Lessons from Low Tide
What becomes visible when the water recedes
I walk almost every morning. Other than writing, it’s the one ritual that consistently returns me to myself. But sometimes, life (or the weather) interferes with my schedule and either forces me to skip a day or squeeze it in later than usual. That’s exactly what happened this weekend. Mother Nature (who gets ZERO stars for her performance in New England this Memorial Day!) decided that, except for one tiny window on Saturday afternoon, she was going to double down on torrential rain and cold temperatures.
So, when that moment came and the skies temporarily cleared, I threw on my sneakers and headed out.
Same route. Same shoes. But the shoreline looked completely different at that time of day. Rocks usually hidden beneath the surface sat exposed to the afternoon light. Tangled seaweed clung to dark, wet sand. Tiny tide pools shimmered where the ocean had pulled away, revealing entire little worlds I never notice at high tide.
Low tide changes the shape of everything.
Standing there looking out at it, I couldn’t help but think about how much midlife feels the same way. There comes a point in life when the water starts to recede a little. The constant motion and noise that once kept us busy - raising children, building careers, caretaking, striving, performing, and proving ourselves - begins to quiet. Gradually at first. And then seemingly all at once.
And when it does, things become visible that we simply didn’t have the time or space to see before. Truths we buried beneath busyness. Needs we ignored. Relationships that no longer fit. Dreams we convinced ourselves were impractical or selfish or too late. Maybe that’s why midlife can feel so unsettling at first. Up until this moment, many of us existed in a kind of perpetual high tide. The water was deep enough to keep us moving forward without having to look too closely at what lay beneath the surface. The tide carried us along and lulled us into believing it might always be this way, even though somewhere deep down, we knew it couldn’t.
And then one day the water begins to pull back.
At first glance, it can look like absence. Like loss. The water pulls back and suddenly everything feels more exposed. And midlife can feel that way too.
Children leave home. Marriages change. Friendships evolve. Parents age. Careers plateau or unravel or no longer feel aligned with who we are becoming. The noise quiets just enough for us to finally hear ourselves thinking. And, I don’t know about you, but that can be a little unsettling. If I’m being honest, I had come to rely on the noise a little too much. The chaos of a full house and full life was my drug of choice to numb me. To not look too closely at the nagging truths underneath it all. It was easy to lose myself in carpools, grocery lists, work deadlines, sports schedules, laundry piles, and the endless details of caring for everyone else. Easy to keep that little voice inside me drowned out beneath the constant motion of daily life.
Until, inevitably, life turned the volume down.
And when that happens, you have two choices. You can try to recreate the chaos with different to do lists. Different distractions. Or you can choose, perhaps for the first time in decades, to be still. To sit with it for a moment and allow that exposure to transform itself into revelation. Maybe low tide arrives so we can finally see what has been there all along beneath the surface.
I think that’s what this season of life has been for me. A gradual uncovering. A pulling back of the water from parts of my life I had spent years moving through on autopilot. And while some of what emerged was painful to acknowledge, some of it was unexpectedly beautiful too.
Desire.
Curiosity.
Creativity.
The realization that there were still undiscovered parts of myself waiting beneath all the roles and expectations I had accumulated over the years. Low tide reveals things. But standing there that afternoon, looking out at the shoreline, another thought struck me too.
The water always returns.
That may be the most comforting part of all. Low tide can feel permanent while you’re inside it. Seasons of loneliness. Grief. Reinvention. Exhaustion. The moments when life feels stripped down and uncertain. But the ocean understands rhythm. Ebb and flow. Retreat and return.
And maybe that’s part of what we are meant to learn too. That pulling inward is not failure. That some seasons are meant for revealing, others for rebuilding. And that joy, connection, purpose, creativity, and love are not gone forever simply because they feel farther away right now.
The tide comes back. Maybe not in the same form. Maybe not carrying exactly what it once did. But life keeps moving. Keeps reshaping us. Keeps offering new things to discover if we remain open enough to notice them.
I think that’s what I want to remember as I move through this stage of my life. Not to fear low tide so much. Not to mistake it for an ending. But to trust what it reveals.
And to trust that the water will rise again.
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This piece was beautiful. The ocean metaphor truly speaks to me. My meditation is picturing the waves rolling in and back out with my breath. Especially at low tide. When my children hit the later years of high school and then college, the absence of so much distracting busyness absolutely made me see that I was DONE w my corporate job and everything in that world.
Also - zero stars here on the southern New Jersey shore as well!
Love it