Going to the Places That Have Always Been Waiting for Me

What 3.7 miles of open water reminded me about swimming, confidence, and the life I’m building.

Yesterday morning, I stood on a beach in Nahant and looked out toward a rock I could barely see.

Somewhere beyond the gray water and low clouds was Egg Rock. The plan was simple enough on paper: swim out, go around it, and swim back.

About 3.7 miles.

I had never done an organized open-water swim of that distance before. I knew I could swim. I knew the ocean. I knew what my body was capable of in the water.

But there is a difference between knowing those things individually and asking all of them to carry you several miles through the Atlantic.

I wasn't there because I needed to win a race.

I wanted to find out what would happen if I went.

One stroke at a time

The first half hour was probably the hardest.

Everyone was settling into the water, and I was trying to find a rhythm that felt like mine. Eventually, I did.

And once I found it, something changed.

I wasn't fighting my way toward Egg Rock anymore. I was swimming.

There is a particular feeling that happens when I stop thinking about swimming as a collection of movements and start simply feeling the water.

My breath finds its place. My body settles. My hands stop moving through the water and begin catching it.

As I got tired, that became my entire world.

Catch the water.

Hold it.

Push it behind me.

Then reach forward and find the next handful.

One stroke at a time.

It sounds simple, but that relationship with the water is at the center of almost everything I believe about swimming.

The water changed. So I had to change with it.

Around Egg Rock, everything became different.

The water got darker and rougher. The waves moved my body in ways I couldn't completely anticipate. Between the chop, rain, fog, and my very questionable ability to see anything at a distance, my sense of orientation disappeared.

For a while, it felt almost like being in outer space.

There was water beneath me, gray sky above me, a rock somewhere nearby, and very little else I could reliably use to tell where I was.

Trying to overpower that would have been useless.

So I stopped asking the ocean to behave the way I wanted it to.

I adapted to what it was doing.

At one point, the thought that came into my head was strangely simple:

I belong to the sea. Please be kind to me.

And despite how physically difficult that section of the swim was, I wasn't afraid.

I felt very, very alive.

Understanding creates confidence

I spend a lot of time talking about confidence in my work.

But when I say I want a swimmer to become confident in the water, I don't mean I want them to believe that the water will always be easy.

It won't.

Conditions change. Bodies get tired. Skills are challenged. Something that felt comfortable yesterday might suddenly feel unfamiliar.

Real confidence comes from having enough understanding to respond.

Can you feel when your balance changes?

Can you control your breathing when something surprises you?

Can you recognize what the water is doing to your body?

Can you change what you're doing instead of panicking because the original plan stopped working?

Can you trust yourself enough to remain curious?

Those questions matter to a child learning to float.

They matter to an adult learning to swim for the first time.

And, apparently, they still matter when you're miles into the ocean trying to get around Egg Rock.

That's one of the things I love most about swimming.

You never really graduate from being a student of the water.

I wasn't out there alone

There was another reason I could keep settling back into my swim: Steve was beside me in a kayak.

I could barely sight in the conditions, so every few breaths I would look toward him. Sometimes I needed a course correction. Sometimes all I needed was a thumbs-up.

He tried repeatedly to convince me to drink more water. I was not always a cooperative athlete.

But he stayed beside me.

When I began to realize just how far I had already swum, he was there. When Egg Rock scrambled my sense of direction, he was there. When the shore looked impossibly far away, he was there.

There is something extraordinary about doing something difficult under your own power while knowing someone you love is quietly moving alongside you.

And when I finally came back into shallow water, there were more people waiting.

Familiar voices reached me before I could really see their faces.

After spending hours inside the rhythm of my own breathing and the sound of the ocean, I came back to shore and found people I love standing there.

I'm not sure I could have designed a better ending.

The places that have been waiting

The swim took me a little over two hours.

There will eventually be official numbers and results, and I'm proud of whatever they say.

But those aren't the things I keep thinking about.

I keep thinking about the dark water around Egg Rock.

The feeling of the water in my palms.

Looking over and seeing Steve.

The moment the ocean floor finally appeared beneath me again.

The voices on shore.

And the strange realization that none of it felt foreign.

It felt like somewhere I was supposed to be.

Water has been a thread through almost every version of my life. Pools. Beaches. Competitive swimming. Lifeguarding. Teaching. Boating. Diving. Exploring beneath the surface. Building Palmer Swim Method.

And lately, I have this feeling that the pieces are beginning to point in the same direction.

There are bigger swims I want to do.

There are places I want the water to take me.

There is more I want to learn, more I want to teach, and a much bigger life around the water that I am only beginning to understand.

For a long time, some of those things felt like distant versions of myself.

Now they don't.

It feels less like I am becoming somebody new and more like I am finally going to the places that have always been waiting for me.

And when I got out of the water yesterday—exhausted, happy, surrounded by people I love—I knew something very clearly:

I'm home.

Madison Palmer is the founder of Palmer Swim Method, where aquatic education is built around helping swimmers develop confidence through understanding the water.