There’s a particular quality to grief that feels like moving through water—every gesture requires more effort, every step meets resistance, the world seems muffled and distant. When my brother David died unexpectedly, that sensation became my daily reality. The initial shock was profound, but it was quickly accompanied by the relentless demands of aftermath: coordinating a memorial, responding to condolences, navigating the bewildering bureaucracy that follows a death.
David was a bartender, unmarried, with an adult child—on paper, his affairs should have been simple. But the reality was anything but. Closing a cell phone account, claiming a pension for an unmarried man—these tasks revealed a system built for nuclear families, leaving those outside its norms to navigate a maze of paperwork and implicit judgments. It felt like managing a large estate, not because of its size, but because of its complexity.
And then there was my mother. She had shared an apartment with David, and suddenly, her stability was gone. I started calling her ‘Wildcard Mary’—partly to make her smile, partly to name the unpredictability that had entered both our lives. Her health became a series of emergencies: a racing heart, a fall on the concrete outside her home, a sudden blurring of vision that turned out to be an eye stroke. An eye stroke—who even knew that was possible?
We installed Amazon cameras and set up Alexa so she could call for help from anywhere in her apartment. The alerts notify me when she gets up or goes to bed—or if she doesn’t. It’s a practical solution, one millions rely on, but it leaves me uneasy. Can an algorithm truly care for someone like Wildcard Mary? There’s a reason Amazon gave Alexa a woman’s voice—it echoes the often-invisible, gendered labor that has historically fallen to women, the kind of work that involves not just doing, but remembering, anticipating, and coordinating.
Psychologists call it ‘cognitive household labor’—the mental load of social reproduction. It’s not just buying a birthday gift; it’s remembering to buy it, sending the thank-you note, filling out permission slips, and planning summer camps with the precision of a corporate merger. My cousin’s color-coded spreadsheet for her kids’ summer schedule looks like a Fortune 500 earnings report.
Amid all this, I was also carrying my own grief. My body felt heavy, sad, closed off. I tried to take care of myself—therapy, meditation, reading about grief, talking to friends—but some days, I just wanted the world to stop. A year passed before I even realized it. Summer arrived, and with it, a longing for escape. But planning a vacation felt impossible—superstitious, even. After so many canceled plans, what was the point?
Yet we needed a break—mentally, emotionally, physically. That’s when I discovered Swimply, a service that lets you rent private pools by the hour. It felt indulgent at first, paying by the hour for a backyard pool, but we were desperate for relief. Our first time, a neighbor saw us loading the car with coolers and totes and declared, ‘Looks like a beach day!’ We didn’t have the heart to say we were only driving five minutes away.
At the pool, my husband settled into a shaded chair with a book. I felt the clock ticking—he could read at home! But later, our son pointed out, ‘The best part of being at the pool is reading by the pool.’ He was right. I let go of my expectations, climbed onto a rainbow unicorn floatie, and looked up at the San Gabriel Mountains against the blue sky.
In that moment, I felt something shift. The sun on my skin, the water holding me up—it was a reminder that my body could still feel pleasure, not just the weight of responsibility. There were no dishes to wash, no emails to answer, no dry cleaning to pick up. Just the gentle bump of my husband’s floatie against mine, both of us finally being useless.
Our usual exchanges—efficient, task-oriented—faded away. I began to wonder: Where am I now? How do I want to move forward? I didn’t need a drastic change, but I needed to feel alive again. I’d spent a year holding space for grief, for my family, and now it was time to shift. Drifting on that floatie, I realized I wanted to be held, too. I wanted to let go of the need to decide, to control, to manage. I wanted to float.
And I could. With just a push from my toe, I could change direction. I felt weightless, light—useless, in the best possible way. Over the summer, we returned to the pool weekend after weekend, and that lightness began to seep into my everyday life. One swim at a time, one float at a time, I found a way back to peace.
The Weight of Two Worlds
When my brother David died unexpectedly, the immediate aftermath felt like being handed a script for a play I’d never rehearsed. There were lines to deliver—planning his memorial service, organizing the reception, responding to the outpouring of condolences that arrived in carefully chosen cards. Each task was a small, concrete anchor in the sea of abstract grief, something to hold onto when the current threatened to pull me under.
