The Water at Fly Ranch
I learned my body knew how to surface. I didn't know yet that floating alone was only half the work.
I had never been to Burning Man before.
When I imagined it, I pictured the opposite of everything that had kept me alive. Overstimulation. Disarray. People dissolving themselves in the name of release. I always thought a place like that would pull me in ways I was not ready for, the way counterculture spaces often did.
Maybe because I grew up adjacent to them, exposed to a tangential community of spiritualists and self-proclaimed free-thinkers that bordered on cult-like belonging. Maybe because, as I got older, I saw what loud music and drugs, wrapped in the language of awakening, could do to people. Or maybe my base instinct has always been to dive off the deep end of anything that made me feel something.
But feeling something, alive and passionate, had always broken me open. So I ran from freedom, or from any culture that would have preferred me to remain true to my nature, even if that nature had been perverted. I ran toward a world where wearing a mask was the requirement for entry.
I joined the service at seventeen, chasing structure like it was salvation. Order made me safe. Precision made me worthy. Freedom was an illusion dressed up as choice. I learned to avoid indulgence, replacing it with self-enforced discipline, becoming my own gatekeeper, my own silencer, my own siphon for anything that made me feel again.
But after I left those systems that shaped me, leaving the military in 2019, giving up my career in aviation, quitting jobs that rewarded endurance over authenticity, I found myself suspended between worlds. No longer who I’d been, not yet who I was becoming. My journey was sparked by heartbreak but propelled by something harder: learning I’d been the one abandoning myself all along.
That reckoning brought me home. Back to the Bay Area. The same place I’d left twenty years earlier to chase a life that might make me forget what came before. When you return to your roots, you inevitably uncover the pieces of yourself you left behind.
I began building community with people who move through life by rhythm instead of rank. Artists. Healers. Nomads. Many came from the Burning Man ecosystem, a culture I’d once viewed as foreign but now found myself learning from, collaborating with, even hosting. So, when a friend I’d met through that work invited me to join her for a four-day trip to Fly Ranch, the birthplace of Burning Man, it made perfect sense that I should go.
For research. For space to think. For myself.
And there, in that vast nowhere, I would also be reborn.
We arrived after midnight. My friend and I parked the trailer on an open stretch of earth that looked infinite in every direction. The air was dry and electric, a quiet that pressed against my ears as I lowered the stabilizer bars and plugged in the battery. The sky was the kind of clear that makes you small, galaxies visible without trying.
I crawled into bed that night with a single intention: to remain present. To find myself in my body and stay there.
I wasn’t expecting revelations or breakthroughs, only time to sit with myself, unhurried, with a nervous system that didn’t need fixing.
By morning, the light had changed everything.
It was bright, the kind of brightness that hums through the skin, but the air held a different quality now. Puffs of clouds cast long shadows across the endless playa, thickening as they moved, mountains stretching across the horizon as if they were holding the edges of the world in place. The air smelled clean, sun-warmed dust and metal with traces of something ancient, like the earth itself was exhaling history. I could feel the barometric pressure dropping, that sensation in my chest that meant weather was about to change everything.
I stood there, watching the sky shift, and realized I wasn’t reaching for my phone to check the forecast. No notifications, no signal, no noise to interrupt the hum beneath everything.
I thought about plugging in the Starlink but decided not to. I wanted to stay disconnected from the world so I could reconnect with myself, with something slower than I’d been living.
I stepped outside and sensed it. That quiet, grounded recognition. I have arrived.
Not to a place, but to myself. To my own freedom. To the right to follow where my body and mind wanted to go, without repercussions or worry.
For the first time, I didn’t want to run.
The camp woke up slowly. Peaceful. Unhurried. As if time itself had stopped bending forward and learned to pool instead, each moment stretching long enough to breathe inside it.
That morning, we set up a small coffee station. A folding table with compostable cups, an assortment of caffeinated options, and a handwritten sign that simply read Thirsty?
My friend told me about the ethos of Burning Man, how one of its core principles was gifting: exchange without expectation of receiving back. The idea delighted me. In the world I came from, everything was measured and accounted for. Effort, output, performance, reward. Here, generosity existed for its own sake. It was a culture built not on transaction, but on offering.
There was something deeply disarming about that.
