The Estuary: A Future We Can Breathe In (Part Three: Flow)
The Tidal Pulse: For How We Move, Retreat, Return
“You have to go the way your blood beats.
If you don’t live the only life you have,
you won’t live some other life,
you won’t live any life at all.”
— James Baldwin
There is a rhythm to this work that lives beneath the surface that is steady, quiet, and often unnamed. It does not follow the structure of a school year or align itself with a strategic plan. It cannot be tracked through metrics or distilled into a deliverable, yet it shapes everything. It moves through the breath we gather before responding with care, through the way our hands keep reaching outward even when we are tired, through the invisible adjustments we make to stay present without unraveling. This rhythm is not linear, not optimized, not designed for speed. It moves like the tide moves: unforced, cyclical, deeply attuned. It is the current that carries us forward when the noise recedes, the pulse that steadies us when nothing else does.
This rhythm does not reward urgency. It does not move toward a summit or accumulate in the way institutions often expect progress to. It draws us into the work when our presence matters most, and it gently calls us back when our bodies, spirits, or circumstances ask us to step away, not in retreat, but in remembrance. Not of what we do, but of who we are beneath the doing.
In those moments, we are not stepping out of the work;
we are stepping back into alignment with it.
There is no shame in this motion, only wisdom. We live in a time when presence is too often mistaken for constancy and stepping back is misread as disengagement. In truth, even the ocean must pull away to gather itself. It does not crash endlessly; the ocean recedes so it can return with purpose. That ebb is not a loss — it is a necessary part of continuity. We would do well to remember that people, too, require seasons of retreat, of quiet tending, of unseen processing. In order to build something that lasts, something that holds not just performance but humanity, we must begin to honour those rhythms as legitimate forms of contribution.
To work in this way is not to opt out; it is to choose presence over pretence. It is to understand that our greatest impact is not forged in exhaustion, but in clarity. We rarely name these truths: we speak about passion and drive and commitment, but not about the long nights when those things feel far away. We tend to not talk enough about the years when we are ablaze with vision and the ones where we are simply trying to remain upright.
Those who stay, truly stay, are not the ones who sprint. They are the ones who know how to move with the current. They have learned the discipline of stepping back without disconnecting, of pausing without self-erasure, of returning not out of pressure, but out of deep alignment with purpose.
The pulse of this work will not always be visible: sometimes it will be buried under layers of grief or healing; sometimes it will look like silence; sometimes it will feel like slowness. That is not a void. That is the rhythm doing what it needs to do. The error is not in taking space and in creating systems that make no space for rhythm at all. Too often, when someone steps back, the first question we ask is, “Why did they leave?”
The more important question, the one that tells us everything about the culture we have created, is: “Did they feel they could return?”
That is the measure of belonging and the sign of true sustainability: not whether people stay without pause, but whether they know the door will remain open if they need to step away. In our schools, our teams, our movements, consistency has become conflated with worth. In that confusion, we have lost touch with what actually sustains community: not endless presence, but mutual trust. Not output, but rhythm. Not perfection, but relationship.
Students know this better than we think. They may not have the language for it, but they feel it in the air. They see it in the way we soften or tighten, in the way our sentences become sharper or shorter, in the way we show up or shrink away. They feel the undertow when our energy begins to recede. If we have created classrooms grounded in relationship rather than control, they will not resent that shift; they will understand it because they are navigating their own tides, too.
The mistake we make in education, in leadership, and in movement work is believing that the goal is to override the rhythm. To teach through depletion, to lead through fracture, to care for others while we drift further from ourselves. We are not taught to treat rest as part of the labour; we are taught to delay it until everything collapses.
We normalize flatness.
We normalize burnout.
We normalize the empty shell of commitment instead of the full-bodied fidelity that rhythm makes possible.
What if our classrooms didn’t require peak energy to be meaningful? What if our returns were met not with questions but with welcome? What if we helped young people see that wisdom lives not just in pushing through, but in learning to recognize when to step back? This is not about asking less of ourselves or others… It is about asking better. It is about designing ways of working, learning, and leading that honour the ebb as much as the flow.
People do not leave environments that honour their tide: they leave the ones that meet pause with resistance; they leave the ones that interpret rest as weakness; they leave the ones that ask for everything but make no space for re-entry. If we are to shift with the tide, we must be capable of deepening and asking different questions:
Not “How do we keep people constantly engaged?” but “What might it look like to build cultures that expect people to step away and plan for their return?”