David was a bartender, unmarried, his only child grown. The estate wasn’t complicated, but the bureaucratic maze that followed felt deliberately obtuse. Closing a cell phone account required notarized documents and waiting periods that seemed designed to frustrate. Claiming his pension involved explaining repeatedly that no, there wasn’t a widow, and yes, his sister could handle the arrangements. The systems assumed traditional family structures, and navigating their heteronormative assumptions became its own kind of emotional labor.
Then there was my mother. She’d shared an apartment with David, and suddenly her support system vanished. The first few months after his death, she became what I affectionately called “Wildcard Mary”—a title she accepted with a wry smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Her health began presenting surprises with alarming frequency: a sudden rapid heart rate that sent us to the emergency room, a fall on the concrete outside her building that left her bruised and shaken, then the floaters in her vision that turned out to be an eye stroke. An eye stroke. The phrase still sounds improbable, like something from a medical drama rather than real life.
We installed Amazon cameras and subscribed to Alexa’s care features, turning her apartment into a gently monitored ecosystem. The system alerts me when she gets up in the morning, when she goes to bed, or—more importantly—when she doesn’t. This digital vigilance should provide comfort, but instead it leaves me in a state of low-grade perpetual anxiety. Millions of people rely on Alexa for everything from weather updates to grocery lists, but entrusting her with Wildcard Mary feels different. The female voice assigned to the device somehow emphasizes what’s missing: the intuitive understanding, the subtle recognition that something’s “off” that no algorithm can replicate.
Psychologists call it “cognitive household labor”—the invisible work of social reproduction that often falls to women. It’s not just buying the birthday gift but remembering it needs to be bought. Not just sending thank you cards but maintaining the mental spreadsheet of who sent what. Not just filling out permission slips but knowing when they’re due. My cousin’s color-coded summer camp spreadsheet for her three children looks like a Fortune 500 company’s fourth-quarter earnings report, complete with conditional formatting and cross-referenced calendars. This work is rarely acknowledged, rarely valued in economic terms, yet it’s the glue that holds families together through crises.
And through it all, my own grief waited patiently, a heavy stone in my chest that made everything—even breathing—feel like effort. I was flattened, as if some large, indifferent boulder had rolled over me and decided to stay. I tried all the recommended things: therapy, meditation groups, grief literature, conversations with understanding friends. But sometimes I just wanted the world to stop its relentless forward motion, to acknowledge that mine had fractured.
The Weight of Invisible Labor: Gendered Dimensions of Care and Cognitive Work
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from work nobody sees you doing. While managing my mother’s care through Amazon’s cameras and Alexa alerts, I began noticing how these technologies reinforced patterns as old as time. Alexa’s default female voice wasn’t accidental—it echoed the historical assumption that caregiving and domestic management naturally fall to women.
Psychologists call this “cognitive household labor”—the invisible work of remembering, anticipating, and coordinating that makes family life function. It’s not just buying the birthday gift, but remembering whose birthday is coming up, knowing what they’d like, ensuring it arrives on time, and later prompting the thank-you note. It’s maintaining mental spreadsheets of children’s allergies, school project deadlines, and which relative needs checking in on this week. My cousin’s color-coded summer schedule for her three children resembles a corporate earnings report more than a family calendar, with overlapping camps, playdates, and activities requiring military precision.
This cognitive labor extends dramatically when caring for aging parents. Suddenly you’re tracking medication schedules, doctor’s appointments, insurance paperwork, and safety concerns—all while trying to remember when the dog needs his shots and what to make for dinner. The mental load becomes so heavy that even simple decisions feel overwhelming.
While carrying this invisible burden, I was also navigating my own grief. My body seemed to hold sadness physically—a constant heaviness in my limbs, a dull pressure behind my eyes. I moved through days feeling like I was wrapped in thick cotton, distant from the world yet hyper-aware of every potential crisis that might require my attention.
I tried all the recommended self-care strategies. I saw a therapist who taught me breathing techniques. I attended my weekly meditation group where we sat in silence together. I devoured books about grief and listened to podcasts about loss while driving to my mother’s apartment. I met friends for coffee and talked about what I was experiencing.
But often, these well-intentioned efforts felt like adding more items to my already overflowing mental checklist. Remember to breathe deeply. Don’t forget to meditate. Make time to read about grief. The irony wasn’t lost on me—even self-care had become another responsibility to manage.
There were moments when I just wanted the world to stop making demands. I’d find myself sitting in my car outside the grocery store, unable to muster the energy to go in, yet mentally calculating whether we had enough milk for tomorrow’s breakfast. The cognitive labor continued even when my body refused to cooperate.
