Back to the Water

Backstroke & Breakthroughs – Post #16

When I was finally strong enough to stand again, I went back to the water.

Not because it was easy—but because it was familiar. The pool had always been my place. In high school, I was a swimmer who took home gold and silver medals. I was a lifeguard who knew how to spot danger before it had a chance to rise. I knew water. I trusted it. I respected it.

So, when I had to start over, I went back to where my body once felt powerful.

Teaching swim lessons and lifeguarding at the local YMCA wasn’t glamorous. I was back at my first job, doing work some people might overlook. But it wasn’t just about a paycheck it was about reclaiming something I had lost. My rhythm. My breath. My sense of movement. My connection to people.

There’s something healing about water. It holds you up when you feel too heavy to carry yourself. It quiets the world just enough for you to hear your own heartbeat. And in that pool, I started to believe in my body again. Every swim stroke I taught reminded me: “You’re not broken you’re rebuilding.”

Even more than that, I saw myself in the kids I taught. Some of them were scared, unsure, convinced they’d sink. But I’d look them in the eye and say, “The water doesn’t want to take you. You just have to learn how to move through it.”

That became a metaphor for my whole life.

This week’s takeaway:
Healing doesn’t always look like therapy or medicine or a breakthrough moment. Sometimes, it looks like going back to the thing that made you feel alive the first time and choosing to feel it again.

I didn’t just teach kids how to swim. I taught myself how to trust again.
In my body. On my journey. In my right to be here.

Still floating, still fighting,
– J.R.