Not “How do we make them stay?” but “What would it mean to lead from the rhythm, not the role?”
We return not because we are restored, fixed, or finished.
We return because we remain in relationship with the work and because something in us still believes in what we are fostering together.
After all, even when the tide recedes, it does not forget the shore.
Field Notes for Honouring the Tidal Pulse
To speak of rhythm in education and to honour it with more than metaphor is to step outside the familiar cadence of institutional life and into something more human, more complex, and ultimately more sustainable. So much of what we inherit as educators, leaders, and community builders is shaped by urgency: faster timelines, fuller schedules, constant availability. This expedited pace is not neutral, however, and it ultimately reshapes our expectations of one another and of ourselves in ways that leave little room for the natural, necessary movements of retreat, stillness, and re-entry.
If we are to build educational ecosystems that last, we need practices that are attuned not to output, but to life. These notes are not strategies to optimize performance; they are practices of attention and care. They are how we begin to craft cultures where rhythm is expected, where movement is understood, and where people feel safe enough to arrive, to pull back, and to return without explanation, without reduction, and without fear that their absence has erased their belonging.
These are not rules; they are ways of remembering what it means to be in relationship with ourselves, with one another, and with the deeper current of the work.
Make Space for Seasonal Presence
No one exists in a single state of contribution. Across the span of a year and across a lifetime we all move through seasons of capacity, clarity, grief, growth, caregiving, recalibration, and return. In some moments, we are energized, initiating, offering. In others, we are healing, observing, protecting our energy.
There is no right way to show up, only an honest one.
When we normalize this movement as part of what it means to belong, we allow people to stay rooted even when their pace changes. This is not about lowering expectations (“Lower barriers, not the bar.”). It is about broadening our understanding of presence to include quiet participation, watchful witnessing, and the kind of endurance that doesn’t always look like momentum but is no less vital.
Signal Return Without Demanding It
When someone steps away, whether for a day, a season, or something less definable, we have the opportunity to show them that time away is not time lost. In the absence of clear signals, it is easy to wonder whether there is still a place for you, whether your re-entry will feel awkward, whether too much has moved on.
A simple message, a held invitation, a saved space can offer more than comfort — it can offer continuity.
Let there be small gestures that say, without fanfare, you are still part of this. You haven’t been replaced. You haven’t been forgotten. The work is still yours to come back to, if and when you are ready.
Design With Absence in Mind
Most structures in education are built on the assumption that everyone will always be present and fully available; however, human systems are not machines — they are living, shifting constellations of people with changing needs, responsibilities, and limits. When we design without accounting for these shifts, we create fragility. When we build with flexibility, when we intentionally leave room for people to step in and step back as they need to, we create something more adaptive and more humane.
This doesn’t require lowering standards. It means designing systems that don’t collapse when someone needs a moment to catch their breath.
Let us move from rigidity toward resilience — not as a reaction to crisis, but as a commitment to care.
Reframe Retreat as Rhythm
Too often, stepping back is treated as something to explain or justify as though one must defend their need for stillness. Retreat is not withdrawal. It is part of the rhythm. It is a way of listening inward and staying honest about what is possible. When someone moves to the edge of the work to observe, to restore, or to reflect, they are not leaving the circle. They are learning how to remain without being consumed.
By naming these pauses openly and without stigma, we invite a different kind of culture, one where pacing is not proof of commitment and where quiet discernment is seen as a form of integrity, not absence.
Create Rituals of Return
Re-entry is rarely easy. The longer someone has been away (or the more invisible their absence has been) the harder it can feel to come back. Not because they are uncertain of their purpose, but because they are unsure how they will be received. We can soften this threshold with intention. This does not require grand gestures: a shared check-in, a moment of acknowledgment, a simple, “We’re glad you’re here” can shift the atmosphere.
When return is treated as a natural part of the flow rather than an exception to it, we make it easier for people to stay connected across all stages of their journey — not just the loud, visible ones.
Let Your Own Rhythm Lead
To invite others to honour their pace while disregarding our own is not leadership — it is performance. What models care most clearly is not the image of strength without limits, but the honest practice of alignment. If you are exhausted, let your pace reflect that. If you are recalibrating, say so. When we speak plainly about the need to slow down, not in crisis but as a conscious choice, we offer others something rare: permission to do the same.
Your rhythm is not an interruption to the work. It is a reminder of what makes it possible.
