Roatán, Honduras
Half the year I am on this island. It is where I learned the thing I use most in the room.
The water
I generate energy underwater. The ocean taught me to let go of control. To let the current carry me to places in flow. To be a kid again, full of wonder and play and exploration, at an age when most people have quietly agreed to stop.
It also taught me the thing I use most in my actual work. I trained as a rescue diver. I can hold space at the bottom of the ocean, safely, while my clients explore. When someone else is in trouble, the job is not to fix it fast. It is to stay calm and stay with them.
My best friend calls me a pearl diver into other people. A deep dive master, above the surface and below it. That is the whole job. I hold the container, and I take people to the depths.
I can hold space at the bottom of the ocean, safely, while my clients explore.
What diving taught me about sitting with people
Gypsy's Jewel
Her father named her Gypsy. A single mom who earned her PhD at night. A supercomputing pioneer in the eighties, when almost nobody who looked like her was in that room. A steel magnolia, with more grit in her delicate southern pinky than most boardrooms I have sat in. She wanted me to stay and knew I needed out, so she gave me wings.
She loved the water her whole life, weightless and free. Last June I dedicated a dive site to her off this island, and she chose the name. She never got to dive it. Less than a month later I gave her eulogy, and that is where this phrase found me. Turns out, love can do that. Love can do everything.
When I told her about the dive site, she wrote back: so cool, thank you so much honey, it is such a positive thing to know that some aspect of me will live forever. She watched the video of the dedication instead of diving it, the first time I went down to see her name on the water.
The house carries her name now too. We shared a favorite hour, twilight, what the French call entre chien et loup, between the dog and the wolf, when you cannot quite tell one from the other. She loved it because the earth was settling down. Twilight is where things transform.
A few days before she died, I asked her how she wanted to be remembered. One word. Kind.
Roatán sits on the second largest reef in the world, and half my year is here, on her water.
I lead small leadership retreats on this island. The medicine stays where it is licensed, at a proper service center, exactly the way the law requires. What happens here is the integration. Diving, mostly. Long mornings with no agenda, warm water, and the kind of processing that moves easier in the ocean than in a conference room.
If your team already knows the room and is ready to go somewhere quieter with it, this is where we would go.
Take something with you
You do not have to work with me to use this. It is the assessment I built for the leaders I coach, and it is free.
Every pearl begins with an irritation. Every transformation begins with the courage to dive. The treasures worth finding are not on the surface.
Most people try to become themselves by adding. More skills, more credentials, more strategy. This does the opposite. It is a process of intentional subtraction, and what is left at the end is the thing you have been carrying the whole time.
Print it in color, step away from screens, and let pen meet paper. The truth lives offline.
Love can do that.
The licensed work happens elsewhere. This page is just where I live, and what the water taught me.
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