Underwater, No More: Reflecting in Moonlight’s Mirror
Some moments in life arrive by surprise. In recent waves of overwhelm, I’ve realized that I’m no longer sinking beneath despair but rising, slowly, steadily—into discovery. Overwhelm can feel like drowning—like forgetting how to move through the water of your own life—but when you begin to feel safe and seen, something shifts. You remember how to swim—because it was in you all along.
For a long time, I believed invisibility simply meant not being seen by others. However, I’ve come to realize that it’s more than external blindness—it’s the silence we internalize. It’s the wounds we bury, the ways we shrink ourselves to survive, and the beliefs we carry about staying small to stay safe. The world can be distorted by misogyny and misunderstanding, but healing begins within. It begins the moment we stop turning away from ourselves.
Now I understand that I wasn’t just unseen. I was self-silencing.
Even in moments when life mirrored something beautiful back to me—in reverent silence, in people who saw my worth—I often couldn’t meet their gaze. I had been taught to strive, to perform, to be useful. I clung to the pursuit of goodness, even when I wasn’t sure what that meant. Staying submerged felt safer. Perfectionism became my armor—a mask to shield the ache, the exhaustion, the fear that I was still not enough.
Invisibility, I’ve learned, is not quiet. It has a sound. It pulses like pressure in your ears, like the muffled world beneath water—distorted and heavy. You can hear everything, but it feels far away. You see the light above you, but you can’t quite reach it. It’s a lonely space, haunted with the ache to belong, to move freely among those who seem to glide effortlessly through life.
That was the seed of Underwater, a song I wrote from the space between collapse and becoming. It was born from the part of me that once wanted to disappear—and the part that now knows surrender isn’t failure. It’s a rebirth and a remembering.
Some people misunderstand those of us who feel deeply. They mistake contemplation for fragility, and quiet depth for lack. They’ve yet to learn that there is strength in sacred stillness. There is power in deep listening. To bear witness without judgment is not weakness—it is courage. Some people move through the world with such attunement that they become mirrors, reflecting not only who we are, but who we are becoming.
I’ve been fortunate to know people like this. People who saw the extraordinary in me before I could see it myself. They didn’t try to possess or fix me. They simply showed up—with presence, patience, and trust. And in that presence, I began to see myself not as a performance, but as someone worthy of reflection.
This kind of seeing can’t be taught in textbooks. It’s a soul-language, one spoken through trust and felt in the heart. It becomes transformational when embodied. Though we studied some of this in my recent graduate course—Coaching for Educational Leadership—it must, in truth, be authentically felt. This cannot be taught alone. In class, we explored the power of mirroring, not as critique, but as a tool for helping others hear themselves. I’ve come to understand that true leadership doesn’t give answers. It holds space. It grounds itself so others can rise into clarity.
Being seen can feel disorienting at first. Visibility feels like exposure. I’ve questioned motives, felt suspicion, and searched for threats I couldn’t name. Sometimes, I’ve slipped back underwater. Yet even those moments taught me something—transformation doesn’t always arrive like a revelation. Sometimes it comes quietly, asking us to soften, to hold steady, and to trust.
These moments offered a different kind of knowing, even in the darkest places of not knowing. These moments whispered silently in the deepest echoes of my soul:
You are more than what you produce.
You are more than the way you’ve been misread.
Sometimes these moments show up in the most ordinary ways—like at Thanksgiving dinner.
For most of my life, I’ve insisted on doing everything myself. Even as I write this, I hear the echo of my grandmother’s stubborn laugh, and it registers as a point of pride in my heart. She knew she could do everything herself, and she made me believe that I could too. Her determination has filled me with the drive to accomplish all that I have in life, yet I’m learning that it can go too far—that without limits and self-awareness, unlimited drive to accomplish is not healthy. In the past, I’ve prepared every dish and taken care of every detail. I’ve told myself it was about flow and focus—but beneath that, there was fear. I feared that if I wasn’t holding everything together, maybe I wasn’t enough. Maybe I wasn’t living up to her legacy.