What makes this type of work particularly draining is its invisibility. Unlike paid employment, there’s no clear start or end time, no performance reviews, and certainly no overtime pay. The work blends into evenings, weekends, and early mornings until it becomes the background hum of your existence.
I began recognizing how this invisible labor distribution often falls along gendered lines. At family gatherings, I noticed women coordinating meal logistics while men relaxed. In friend groups, women remembered birthdays and organized gatherings. Even my husband, wonderfully supportive in so many ways, would ask “What can I do to help?”—placing the mental burden of delegation back on me rather than anticipating needs himself.
This isn’t about blaming individuals but recognizing patterns. We’ve socialized generations to see cognitive labor as women’s natural domain, making it easy to overlook its real value and effort. The result is that women often carry what feels like a second full-time job—the job of managing everything and everyone.
During that first year after my brother’s death, this cognitive labor expanded to include tracking my mother’s medical appointments, managing her medications, handling her bills, and being constantly alert for Alexa’s alerts indicating she might need help. The emotional weight of grief combined with the cognitive weight of caregiving created what felt like an unbearable load.
What I craved wasn’t more efficient organization systems or better time management strategies. I wanted someone to lift the mental burden entirely—to take over the remembering, anticipating, and deciding, even temporarily. I wanted to experience what it felt like to have empty mental space, to not be constantly managing invisible responsibilities.
This longing for mental rest would eventually lead me to discover the transformative power of doing nothing useful—but that revelation would come later. First, I had to fully acknowledge the weight I was carrying, and how much of it consisted of work nobody ever saw me doing.
Breaking Through: The Swimply Experiment
A year had drifted by since David’s passing, marked not by healing but by the relentless accumulation of responsibilities. Summer arrived with its oppressive heat and the unspoken realization that we were still treading water, still gasping for air. The idea of a traditional vacation felt like a cruel joke—another item on a to-do list I had no energy to tackle. There was also this superstitious dread nesting in my gut, a conviction that any plan we made would inevitably be canceled by the next crisis from Wildcard Mary. Why set ourselves up for another disappointment?
Yet the need for a break was a physical ache. We were frayed at the edges, mentally and emotionally threadbare. The solution, when it finally surfaced, was so simple it felt almost absurd: Swimply. The concept—Airbnb for pools—seemed to belong to a different life, one where spontaneity and leisure weren’t foreign concepts. The act of booking felt illicit. I was scheduling idleness, budgeting for uselessness at an hourly rate that matched a casual lunch out. It was a small act of rebellion against the constant pressure to be productive, to be useful.
The morning of our first rental, our preparations were a quiet, almost furtive operation. We loaded the car with towels, a cooler stocked with Trader Joe’s provisions, and a bag of novels that had been gathering dust on our nightstands. Our neighbor, witnessing the exodus of beach gear, called out with genuine cheer, “Looks like a beach day!” We offered weak smiles and a noncommittal wave, too embarrassed to confess our destination was a backyard just five minutes up the road. The charade continued with a stop at a favorite food truck for iced coffees and black bean arepas, adding to our comically large haul for such a short journey.
Arriving at the rented oasis felt like stepping into a different dimension. The space was private, quiet, and unapologetically dedicated to pleasure. And then, my husband committed what I initially saw as a cardinal sin of our expensive hour. He pulled a chair into the dappled shade, opened his book, and settled in. A wave of pure, irrational frustration washed over me. The clock was ticking; we were paying for this! He could read at home for free. This, I realized later, was the ingrained reflex of a caregiver—to optimize, to maximize, to extract every ounce of value from any given moment because time itself is a scarce resource.
It was our adult son who later laughed at my folly when I recounted the story. “Mom, the best part of being at the pool is reading by the pool.” His words were a key turning a lock I didn’t know existed. He was utterly right. My internal timer, the one that constantly tabulated tasks and worries, began to quiet. The pressure to use the time correctly started to evaporate under the sun. Letting go of those expectations was the first real step toward the break we desperately needed.
The true magic, however, was in the water. I lowered myself onto a ridiculous, glorious rainbow unicorn floatie and pushed off from the edge. The shift was instantaneous. The weight I had been carrying—the grief, the worry, the endless cognitive labor—didn’t disappear, but it was suspended. Buoyant. For the first time in a year, my body remembered it was capable of pleasure, not just endurance. The warmth of the sun on my skin, the coolness of the water, the view of the San Gabriel Mountains against a brilliant blue sky—these were sensations that existed outside the orbit of dirty dishes, unanswered emails, and Alexa alerts.