What surprised me most was how naturally it felt. I’d spent so long in systems where everything had to be earned, where worth was constantly proven and reproven. But here, as people wandered over for coffee, they offered conversation instead of payment. No performance required. No ledger kept. Just presence exchanged for presence.
I hadn’t expected to feel so at ease in a place I’d once feared would ask too much of me. Instead, it asked for nothing at all.
They told me about Fly Ranch and what they were building here: a living experiment in sustainability, art, and belonging. It was a soft introduction, a slow unfolding. I could sense myself beginning to settle into it.
My friend and I sat in two camp chairs beside my trailer, trading intentions for the days ahead. We talked about what we wanted to receive from this place, from this experience. I told her I wanted this trip to be about moving through the emotions and sensations I still carried from the past five years. The ones I’d not yet processed fully, not yet let my body speak.
I was tired of performing healing. I wanted to feel it.
Then someone called out that the first activity of the day would be a trip to the hot springs.
My friend grinned. “They’re magical,” she said. “Life-changing.”
Her excitement was contagious.
We put on our swimsuits, packed towels, and boarded the bus.
I had no idea what I was walking into. But for once, that felt like an invitation instead of threat.
Twenty-six adults crammed on a bus, giddy like teenagers on a field trip. I kept my head down, staying contained in my own experience.
For most of my life, I’d found ways to put myself at the center of attention, to claim territory that wasn’t mine, to fill silence with my own voice. It was a survival skill I’d learned early: be louder, be funnier, be more interesting than whatever pain you’re trying to outrun. But here, I was practicing something different. I wasn’t here for conversation. I was here for something quieter.
For fifteen minutes, I just listened. Let other people’s laughter fill the air. Let their stories take up room. I existed in the liminal space of their joy without needing to claim any of it as my own.
I never do that.
When we finally disembarked, it felt like stepping onto another planet. An overcast layer had settled like a blanket, trapping the heat close to the ground. Steam rose from every direction, reeds bending in the wind, and in the distance a geyser shaped like a lion’s head spewed clouds into the sky. The air was thick with minerals and the promise of rain. My friend opened a white umbrella dotted with polka dots, and we used it to shield ourselves as we picked our way carefully through the mud.
The heat intensified with every step.
When we found a dry spot to drop our bags, I stripped down to my swimsuit and started walking toward the edge of the dock. That was when I noticed everyone else was naked.
A wave of panic hit me. My fear of exposure flared.
I’d been to women’s soaks before, but nothing like this. Coed. Unselfconscious. Unperformed. The nakedness here was not rebellion. It was honesty.
I hesitated at the edge, my body rigid with the old programming. Every instinct screamed to stay covered, to stay safe, to maintain the boundary between what I showed and what I kept hidden.
But this was a safe space. And what happened here, could stay here if I wanted it to.
So, I jumped in.
The water enveloped me instantly, hotter than I expected. When I surfaced, gasping, I could sense my heart pounding, my body hyperaware of itself. I looked around. Everyone else moved through the water like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I was the only one still clothed.
I was the only one still hiding.
So I swam to the dock, peeled the swimsuit from my skin, and laid it beside me.
It clung for a moment before sliding away, and I felt it. The freedom. The lightness. The absence of weight or expectation.
Around the dock, conversation buzzed. People traded introductions and shared stories, voices weaving together with natural ease. My friend dove deep in conversation with a man who reminded me of every man I’d ever wanted to want me. The handsome ones who drift through, charming you with fleeting attention that makes you believe you matter while leaving wreckage they never return to see. He had a magnetism that made him the center without trying, like he belonged everywhere and nowhere at once.
I recognized something I couldn’t yet name.
He reached into a bag, pulled out a few beers, and started handing them around. When he offered me one, I smiled and declined, not wanting to slip into a familiar pattern I’d been caught in before.
I’d been in too many moments like this. Places where I gave my energy away too easily, and left depleted. I didn’t want to start this experience that way.
So I swam out, toward the quiet. Toward the part of the water that was waiting to meet me.
The water was so hot it almost felt alive, silky and dense, like it was pulling me down instead of holding me up. I followed that pull, chasing the thread of heat toward the center where it was hottest. Behind me, the noise of the dock faded. The further I swam, the quieter it became until it was just me and the sound of my own breath.
I found two pool noodles, put one under my neck, one under my knees, and floated into the middle of the spring. The steam blurred everything. The sky. The water. My body.
