Finding Yourself After 60: My Story in the Water
I’ve lived around water most of my life. Oceans mostly, for a long stretch of it. But I never really swam in them. Too many things bigger than me out there, and I’ve always liked being able to see the bottom. Rivers are worse. This is Florida. There are alligators. That’s a hard no from me.
So it’s always been pools. Where the water is calm and clean and I know exactly what’s under me.
What I didn’t expect was that somewhere in my sixties, a pool would end up being the place I found myself after 60, years after I thought that version of me was just gone for good.
Where I Was Before the Water Found Me
We never had kids. We have cats instead, which honestly worked out fine for us. What we did have were years and years of caregiving, first for one set of parents, then the other, until both of mine had passed.
Caregiving years have a way of quietly removing you from your own life. You’re so busy showing up for everyone else that you stop noticing you’ve disappeared a little. I didn’t clock it happening. I just woke up one day in a new phase of life, parents gone, and realized I didn’t really know what I wanted anymore. I’d forgotten the things that used to make me happy back before life got so busy.
On top of all that, I’d gone through breast cancer. Treatment does things to your body you don’t always notice right away. For me it was my chest and shoulder muscles. Slowly, over time, they’d drawn in and tightened up. I started noticing I was hunching forward a little. My body was holding something and I hadn’t caught up to it yet.
The Day I Cried in the Deep End
I’d lived in my community for over 20 years and barely used the neighborhood pool. Didn’t want to deal with people, didn’t want to deal with kids splashing around. So it just sat there, empty of me, for two decades.
One day, mid-cancer recovery, I decided to go anyway. Just to splash around, see if moving in the water might help my body feel less locked up.
I’m buoyant, so I don’t sink easily, and I ended up in the deep end treading water. And then, almost without meaning to, I started stretching my arms out through the water. Really opening up through my chest.
And I started crying.
Not from anything bad. My chest muscles were releasing for the first time in years, and the relief of it just broke something open in me. I couldn’t believe how good it felt. For the first time in a long time, I felt real joy again, right there in the deep end of a pool I’d been ignoring for 20 years.
That was the actual beginning. Not a decision I made, just a moment my body had for me before my head caught up.
From Treading Water to Lazy Rivers
After that, I started going back regularly. For about a year, that was the whole practice. Get in the deep end, tread water, stretch, breathe. I brought a pool noodle along for when my arms got tired, but mostly I just stayed out there in the deep end on my own.
Then my birthday came around, and I wanted to try something new. I’d heard about something called a resort pass, which is basically a day pass that lets you use a hotel’s pool facilities for the day even if you’re not staying there. A lot of hotels here have lazy rivers, and I wanted in.
So my sister and I went. First attempt, we used the inner tubes the hotel had on hand, and honestly, they were miserable. You sit up on top of the tube instead of down in the water, so you’re just baking in the Florida sun while barely getting wet. We still had fun, but we knew we could do better.
Round two, we brought our own pool noodles instead. Hotel didn’t care. We floated that lazy river for hours, caught up on each other’s lives, and that became our thing. We found a second hotel nearby with its own lazy river and started trading off between the two.
Chasing a Little More Speed
Eventually we wanted more movement in the water, so we found our way to Aquatica. They’ve got a slow river and a fast one, and at a theme park you can’t bring your own noodle, but they hand out life vests instead. We floated that fast river for hours, got sprayed by the random sprinklers along the way, which annoyed me at first and then felt amazing once the Florida heat really set in.
We got out for lunch, then went right back in for another couple hours. It was, without exaggeration, one of the best days I’d had in years.
Naturally, that led us to think we needed even more speed. So we tried Volcano Bay, which has a genuinely fast lazy river.
That one was too much. There’s a real difference between floating and relaxing versus just trying not to go under. We survived it, but it wasn’t fun in the way Aquatica was. So we went back to Aquatica and got annual passes.
What Started As One Pool Day Became a Ritual
My sister and I have been doing this for almost three years now. Roughly every six weeks, she drives up, stays a night or two, and we spend a full day floating at Aquatica together before she heads home.
It’s become one of the best, most consistent joys I’ve found in years. Not a big production, not an expensive vacation, just two sisters and some water and hours of catching up while we float.
If You Want to Try a Resort Pass Yourself
If a lazy river day sounds appealing and you don’t happen to live near a theme park, a resort pass is worth looking into. It lets you buy day access to a hotel pool without booking a room, and plenty of hotels with lazy rivers or nice pool setups offer it. It’s an easy, low-commitment way to get a little bit of that floating joy without planning a whole trip around it.
As an affiliate with Resort Pass I earn from qualifying purchases, this cost you nothing extra.
There’s actual research behind why this all works the way it does, too. Time spent in or near water, sometimes called a “blue space,” has been linked to lower stress and better mood, and swimming in particular seems to have a real mindfulness effect on the brain. Insight Psychological has a good rundown of the research if you want to go deeper on it. It’s not just a feeling. Something is actually happening out there in the water.
I didn’t know any of that science the day I cried in the deep end. I just knew it felt like coming back to myself. Turns out there was a reason for that.
So that’s the beginning. There’s more to tell, caregiving years I’ve only touched on here, the cancer years, the sister trips that came after this one. I’ll get to those. Finding yourself after 60 has been an amazing journey and I hope you come with me to explore more.
For now, come float with me and let’s see what happens together.
Read more of my stories and find out how I Kept a secret for 57 years. Also take a look at how I went to Aquatica alone and ended up with a Stranger’s Babies in My Arms.