In My Element and Learning to Adapt

Long ago, I titled a photo of myself, Leigh, In Her Element. I was near the water, sun on my face, salt in the air, smiling in a way that did not feel posed. When I named it, I meant something simple. I felt like myself there. Unguarded. At ease. As if the world and I were briefly in agreement.

Leigh, In Her Element

Lately, I have been wondering what it really means to be in your element, and how that idea changes when you start paying attention to adaptation.

We usually think of being in our element as finding the place where we function best. The setting where our nervous system calms down. The space where our instincts make sense. For me, that has often been water, wind, and open sky. My body seems to understand those conditions without much instruction. I breathe differently there. I move more slowly. I feel less divided inside.

But adaptation asks a harder question.

Is being in your element about staying where you feel most comfortable, or about learning how to carry that sense of self into places that do not look like your natural habitat.

When I lived mostly in retreat, my element was easy to define. Quiet. Solitude. Motion that came from tides instead of schedules. I built a life that kept me close to what felt safe and familiar. That was not avoidance then. It was recovery. It was learning how to live inside my own skin again.

Now adaptation is shifting the meaning of that old photo.

Being in my element can no longer mean only water and distance. It has to include people. Responsibility. Conversation. Friction. It has to stretch beyond the conditions that feel ideal and into the ones that ask more of me.

Maybe being in your element is not about geography at all.

Maybe it is about alignment.

When you are in your element, your inner world and outer world are not fighting each other. You are not pretending. You are not bracing for impact. You are present. That can happen on a boat, on a trail, at a table with friends, or in a room where hard things are being said honestly.

Adaptation teaches me that my element is not fixed. It grows as I grow.

What once made me feel most alive was distance. Space between me and everything else. Now what makes me feel alive is learning how to stay while remaining true to myself. That is a different kind of balance. It takes more awareness. It takes more risk.

The photo still matters to me because it captures a truth from a real season. I needed that element. It gave me back to myself. But if I keep trying to live only inside that frame, I turn memory into a rule. Adaptation asks me to let that image become a foundation instead of a boundary.

To be in my element now means I can feel grounded whether I am alone or with others. It means I can recognize when comfort is helping me grow and when it is keeping me small. It means I can let the part of me that learned to breathe near water also learn how to breathe in rooms full of voices.

There is something steady about that shift.

My element is no longer only where I feel best. It is where I live honestly. Where I notice my fear without obeying it. Where I carry what healed me into what challenges me.

So when I look at that old photo, I do not just see a moment of ease. I see the beginning of a longer story. One where being in my element is not a place I return to, but a way I learn to show up.

Adaptation does not take that image away from me.

It teaches me how to grow beyond it.