A Buoy's Anchor Doesn't Budge

Happy Solstice... Happy Pride... Happy last days of school... Happy Father's Day. Lots of events, parties, greasy grill brushes, slushy coolers, and slap-happy SPF moments. Even though bright, sparkly days are ahead, there are also some hard transitions during this summer shove-off. It's graduation season where the "last days of school" aren't just pajama days with cupcakes. It's watching your fledgling leave the proverbial nest, off to navigate this weird new workforce equipped with just a diploma and a weaning umbilical cord—in the form of a Venmo account.

For me personally, it's watching a first grader say goodbye to a precious chapter and head into a whole new one. One that might care less about her massive mountain of stuffies and care more about the mountain of peer pressure as she trudges deeper into grade school. It's no longer as simple as "girls rule and boys drool." Sometimes your favorite girl doesn't rule, and they're the ones making you cry. The boys will be too obsessed with looking cool to drool. Everything is about to get way more complicated.

With any transition or change of currents, no matter how white-capped it looks on the surface, my job as a parent is to be the anchor to her stormy buoy. I'm sure the older she gets, the longer the anchor chain will need to be. I'm not going to lie, it's going to be hard watching her get tossed around on the surface without pulling her down closer to me for safety. I realize that pulling her down to safety every time it's hard will keep her from getting to experience the wildlife up there, where she needs to explore and build resilience. When you look up what a buoy is, it's more than just an anchor and floating pendant. It measures "characterization, calibration, and maintenance." The part of the buoy that takes in all this information and does most of the work is the bobbing piece above the surface. The anchor's job is really to just keep the floating end from getting lost. That's it.

Father's Day for me is a reminder of the strong, reliable anchor I was fortunate to have. It seems insane to say my childhood had stability and a sense of consistency—considering we moved 7 times before I even graduated high school. Completely different sets of friends, homes, sometimes states, and dramatically different accents, temperatures, and cultures. The conditions on top of the water's surface were so erratic and unpredictable. What I think kept us as a family, and me as an awkward preteen, okay is that everything below the surface felt secure. Despite the constant changing, where our red string would stretch across the map, pin down only to wrap and pull to the next place, everything within that moving dot was reliable. My dad was always on time for school pick-up, rescuing me from that weird unsupervised time when kids are without structure and bored, and the new girl is a real easy target. At any softball game, basketball game, cross-country meet, talent show, or marathon, where I was consistently good but never the best, my dad was always there. He'd get to the events absurdly early and sit in a parked car forever just to make sure he wasn't late. Even his rants and raves were like clockwork and cathartically reliable, usually to protect us or to protest some sort of tiny injustice. Like how the improper signage in a parking lot and the torturous process of peeling a sticker off a tomato are all personal attacks. He was going to let the inanimate object he stumbled over know he won't stand for it. In the case of the fan cord, he definitely won't stand for it because he's too busy tripping over it. Having the small day-to-day reliability around me made for the strongest imaginable anchor beneath me, so that despite all the chaos and major changes around me, I felt safe.

I'd like to think I inherited his disciplined and dependable character. As an instructor, I definitely value consistency and being a source of constance for my clients, especially as life's stresses are becoming increasingly hard to navigate. When you come up for air and a salty spray of water slaps you across the face, just know I've got you. During these transitions, whether you're getting your little one or big graduate ready for the next chapter, you're preparing for a long trip, or a life change, this is when it's especially important to remember to stay close to the things and people that anchor you. Take it from me, someone whose environment was constantly changing as a kid, having reliability in my everyday life is how I survived.

In the studio this week, per usual, we'll get tossed and twisted and thrown around, but because you have the (quite literal) pulley and chain that keep you anchored, you're safe. Safe to move feely, safe to have fun, safe from judgement. I will be there as the most reliable anchor in the room, so you can focus on characterization, calibration, and maintenance. As your anchor I have one job, to make sure you do not get lost.

Happy Pride! Congrats to our Graduates! Cheers to all the special events that are kicking off Summer! Of course Happy Fathers Day to my dad and all the father figures out there - whoever has been your anchor.

Excited to make your bodies sweat, smile, and move fearlessly because your anchor is strong.

XO,

Celeste