Getting to calm. Getting to warm

Editor's note:  I worked with Libby DeLana on an essay about her cold water practice in February 2024. The piece is entirely Libby's, but I felt a personal connection to it: I started my own cold plunge practice in early 2022 with friends, in Walden Pond. As the pandemic wore on, and on and on, it was (yet) another difficult thing — but at least we had some control over it. Plus, I liked how the cold made me feel: alive and awake to the world. Libby's articulation of what the practice means to her feels true to my own experience. It's the cold exposure, yes, but it's also the community it builds, the self-knowledge it inspires, and how this simple, physical thing expands my capacity to tolerate vulnerability and discomfort. I hadn't been dipping as much lately — too cold, too distressing! — but the excerpt below, from Libby's new book, "Cold Joy," sent me back to the water's edge. — Cloe Axelson

By Libby DeLana

Chapter 10: Warmth

On the East Coast, there are mornings when the weather is scathing, the cold is so cold I worry about getting blisters from the air. I worry about the feeling of the water, the health of each one of my toes, the passing time. I worry about what I have done with my life and what I will do. I worry about everything. I worry that I can’t do it anymore. It is mercurial, frequently morphing and shifting shape. Sometimes it is writing. Sometimes it is a relationship. Sometimes it is the dip itself, an act as familiar to me as my morning walk. I think about the cold water moving under the cold sky and I’m shaky-afraid. It’s incredible the things a clever gust of wind can make you believe about yourself. Suddenly, there is doubt and the stories I tell myself grow teeth. The world darkens. The weather outside quickly becomes the weather inside. I can’t get warm.

This first happened to me early on in my practice, among friends. I was at Plum Island, a place that seems to know me even better than I know it, a place that usually finds a way to say, “Good morning, Lib,” in sunspots on the beach or with a Red-Breasted Nuthatch.

I drove up smiling for a dip one day with a golden-bright peace tucked somewhere perfect between my solar plexus and my heart. My darling mermaids, Ari, Meg, Sarah, and Claire were already there. I waved to them. I got my things together — changing coat, tea, towel, woolly clothes for after — and pulled my hat down on my head and opened the door.

A wind blew, the kind of salty stinging wind that shuts your eyes for you. Something happened to me. I knew it wasn’t an especially nice day and had no intention of laying out on the beach with a novel after, but I hadn’t expected the particular bite in the air. It took my breath away—a lovely sensation when you’ve planned for it, a disarming one when you haven’t. When I opened my eyes, Plum Island wasn’t as I’d left it in my mind. Sand that had once sparkled purple and bewitching felt peppery on my cheeks and legs. The wind was blowing, blowing, blowing, not a sea breeze or a storm, something different.

“Come on, love!” Sarah sang over the sound of the ocean, a roar that felt both loud and empty.

I made my way over to the mermaids. We didn’t hug as we normally would have, and to this day I doubt any of us know why we didn’t. There was a sense of urgency in that morning for all of us, indeterminate in origin.

Have you ever seen something that wasn’t really there? I wanted to ask but didn’t.

That’s what worry is to me. And that’s what cold is too, or what it used to be, uncertainty that has decided against possibility, a question that does more haunting than evoking wonder.

There was no sun in the sky, but we had to squint to protect our eyes from swirling microscopic debris. For that same reason, we weren’t very chatty. No matter how well you brush, sandy teeth tend to stay sandy all day long. Wordlessly, we approached the water. I could feel the beach shifting underfoot. I could feel myself shifting too. In the long gray moments before we got in, my mind began rifling through worries: How would I get to the car after? Where had I put my booties? What if I got too cold? It was too cold?

But I wouldn’t. Deep, deep down, I knew that. I looked at the water. While the rest of the world swirled, it smiled. I smiled back.

Instinctively, with my toes covered in surf, I grabbed Sarah’s hand. And she grabbed back.

The water taught me how to do that, to reach beyond worry to trust, and hold it in the palm of my hand. The water taught me to be boldly afraid, so that I could experience bold love. It taught me how to be cold, so that I could learn how to get warm.

You got this, Sarah’s grin said silently to me.

We walked into the Atlantic together and stayed together, not in the cold, beyond it. The sun never broke through, but I felt in a way as though I had. After the first aching seconds, my body started saying “you got this” and the water did too. My whole journey with this beach and this water had been scary and electrifying. It had been challenging and surprising. It had been emboldening and, suddenly, it was heartwarming.

Have you ever seen something that wasn’t really there? I wanted to ask again, but again I didn’t.

Because I knew the answer. Of course, it was love. The first dip is like falling in love. From there, the love grows deeper and deeper.

Excerpted from "Cold Joy: Experience the Wondrous Power of Cold Water" by Libby DeLana. Published by Chronicle Books, available everywhere books are sold. Copyright © 2025 by Libby DeLana.