Finding Your Keel: How to Stay Grounded and Centered in Turbulent Times
This is me.
True contagious vulnerability.
No filters, no makeup.
Drenched with rainwater.
Floating in a sailboat on the sea.
My #happyplace.
The calm in the storm.
The shy little girl with the wild, untamable, white-blond curls that I introduced you to in “But Wait There’s More! So Much More! Secrets to a Life Well Loved”. That little girl — Katherine or Mousey Mouse as I was known then — spent a lot of her childhood at sea. Both literally and metaphorically.
My Early Life Aquatic
Growing up as the daughter of a naval aviator and navigator who loved the ocean, my earliest and fondest memories took place in and on the sea. Dad had a stressful job as a New York lawyer and was happiest and most relaxed when he was sailing so my family spent a lot of our holidays on small sailboats off the North Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean.
Back in the 70s when I was a girl it was all about the monohull, boats that leaned, sometimes dramatically, when under sail. I remember shrieking at Dad with a mixture of terror and delight when our boat would tilt under strong winds, certain that we were going to tip over and sink to the bottom of the sea. Dad would grin and calmly remind me about the keel, the weight at the bottom of the boat’s hull that he assured me would keep us from my imagined peril.
Over time I grew to trust and stay connected to the keel when sailing, becoming ever calmer and more courageous when navigating high winds and rough seas.
A Baby Empath Awash in a Sea of Energies
I grew up in the teeming ocean of humanity that is New York City as an intuitive, hyper-sensitive, baby empath who was also extremely timid and fearful — hence the Mousey Mouse nickname my Dad gave me. I spent much of my childhood feeling lost and at sea, metaphorically and emotionally speaking.
I was as frightened by the intensity of the energetic currents I was reared in as I was by the literal oceanic currents I experienced when sailing in a monohull. The difference, I had no inner keel to steady my boat, no captain to reassure me.
Mooring + Anchoring Work Great When All is Calm
Two summers ago, a friend invited now 54-year-old Kate on a dream, 3-week sailing trip in the Caribbean, cruising around the British, US, and Spanish Virgin Islands on his Lagoon 42. As the first mate, I had a variety of jobs, one of which was helping my friend the captain secure the boat when we were done sailing. With three weeks of practice, I got really good at grabbing mooring balls and dropping anchor to keep our craft from drifting while we swam, snorkeled, and slept.
Anchoring or mooring your boat works great when the ocean conditions are calm. With turbulent, stormy seas and intense currents, you learn quickly that anchoring and mooring — attempting to tether yourself to something solid and immovable — are often dangerous or impossible or both. Sometimes all you can rely on to ground and steady yourself when conditions are rough is the keel of your craft and your commitment to keep sailing when all seems dark and frightening.
2020: The Perfect Storm in our Collective Ocean
The blissfully calm, tropical waters I experienced on my Caribbean sailing trip in the summer of 2019 could not be more different than the metaphorical seas we’ve all been navigating since the year 2020 revealed its daunting and disruptive truths. Navigating 2020 was like living The Perfect Storm for an entire year — a year that felt like a decade!
The massive energetic seas we are individually and collectively navigating not only surround and threaten to drown us but are also unleashing a parallel level of inner turmoil and havoc within. And the wild seas of our emotional inner landscape can be as destabilizing as the turbulence that surround us, compounding the intensity of our experience.
Finding Your Keel: How to Stay Grounded and Centered in Turbulent Times
Those of you who’ve been following along with me over the past year know that I love aquatic metaphors and they appear with frequency in my writing. Reflecting on the year that was 2020, the idea of going inward and finding your keel is alive for me as I think about how to stay centered and grounded as we navigate these tumultuous times.
In rough seas, whether literal or metaphorical, we often look outside of ourselves for stability, seeking the comfort and security of a safe harbor, a secure anchor, a grounding mooring ball. Our temptation is to grab onto whatever solidity we can find. Yet in the face of massive disruption, there is little that can be counted on in the way of solidity. Solid things often turn out to be more flotsam and jetsam than true solidity, or the rigidity of external structures no match for powerful currents. What is crumbling around us cannot and should not be pieced back together, nor can it be relied on for safety and stability.
When you feel like you’re drowning, it’s important to stop struggling, calm yourself, conserve your energy, and float. Allowing the ocean to support you as you regroup, find your keel — the weighted center of inner knowing and calm that helps you stay balanced and grounded when all is swirling and crashing around you — and trust that it will keep you upright and afloat when you feel lost and adrift.
Because when we are centered in ourselves, we can connect with our own power, we can be responsive rather than reflexive or reactive. Fluid and adaptable rather than rigid and unyielding.
Finding your keel means not getting swept up in the waves of opportunities and external opinions flowing around you, ending up lost at sea, drowning and thrashing in currents of FOMO.
Finding and staying grounded and centered in your keel means being able to discern which of all the available options is the right next one — for you. To answer the question of what now, what next.
I know it’s scary. 2020 was a terrifying year and we’ve faced the Perfect Storm of challenges as a species. All together, all at once. We have never before been so vulnerable for so long with so much company, floating in an energetic sea of collective anxiety, grief, rage, and fear. Feeling it all as the sentient collective beings that we are.
In the face of all the disruption and uncertainty, the one thing we can count on is our keel, the calm, enduring, grounded center of our being that is a place of refuge, sanctuary, and wisdom in tumultuous times. The source of our inner strength, inner knowing, and courage to continue when all seems lost.
So it’s a great time to go inwards and find your keel. Connecting with its weight and allowing it to ground and center you in the rough seas that continue to disrupt and destabilize us as we begin the new year. Because as I said in the last piece: “Everything we thought we knew or could count on has been massively disrupted leaving most if not all of us feeling lost and adrift and deeply uncertain about the future.”
The one thing we can learn to count on is ourselves. In my work as a Vulnerability Doula, I help people discover their inner strength and learn to trust their keels.
As the saying goes, where your focus goes, energy flows. If you focus on the storms, they will suck the life force right out of you. If you focus on your grounded center, trusting in your keel, it will keep you afloat even when all seems dark and hopeless. Your keel is solid ground in a fluid, turbulent world when the storms are raging inside and out.
If you need help finding your keel, I’m here. Book a curious conversation with me to see what the Vulnerability Doula can do for you :)