Come With Me
Sometimes the most helpful thing is an invitation.
I invited someone out on the water recently. She doesn’t fish. Never has. I could see she was carrying something heavy, though I didn’t know exactly what. I just knew that a change of scenery might help. Sunshine. Fresh air. The water. Time away from everything else.
What I didn’t expect was how it would remind me of something I’ve been noticing for years now. Every time I’ve invited a non-fisher out on the boat, the same thing happens. There’s this moment, usually when we’re out there with the wind in their hair and the sunrise breaking across the water, when something shifts. They sit back. They put their feet up. Their shoulders drop. I watch the tension leave their face. And then, without fail, they turn to me and say it: “Now I know why you love this so much.”
It’s never about the fish. It’s about seeing me differently. And me seeing them differently too.
When these women come out with me, they’re watching me launch the boat solo. They’re watching me retrieve it. They’re watching me do all of it myself. And I’ve noticed something in their eyes. A kind of recognition. A realisation that this is possible. That they could do this too. I’ll never forget one woman turning to me after watching me work through the process and saying, “Boss bitch.” She wasn’t being cheeky. She was in awe. And what I realised in that moment was that she wasn’t just seeing my capability on the water. She was seeing possibility for herself. That matters. More than I think we sometimes acknowledge.
When I’m on the water, everything stops. My brain stops overthinking. Work disappears. The endless list just falls away. There’s the landscape. The salt in the air. The light on the water. That whole feeling. And I think, watching these women out there for the first time, that they feel it too. The calmness. The sense of having left everything behind, even just for a day.
We’re out there, just existing together. Chatting. Taking in the landscape. And then someone asks, “Can I have a go?” So I hand over the rod. They cast. They ask questions. They get excited. No one’s teaching. No one’s performing. It’s just happening, naturally.
And here’s what I’ve noticed: every single woman I’ve taken out has come back wanting more. They buy their first fishing rod. They start thinking about how to share this with their kids. They ask me questions. They want to know where to start, how to make it happen. But more than that, they’ve found something. A connection. A place that feels like theirs.
Through all of this, I’ve realised something. I value creating that space for someone else. And I value what happens when you open a door and just let someone step through, without agenda, without expectation.
I’ve also learned that sometimes, when someone is struggling, the most helpful thing isn’t advice or words. It’s an invitation. It’s saying, “Come with me. Let me show you something.” Because I didn’t know how else to help. But I knew what the water had done for me.
I still think about that day sometimes. The way her shoulders dropped. The way she turned to me and said, now I know why you love this.
That was enough.