However, this past year—something shifted. This Thanksgiving, I invited friends, family, and friends of family to my house and asked them to bring dishes. We cooked together, cleaned together, and laughed together. I didn’t perform strength—I shared it. I wasn’t exhausted. I was present. The moment that stayed with me most wasn’t just the ease—it was the look on my daughter’s face. She still watches me, even at twenty-one years old, and this year—she saw a mother not overachieving for approval but leading with trust. She joined in and helped too. We are learning to adapt, to create a different type of legacy with a kind of strength that endures through shared work and caring leadership that resonates and builds.
That shift echoed into my professional life too. I’ve coordinated our campus Christmas Concert for years, often doing everything mostly myself—logistics, budgeting, graphic design, marketing, vendors, video, music, catering. It was never sustainable—but I wore the overwhelm like armor. This year, I built a team of six graduate students and three staff volunteers. I aligned their roles with their strengths and checked in with care—not because I doubted them, but because I finally understood the value of support.
The concert was a success, and the cleanup was filled with laughter and synergy. We even took silly photos beside an eight-foot cardboard cutout of the Ghost of Christmas Present I designed. We finished an hour early despite a huge crowd. And I felt something I hadn’t felt in years—lightness. Not because I had carried it all, but because I had allowed others to carry it with me.
I’m learning that leadership is not about containment—it’s about reflection. It’s about walking in your own light while igniting others. It’s about trust, shared space, and softness.
That softness reminds me of where it all began—back in the natural world, the world I grew up in and later wrote about in The Flutter of the Fly. In that poem, I recalled the sacred in the ordinary—the magic of life found in seemingly ordinary, unnoticed places. Nature doesn’t perform. It simply is, and it reveals itself in patterns—not grand declarations.
So too with us. When we allow ourselves to unfold, to be seen authentically, the sacred reveals itself. What once felt ordinary becomes divine. That is the power of the sacred witness—not someone who fixes, praises, or analyzes, but someone who sees what others pass by—someone who reflects without distortion, listens without interruption, and holds up the mirror gently, without consuming.
To be seen in this way doesn’t change you because you were lacking—but because you remember who you already are.
So much of our defensiveness arises not from what we hear, but from what it touches in us. Being witnessed with reverence allows us to lay down our shields. It allows us to shift from performance to presence and from reaction to reflection.
This is the heart of my growth—the work I am still learning to do. I’m learning that feedback is not inherently threatening and that perfectionism is not protection. I’m learning that my neurodivergence is not something to hide but to honor, and that the light I once searched for was never outside of me. It was always within—waiting for me to stop and see it.
And when I forget—as we all do—I return to the water.
Water has always held meaning for me, not just as an element, but as metaphor. Even my choice to join the Navy years ago was, in part, about staying close to its depths. Water is the space in my mind where weightlessness and wildness meet. When I descend into it now, I don’t fear drowning. I understand the descent into freedom and reformation. I trust it.
Being submerged is not failure. It is process. It is learning again—how to submit and then swim to shore.
And when I rise, I rise not to prove, but to perceive. Not alone, but among others who have learned to witness with gentleness. I rise with the memory of the moon’s mirror—a light that reveals and creates.
Like the moon, I too live in reflection.
And in stillness, the light grows brighter.
“Underwater” by Michelle Ried Ohhh... underwater... underwater... forgot how to swim. Feels like the tide's pulling harder… pulling harder… to pull me back in. I have this sinking feeling, like I’m falling again. A voice beneath me, keeps whisperin’... “Just give in...” Ohhhh... (“Just give in...”) Ohhhh... Am I lost forever... is this where life begins? Is this the end, or where I learn how to swim? (Ahhh... underwater...) Sound's muffled, sight’s cloudy— the world’s warped and rearranged. All feels distant, alone and estranged... Light bends through the surface, the future sways... When I look too closely, lost in a cloudy haze… and the world slips away— Am I lost forever... is this where I begin? Is this my rebirth… where I learn how to swim? Oooh... tracing movements in slow motion… Held by silence living deep within… Ohhh, I know... The time’s come… to swim to shore… Ohhh, I know... The day’s come… to become self-assured (Mmm...) Underwater... Oooh... No more... Ohh... underwater... no more.
