by Christi Baker, AMFT

WATER 

In On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), Ocean Vuong writes, “What were you before you met me? I think I was drowning. And what are you now? Water.” What a succinct and beautiful metaphor for the transformation that can be co-created through an intimate relationship like therapy.

Therapy feels both like unchartered waters and a pool (container) where I witness and support my patients’ before (drowning) and after (water) states. When patients arrive, they are often drowning – metaphorically gasping for air, flailing, screaming for help, or going under. Their struggles range from situations, feelings, relationships, and more. Some feel overwhelmed. Some are shut down. Everyone’s drowning is different.

My task early in the therapeutic relationship is to meet a patient in the pool, helping the patient feel safe enough in their struggle to explore. Together, we can get to know the struggle and the water. Stroke by stroke (session by session), my patients start to think, be, and do differently. I bear witness to the struggles, adaptations, and revolutions. Maybe my patients’ struggles become gifts. Maybe their struggles lose their weight to keep pulling them under the water. Maybe their struggles become a symphony. Maybe their struggles become their friends. 

The steady swimming practice of therapy yields the metamorphosis. Instead of fighting the currents, patients are with the current. At the end of therapy as water, patients can breathe, flow, align, and rest. Water is a symbol of calmness, clarity, adaptability, renewal, change, and healing. Patients make meaning of where they have been and who they have become. And transformation is breathtaking every single time.

Early on in our work together, one of my patients shared that he always felt like a side character in someone else’s story. He was drowning from abandonment by his father, his past partner, and from himself. Rarely allowed to be himself in intimate relationships, our therapy pool encouraged him to splash around with safety, acceptance, and validation. We steadily practiced together for a couple of years. When he moved away, his parting watery words were of thanks for helping him emerge as the main character in his story.

Reimagining doesn’t just happen in therapy. Today I saw an unexpected new state arise from toxicity, synchronistically centered on water. I visited a holistic pediatric public health initiative in Flint, MI, where residents have been struggling to access clean, fresh water for the last decade and have had to rely on bottled water. Turning tragedy and an overabundance of materials into beauty, a visual artist and toddlers transformed discarded water bottles into a stunning chandelier in the health clinic’s waiting areas.

Art, poetry, water, metaphor, and therapy are all essential and related ingredients to life. They are tools for meaning-making, change, hope, and beauty. I want to thank my guides for this entry - Ocean, my patients, and the toddlers of Flint.