, it will all just come apart. The studio, the schedule, the family, the version of myself that has it all handled. So I don't stop. Like Dory, I just keep swimming, upright, treading water in every part of my life at once, because floating requires believing something will catch you, and I'm not always sure I believe that.
For a few minutes in the pool, I didn't have a choice. The water was going to hold me up whether I trusted it or not. And, surprise, nothing fell apart.
It wasn't just the water, either. I watched it happen all week, all around me. One person would slow down on the hike when someone else was lagging, so nobody finished alone. A stomachache would bubble up at breakfast and three different bags would open at once - a veritable pharmacy laid out on the table, Gas-X and Tums and Pepto. Sixteen women who mostly didn't know each other a week earlier, taking turns holding one another up so nobody had to carry anything by themselves.
I don't think twenty minutes of floating can fix everything. But I'm hoping I remember the feeling. Not needing to solve everything immediately. Seeing people, and water, do the thing they're both capable of, whether you ask them to or not.
Maybe that's the actual job of travel. Not escaping your life but bringing something back into it. Returning a little quieter, a little steadier, trusting a bit more that things hold up without you white-knuckling them the whole time.
The best souvenir I brought home from Greece didn't fit in the suitcase. It's also the reason I'm already excited for our Kingston retreat this fall. While I can't promise the sparkling blue waters of the Aegean, I can promise the part of Greece that actually mattered - a few days outside your normal life, new friendships, real movement, and hopefully something you carry home that doesn't weigh anything at all. We've got one room left for Kingston, if you're looking for your own excuse to float for a few days.