Maybe it’s the crazy winter, or maybe I’m just a beach baby, but right now, I’m yearning for some cobalt blue water. There’s nothing quite like a trip to the ocean, but as I learned on a vacation with my mom, not all ocean waters carry the same energy.

I’m lucky enough to live within an easy drive of the Atlantic Ocean, and that coast has become my place of renewal. A few years ago, however, my mom and I ventured south to the blue waters of the Caribbean, spending a few blissful days island hopping in the Bahamas.

There are so many places in the world that I still long to see, but Grand Bahama Island is a place I would return to in a heartbeat. This island is the closest of the Bahamas to Florida, but it might as well be another world. Sandy soil makes the island feel like a palm-tree filled desert, and the pace of life on the island is languid. There are resorts and tourists, although it didn’t feel like as many people find their way to this island as to the more popular ports, like Nassau, but there are also school children in uniforms and men and women going about their lives. There was poverty and pain, to be sure, even visible from a tour bus window, but there was also a sense of quiet joy that pervaded the island.

And then there’s the water.

Mom and I spent a day at a national park on Grand Bahama island, exploring sunken caves and cenotes, and then floating on the salty, crystal sea. I’ve always felt pulled to the Orisha sisters, Oya and Oshun, when I visit any coast, but the warm water of the Bahamas was more overtly feminine than any body of water I’d been to before. As much as I felt the presence of the Orishas, I also felt totally out of my depth; it felt like it would take a lifetime to understand the energy of the blue waters. Everything about the waters, from the sea to the cenotes, touched a deep part of my soul, and it was easy to feel the whisper of intuition and initiation tugging at my heart.

The magic of that island pulls at me still, and I know that one day, I’ll be back. In the meantime, however, whenever I need to fall into stillness, I revisit that trip in my mind and remember how buoyant I felt in the water, how loved, and how supported. Usually, I go to the ocean to be renewed, but in the Bahamas, I swam in the arms of the mother...alongside my own mom.

Do you have a favorite body of water? Where do you go to be renewed?