Hi there,
I’ve been quiet for a few weeks — heads down finishing the prep for something I’ve been building toward for months.
Last week, I watched six people swim across a bay they’d never seen before. Not once, not twice, but day after day for the entire week.
Complete strangers to each other, they’d been training with me since October — scattered across the country, doing laps in their local pools all winter, building toward the same thing. We rarely had everyone in the same place at the same time — group calls with rotating attendance, buddy assignments to bridge the gaps, a handful of in-person sessions. They built something real in the margins.
I spent that first day on the support boat. Watching their lines, their rhythm, the way they moved through the water. And at some point it hit me: there was nothing left for me to do. I couldn’t get in and help. I couldn’t feel what they were feeling. I could only watch.
Something in me went quiet.
From the boat and the kayak, I saw them show up for each other. They adapted. The swimmer who missed her connection and arrived late walked into a group that had already saved her a place. There was no hesitation in belonging — even though most of them had only met a handful of times before.
I didn’t hear about the nerves until later. How scared some of them were. How uncertain it felt. In the moment, they just showed up.
By the end of the week, most of them swam further than they ever had. And tackled conditions that they never thought they could. One of them gazed out across Prince Rupert Bay—a 5 kilometer expanse of water—and said, “I can’t believe I swam across that bay.” They had already done the longest swim of their life earlier in the week, and now they’d bested that by another mile.
The lesson I’m sitting with: you can create the conditions. You can prepare, plan, show up fully. But at some point, you have to trust — trust the work, trust the water, trust the people will step into their courage.
I’ve felt this in my own long swims — the moment where preparation runs out and something else has to take over. It’s not just a water thing. Any time you’ve done the work and have to let go of the outcome — in a relationship, a creative project, a business you’ve been building — the muscle is the same. The water just gives us a place to practice it.
At some point, you just have to get on the boat and watch.
If you’ve been curious about SwimBound, reply to this email and let me know. No pressure, just an open door.
More soon,
P.S. If you’re here for summer swim lessons — I see you, and more details are coming soon.
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