What If Safety Isn’t What You Think It Is?
In meditation, I found myself high above the ocean, looking down.
At the same time, I could see myself holding tightly to a life preserver.
(Apparently in meditation, it is possible to be both the observer and the participant at the same time. It’s a thing.)
Clinging to the life preserver felt like safety.
But then I watched myself do something unexpected.
I turned away from it and began to swim out into the open water… trusting that I would be held.
Held by the deep, vast, expansive water.
That moment repeated itself over and over.
Not once, but again and again.
So I painted it (below).
I realized in that moment that what feels like safety can sometimes be the very place I stay stuck…
Held By the Deep by Lori Poff Kellogg, March 2026
And as I sat with the idea of releasing my life preservers, something even deeper revealed itself.
I felt compelled to paint the ocean and the rising sun, stylized and different from my regular style. And then add the life preserver, so small against them. The juxtaposition of the vastness of the universe and the life preserver is the point.
And suddenly I saw something so obvious, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.
The life preserver isn’t what’s holding me up.
It never was.
It is the water.
The same water I’ve been surrounded by all along.
The water is holding the life preserver… that I thought was holding me.
The life preserver is just a layer between me and what is really supporting me.
And then the sudden knowing: “I have never NOT been supported.”
“I Have Always Been Supported” by Lori Poff Kellogg, March 2026
And everything shifted.
Because for so long, I’ve lived with this quiet belief:
“It’s all up to me.”
That I had to hold everything together.
Figure everything out.
Make sure I (and everyone else, too) would be okay.
But that was never actually true.
I have always been supported.
Even in the moments I felt alone.
Even when I was gripping tightly to something I thought I needed to stay safe.
I was being held the entire time.
And maybe that’s what trust really is.
Not forcing ourselves to let go…
but slowly realizing we were never unsupported to begin with.
In just a few days, I’ll be leaving for the Great Mother March.
And if I’m honest… it feels a little outside my wheelhouse.
There’s still a part of me that wants to reach for the life preserver.
To stay close to what feels known and certain.
But this is what I’m carrying with me instead:
The knowing that I am already held.
That I don’t have to do this on my own.
That the same support that has always been there… is still here now.
And maybe I can trust that, one step at a time.