Let it guide you not away from responsibility, but toward a version of it that is more sustainable, more truthful, and more human.
Rhythm is not something we master once and apply forever. It is something we return to again and again: listening, adjusting, remembering. The field notes above are not prescriptions or guarantees. They are invitations to stay in relationship with the deeper currents of the work, especially when the surface feels chaotic or unclear. They ask us to resist the urge to make people prove their readiness and instead build the kind of cultures that trust people to find their own pace.
In doing so, they remind us that our capacity to sustain meaningful change is not found in how hard we push, but in how wisely we move.
Together.
In season.
In rhythm.
In time.
The ocean does not explain its rhythm. It does not defend the curve of its retreat or ask permission before it returns. It simply moves in accordance with forces deeper than opinion, older than urgency, and the world responds to its movement without hesitation. Trees bend. Birds adjust. The shoreline reshapes itself again and again, not because the tide is inconsistent, but because it is faithful to something beyond visibility. It knows when to arrive and when to pull back and it does both without apology.
What might shift if we treated our work and one another with that same trust? What might become possible if we stopped asking people to prove they belong by how consistently they show up and started designing environments where belonging is carried through rhythm, not attendance? Where absence is not a rupture, but part of the continuity? Where return is not earned, but welcomed?
To live the tidal pulse is to remain in relationship — even in retreat. It is to stay connected to the work, to the community, to the future you are shaping, without needing to be at the centre of it at all times. It is to know when your presence will serve and when your pause is the more faithful act. It is to move through your seasons with dignity and to allow others the same grace.
This is not about taking less seriously the urgency of our work.
It is about trusting that urgency is not best answered by depletion, but by alignment.
It is about remembering that what is most sacred is rarely loud and what is most lasting is rarely rushed.
Let your legacy be not how long you endured without rest, but how deeply you listened to what was needed.
And how generously you allowed others to do the same.
Listening Beneath the Surface: Reflections in the Current
There are times when the most important work cannot be seen; when the shifts happen not in our output, but in our understanding.
Reflection, when done in rhythm, is not an evaluation of what we have done wrong or right but a way of listening inward, of noticing what is surfacing, and allowing ourselves to imagine what else might be possible.
These questions are not here to measure you, they are here to meet you, wherever you are in the tide.
What would become possible in your community, team, or classroom if rhythm was not a disruption to manage, but a design principle to honour? Imagine a culture where the ebb is anticipated, not feared. What would leadership look like if rest were embedded into the structure not as a reward, but as part of the rhythm of responsibility?
Where in your own life have you been holding onto constancy at the expense of connection? What would it mean to let go of the need to be unshakable and instead show up as someone in motion — still here, still rooted, but allowed to sway with the wind?
What signals could you leave for someone who has stepped away not to rush their return, but to remind them they are still held? What does it look like to hold space for another’s rhythm with no timeline, only trust?
These questions are not meant to be answered all at once. Let them arrive and settle in their own time, drifting beside you for a while, like driftwood in the estuary shaped by water, softened by time, carried by current.
You’ll know what to do with them when the tide turns.
To Move in Rhythm, To Lead with Trust
The tide does not announce its return. It moves in silence, held by forces we cannot see but can feel. Its rhythm is not random; it is relational. Everything around it has learned to live in response: the coastline adjusts, the roots deepen, the air shifts. There is no crisis when the ocean pulls back; there is only space and the knowing that it will come again, reshaped, ready, still connected.
This is the kind of relationship we are being asked to co-create.
One that does not require constant proof of value.
One that does not mistake motion for meaning.
One that can hold fluctuation without fear.
To live the tidal pulse is to honour what is steady without becoming static. It is to recognize that there are seasons for rising and seasons for gathering. And it is to trust that the ones who return — not performatively, but fully, in rhythm with something deeper — bring with them not only experience, but discernment.
They bring a presence that does not rush because it remembers why it came.
Let your presence be shaped not by pressure, but by principle.
Let your returns be slow, true, and whole.
Let your leadership make space for others to do the same.
The ones who know how to move with the tide are not the ones who disappear; they are the ones who last.
It was never about enduring at all costs. It is about returning in rhythm, with your wholeness intact, and leaving behind a pace others can trust. What we pass on is the rhythm we model, which others can follow not out of obligation but out of trust.
The tide does not stay because it is forced to.
It returns because it belongs.
From the still point of the turning tide,
Ms. K