There was another profound shift happening inches away. My husband and I, on our separate floaties, drifted aimlessly. Our usual interactions were efficient, logistical exchanges—a division of labor for dinner pickups and vet appointments. Here, we had no agenda. Our floaties gently bumped into one another, and we simply laughed. We were, together, finally and completely useless. In that shared uselessness, we rediscovered a connection that had been buried under a mountain of responsibility. We weren’t a caregiving team; we were just two people, floating.
This chapter wasn’t about finding a dramatic, life-altering solution. It was about discovering a tiny puncture in the sealed container of our grief and stress. Swimply offered more than a pool; it provided permission. Permission to be still. Permission to be inefficient. Permission to prioritize a moment of joy without justification. It was a practical, accessible micro-vacation that didn’t require elaborate planning or a large financial investment, making it a viable tool for anyone feeling the weight of caregiver burnout. It taught me that sometimes, the most radical act of self-care isn’t a grand gesture, but a small, scheduled hour of deliberate pointlessness.
The Philosophy of Floating: From Useful to Useless
Floating on that ridiculous rainbow unicorn floatie, I discovered something unexpected: the profound value of being completely useless. The water supported my weight in a way nothing else had for months, cradling my tired body while the San Gabriel Mountains stood silent witness against a sky so blue it felt like a personal gift. For the first time since David’s death, my body remembered it could feel pleasure instead of just the heavy weight of responsibility.
My skin absorbed the warmth of the sun like a dry sponge, each pore drinking in the sensation of simply being rather than doing. The gentle rocking motion of the water became a physical meditation, washing away the constant mental lists that usually occupied my mind—dirty dishes waiting, dry cleaning to pick up, emails demanding responses. Here, in this rented backyard oasis, there were no tasks to complete, no problems to solve, no one needing anything from me. The only requirement was to float.
This stood in stark contrast to our normal interactions back home. My husband and I had become masters of efficient exchanges—quick conversations about who would pick up dinner, take the dog to the vet, or meet the cable guy. Our communication had been reduced to logistical coordination, all function and no feeling. But here, with our floaties occasionally bumping gently against each other, we were simply two people sharing space without agenda. We had rediscovered how to be together without working together.
I began to understand that I had been holding space for everyone’s grief but my own. For months, I had been the strong one, the organizer, the problem-solver—for my mother, for David’s friends, for everyone who needed something handled. But drifting on that unicorn floatie, I realized I too wanted to be held. I wanted to let go of the constant need to decide, to manage, to control. I wanted to surrender to the water’s support and trust that I would stay afloat without my frantic efforts.
The physics of floating became a perfect metaphor for what I needed emotionally. I noticed how even the slightest push off the pool’s edge—just a toe’s worth of energy—could change my direction entirely if I wanted. But more often, I preferred to remain still, allowing the water’s natural movement to guide me. This minimal intervention approach felt revolutionary after months of aggressively trying to solve every problem that came my way.
There was something deeply subversive about choosing uselessness in a culture that worships productivity. As women, we’re particularly conditioned to derive our worth from being useful—from our capacity to care for others, to manage households, to remember birthdays and plan activities with military precision. But in that pool, I was none of those things. I was just a woman floating on a ridiculous unicorn, and that was enough. More than enough—it was healing.
This embrace of uselessness didn’t feel like giving up; it felt like opting into a different way of being. The world continued to spin without my constant management. My mother survived without my hourly check-ins. The emails waited patiently. And I discovered that my value wasn’t tied to my productivity or my usefulness to others. I could simply be, and that was valuable in itself.
With each gentle bob on the water, I felt layers of tension melting away from my shoulders, my neck, my jaw—places I hadn’t realized were holding so much strain. The water seemed to absorb my grief and anxiety, transforming it into gentle ripples that eventually disappeared into the pool’s calm surface. My breathing deepened, matching the slow rhythm of the waves my movement created.
I thought about how we measure time in accomplishments—tasks completed, problems solved, items checked off lists. But floating time is measured differently: in sun positions changing, in cloud formations drifting, in the gradual cooling of skin as evening approaches. This alternative experience of time felt like a necessary correction to the frantic pace I had been maintaining.
The symbolism of the rainbow unicorn wasn’t lost on me either. There was something beautifully absurd about a middle-aged woman on such a whimsical floatie, and that absurdity felt like part of the medicine. It reminded me not to take myself so seriously, to embrace playfulness even in grief, to find joy in silly things because life is too short for constant solemnity.
