Breathing Underwater

Not all at once.

Quietly.

Almost without us noticing.

A few nights ago I dreamed I was swimming in a pool. I kept diving to the bottom and coming back to the surface. Again and again. There were other people around me, but what I remember most wasn’t the dream itself.

It was how peaceful it felt.

That surprised me.

There was a time in my life when going beneath the surface felt frightening. Grief, uncertainty, disappointment, fear… those were places I wasn’t sure I could survive. If I went there, I worried I might never find my way back.

This dream felt different.

I wasn’t avoiding the deeper water.

I wasn’t fighting it.

I was simply moving through it.

The same night I had another dream. A woman pointed to a wrinkle on my face and suggested it didn’t look very good.

I smiled and thought, Well… I’m almost sixty-five.

When I woke up, I wasn’t thinking about wrinkles.

I was thinking about all the ways we’re taught to hide the evidence of living.

Our mistakes.

Our grief.

Our scars.

Our age.

And yet, what if those aren’t flaws at all?

What if they’re evidence that we’ve loved deeply, lost painfully, forgiven slowly, and kept going anyway?

The older I become, the less interested I am in appearing untouched by life.

I’d rather allow life to touch me.

Carl Jung wrote that dreams often reveal what our conscious mind hasn’t yet recognized. Whether or not you study Jung, I think there’s something beautiful about paying attention to what stays with us.

Sometimes it’s a dream.

Sometimes it’s a conversation.

Sometimes it’s simply a feeling we can’t quite shake.

For me, this dream wasn’t really about swimming.

It was about trust.

Trusting that I can enter life’s deeper waters without losing myself there.

Maybe that’s what healing is.

Not avoiding sorrow.

Not pretending everything is fine.

But discovering that we can move through whatever life brings and still return to ourselves.

If you’re walking through a difficult season right now, I hope you’ll be gentle with yourself.

Healing isn’t becoming someone new.

It’s slowly discovering that you’ve been stronger than you realized all along.

Love travels faster than footsteps.

Audrey
Cued Coaching