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Last week, a dear friend, Carol, placed a small gift in my hand when she came to visit from the west coast of Florida for our sunrise gathering during Wilton Women’s Week.
It was a bracelet with a tiny manatee.
Its purchase supports the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, a place that rescues and rehabs manatees, like the real manatee named ODare, who this one represents. She’s tracked via microchip, so I can follow her travels.
ODare received a full health check in Georgia’s Savannah River by a team of loving veterinarians and researchers, where she was gently examined, cared for, and then released again, back into the wide, moving waters.
And like many manatees, her body tells a story.
If you’ve ever seen them up close, you know their backs often carry marks.
Scars from boats. Moments where the world moved too fast, too harshly, around them.
Sometimes they die.
Sometimes they are supported through rehab, like ODare.
And sometimes they just keep floating with their scars, and keep on swimming.
I’ve been tracking ODare and have been really moved by the visual of her path when looked at on the maps below.
Not long ago, she swam by one of my favorite state parks close to my home, and now she’s 200 miles north, near Daytona Beach.
The way she swims and zigzags through canals and inlets, out into deeper waters, and back again to the warm places and coves, the trajectory, the way she keeps on going.
It made me think about us and how we get hurt, how we keep going, how we keep trying to find our way.
Manatees don’t stop living because they’ve been hurt.
They don’t stop seeking warmth.
They don’t stop finding one another.
There’s something in that, that feels so familiar.
Because we do this too. We move out into the world, into love, into risk, into connection. We get turned around sometimes. We get hurt. And still… something in us keeps going.
Still looking for warmth. Still drawn toward connection.
Still learning, in our own way, where the safe waters are.
What touched me most about Odare wasn’t just her journey; it was that moment of care.
That pause. That someone said: let’s bring her in for a closer look. Let’s check in. Let’s tend to what might not be visible from the surface.
In so many ways, that’s what coaching can be. A place to pause in the middle of all the swimming. To come in, just for a moment, and take stock. To look at what’s working, what’s hurting, what’s asking for care.
Not because anything is wrong with you, but because you matter. And being able to pause and take in where you’ve been, and where you might want to go next, matters.
This weekend, someone I love needed their own kind of check-in. And it was a quiet but powerful reminder that sometimes we have to stop.
Rearrange.
Cancel what we thought we were going to do.
And come back to what’s most important.
The waters will still be there.
But presence, care, tending to ourselves and the people we love — those are the moments that matter most.
On that theme, here are a couple questions for us to ponder and come back to now and again…
What’s one thing you can let go of right now… to come back to what matters most?
And how might you put yourself, and your loved ones, first in a way that truly honors everyone involved?
Like ODare, you don’t have to stop swimming.
You are allowed to pause.
To be cared for.
To cancel what doesn’t need to happen right now.
To find your way back to the warm coves that hold you.
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