As the afternoon light began to soften, I realized this experience wasn’t just about taking a break from caregiving; it was about redefining my relationship to care itself. I could care for others without abandoning myself. I could be responsible without being burdened. I could grieve without being consumed. The water held all these contradictions without needing to resolve them, and in that holding, I found space for all parts of myself—the competent manager and the woman who just wanted to float on a rainbow unicorn.
That day, I learned that sometimes the most productive thing you can do is nothing at all. That being held—by water, by love, by community—is as important as holding others. And that a single toe’s push in a different direction can change your entire trajectory, if you’re willing to be still long enough to notice which way the water wants to take you.
Integration and Moving Forward: The Ongoing Process of Healing
That summer, something shifted in the rhythm of our weeks. What began as a desperate escape—a paid hour of chlorinated water in a stranger’s backyard—slowly wove itself into the fabric of our healing. The pool visits became a non-negotiable weekend ritual, a quiet rebellion against the unending demands of caregiving and grief. I hadn’t expected these small respites to amount to much, but like water softening stone, their cumulative effect was undeniable.
The lightness I found while floating on that ridiculous rainbow unicorn didn’t vanish when we toweled off and drove home. It began to seep into ordinary moments. I noticed it one Tuesday evening, standing at the sink washing dishes. The setting sun cast a warm glow through the window, and instead of mentally cataloging all I still had to do, I simply watched the light play on the soap bubbles. It was a small thing, a moment of pure, unproductive noticing. My body remembered the feeling of weightlessness, and for a few seconds, I could almost feel the water holding me again.
This is the subtle alchemy of micro-vacations—they don’t solve the big problems, but they change our relationship to them. The mountain of paperwork for my brother’s estate didn’t shrink, but my shoulders felt less tight while tackling it. My mother’s health remained a delicate ecosystem of alerts and appointments, but the constant buzz of anxiety in my chest quieted to a more manageable hum. I was still a daughter, a wife, a woman grieving her brother, but I was also becoming someone who could experience pleasure without guilt.
Integrating this new mindset requires intention. It means actively carving out these moments of ‘uselessness’ in a world that prizes perpetual productivity. For us, it continued with Swimply, exploring different pools around our area, each with its own character. But it also translated into smaller, daily practices. A ten-minute sit on the porch with morning coffee, truly tasting it, instead of gulping it down while scrolling through emails. A conscious decision to leave my phone inside during a lunch break, simply to feel the sun on my skin without documentation.
For other caregivers feeling the weight of invisible labor, the path forward is built on these small, consistent acts of reclamation. It’s not about finding another massive block of time you don’t have; it’s about stealing back slivers of it for yourself. It could be:
- Sensory grounding: Keep a particular scent—like lavender or citrus—at your desk or in your car. Taking one deep inhale can be a five-second vacation, a quick reset for your nervous system amidst the chaos.
- The five-minute float: Literally or metaphorically. If a pool isn’t accessible, even lying flat on your back on the floor, focusing on the support beneath you, can mimic that feeling of being held and weightless.
- Tech-boundaried breaks: Schedule short periods where you mute caregiver alert apps and Alexa notifications. This isn’t negligence; it’s sustainability. Trust that the systems will hold for fifteen minutes while you breathe.
- Reframing ‘useless’ time: Challenge the internal voice that says time must be optimized. The most profound healing often happens in the spaces between tasks, in the quiet moments of simply being. Reading a book for pleasure in the middle of the day is a radical act of self-care.
Healing from loss and caregiver burnout is not a linear destination but a gradual unfolding, a series of tiny choices that, over time, tilt the balance back toward life. It’s ‘one swim at a time, one float at a time.’ Some days, the water will feel heavy again, and the memory of lightness will be a distant echo. That’s okay. The path isn’t about avoiding the weight but knowing you have a place to put it down, even briefly.
I still walk underwater sometimes. Grief has a tide that comes and goes. But now I know what it feels like to float back to the surface, to feel the sun on my face. I know that even a toe’s worth of energy can change my direction. The peace I found wasn’t a final state but a tool, a practice, a quiet knowing that amidst the immense responsibility of holding space for others, I must also find a way to be held. And sometimes, that support comes from the most unexpected places—a backyard pool, a rainbow floatie, and the courage to be, for a little while, gloriously, restfully useless.
The Weightlessness of Being
That rainbow unicorn floatie became more than an inflatable pool toy—it transformed into a vessel of quiet revelation. It carried me not just on chlorinated water, but through a shift in perspective I hadn’t known I needed. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me: a mythical creature representing both fantasy and strength, its rainbow colors reflecting fractured light, much like grief itself—sharp, prismatic, and unexpectedly beautiful at certain angles.
What began as a desperate escape from the unrelenting pressure of caregiving evolved into something far more profound. Those hours spent floating taught me the revolutionary power of purposelessness. In a world that constantly demands our productivity—where even self-care often becomes another item on the to-do list—the act of being deliberately useless becomes radical. The water supported me physically just as the experience supported me emotionally, allowing me to release the constant tension of holding everything together.
This isn’t about abandoning responsibilities or neglecting those who depend on us. Rather, it’s about recognizing that sustainable caregiving requires moments of complete surrender. The micro-vacations we took throughout that summer created pockets of breathing room in what felt like an airtight existence. Each visit to a different backyard pool (we tried several through Swimply) offered slight variations—a different view, a unique landscape, distinct water temperature—but consistently delivered the same gift: permission to temporarily set down the weight I’d been carrying since David’s death.
I began to notice how these moments of weightlessness seeped into my everyday life. The sensation lingered like the smell of chlorine on skin—subtle but persistent. I found myself breathing more deeply during difficult phone calls with insurance companies. I became slightly more patient with my mother’s evolving needs. The frantic edge to my productivity softened just enough to make it sustainable. These changes didn’t happen dramatically but accumulated like individual water droplets—insignificant alone, transformative in their collective presence.
The accumulation of small respites can create significant change. One swim doesn’t heal a year of grief; one float doesn’t erase caregiver burnout. But consistent moments of intentional stillness create fissures in the wall of pressure, allowing light and air to penetrate what felt like an impenetrable barrier. I started incorporating miniature versions of poolside stillness into my days: five minutes of simply staring out the window, a conscious decision to sit rather than multitask while drinking tea, allowing myself to read a novel without justifying it as “self-care.”
What made the pool experience particularly powerful was its physical nature. Grief and caregiving often live in the mind—an endless loop of worries, plans, and memories. But floating engaged my body in a way that quieted the mental chatter. The sensation of water supporting limbs made heavy by emotional weight, the warmth of sun on skin that had felt only the cold touch of loss, the visual feast of blue sky and mountains when my eyes had grown accustomed to screens and documents—these sensory experiences grounded me in a way pure meditation couldn’t.
I’m not suggesting everyone rent a pool hourly (though I highly recommend it). The specific solution matters less than the principle: find ways to be held, both literally and metaphorically. For some, it might be floating in water; for others, it could be lying in a hammock, sitting in a sensory deprivation tank, or even just stretching out on a comfortable rug. The essential element is creating circumstances where your body can experience support without your conscious effort, where you can momentarily relinquish the exhausting work of holding yourself up.
This approach to self-care feels different from the typical recommendations. It’s not about adding another activity to your schedule or mastering a new technique. It’s about subtraction—releasing the need to be productive, the pressure to heal correctly, the expectation that every moment should serve a purpose. It’s the emotional equivalent of that physical sensation when you first stop treading water and realize you can float—the surprise that staying afloat requires less effort than you imagined.
A year after those first pool visits, I still struggle sometimes. Grief doesn’t disappear; it changes form. Caregiving demands continue, though they’ve evolved as my mother’s needs have shifted. But I’ve maintained the practice of seeking weightlessness. Sometimes it’s an actual swim; often it’s just mentally revisiting that sensation of being buoyed by water, remembering that even in the deepest grief, moments of lightness remain possible.
The invitation remains open: find your version of that rainbow unicorn floatie. Discover what makes you feel both held and free, both grounded and weightless. It might feel self-indulgent at first, especially when others depend on you. But that perspective misunderstands what caregiving requires—we cannot pour from empty vessels, and sometimes filling up looks suspiciously like doing nothing at all.
Your floating moment might last five minutes or five hours. It might happen in water, in a field, or in a comfortable chair. The container matters less than the content: giving yourself permission to be supported, to release the constant tension of holding everything together, to remember that even in the midst of great weight, lightness persists, waiting to be noticed.
One breath at a time. One moment of weightlessness at a time. The transformation happens gradually, almost imperceptibly, until one day you realize the water that once felt like something you were struggling through has become something that holds you up.