Every inhale lifted me above the surface. Every exhale pulled me below, until I couldn’t tell if I was floating or drowning, if this was freedom or erasure. The water didn’t distinguish. Neither did I.
Then panic hit.
Because every time I breathed in, my chest broke the surface. Every time I exhaled, I disappeared beneath the water. The movement made me exposed, revealed. My skin prickled with heat and shame. I became hyperaware of my body, of the way the air touched it. I was convinced everyone must be watching me even though I knew how absurd that was.
But my body didn’t believe me.
It remembered other moments of exposure, other times I’d been seen before I was ready. My mind flashed back to old memories, times when water had been both sanctuary and stage. When I’d jumped from high heights and sunk to the bottom of abysses I couldn’t swim out of. Times when I’d wanted to disappear, when I’d believed destruction was the only way to feel alive again.
And now, here I was, floating between those same instincts. Between the part of me that wanted to hide and the part that wanted to be appreciated.
I thought about how much effort it is to always try to control the narrative, shaping every story to prove I was worth listening to. Terrified that if I stopped performing, no one would stay. That the truth of me, unedited and raw, wouldn’t be enough to keep anyone’s attention. I’ve built a beautiful life, but inside I’m still that girl trying to will her way into mattering, into being seen, into finally being done with the work of earning love.
The memories rose and fell like breath.
But the water did not care about my story. It just held me.
And I always let go if I am held.
So I exhaled everything. The fear. The judgment. The performance.
And in that release, I found a new breath waiting underneath it.
A deeper breath.
One that kept me afloat even when the water tried to pull me down.
Eventually, I drifted back to the shallows and lifted my head above the surface. The world came back slowly. Voices. Laughter. The hum of life.
No one was watching. No one cared. I just existed, weightless, alone with myself.
I sank my knees into the mud, grounding myself, and sensed a bubble rise up my body, a pulse of warmth that felt like release. The timing of it made me laugh out loud.
How long I’d kept my body as a prison against pleasure, how I’d confused discipline for safety and pain for truth. But here, there was only allowance.
Every version of me that had come before... the soldier, the pilot, the survivor, the woman who ran from freedom... none of them could have found their way here without drowning first.
Maybe that is why it all mattered. The heat. The water. The sky. The sound of his voice somewhere behind me. All of it was a map back to myself.
When I finally swam back to the dock, my friend welcomed me. Next to her, he was standing there again, waist-deep in the same water but living in a completely different reality. He didn’t look like a stranger when he smiled and offered me a beer again, saying, “You looked really peaceful out there.”
Peaceful.
If only he knew the cost. The times I’d crumbled wishing I could find calm. The times I screamed when I just wanted to whisper and be heard. The cycles I tried to break that instead broke myself trying.
But that was the thing: he didn’t need to know. My past wasn’t entangled with this moment. The story didn’t need to be told for the peace to be real.
He’d been watching me. But this time, I didn’t feel ashamed. I didn’t feel exposed. I just felt seen.
I felt present. Even safe. And that was something new.
I accepted his gift, drinking with nothing expected in return. It quenched my thirst.
Earlier that morning, we’d offered coffee without expectation. Maybe this was the same thing. The universe offering something back. An opportunity to meet the same archetype, the same pattern, the same type of moment, but choose differently this time. Not because I’d explained myself into worthiness, but because I’d simply allowed myself to be here.
I’d come here wanting to stop performing healing, to let my body speak instead of my mind controlling every line. And somewhere between the dock and the center of the spring, between the steam and the silence, it had spoken. Not in words, but in breath. In the way my body knew to float even when I thought I was drowning.
If only he . The times I’d crumbled wishing I could find calm. The times I screamed when I just wanted to whisper and be heard. but instead broke myself trying.
But that was the thing: he didn’t need to know. My past wasn’t entangled with this moment. The story didn’t need to be told for the peace to be real.
He’d been watching me. But this time, I didn’t feel ashamed. I didn’t feel exposed. I just felt seen.
I felt present. Even safe. And that was something new.
I accepted his gift, drinking with nothing expected in return. It quenched my thirst.
Earlier that morning, we’d offered coffee without expectation. Maybe this was the same thing. The universe offering something back. An opportunity to meet the same archetype, the same pattern, the same type of moment, but choose differently this time. Not because I’d explained myself into worthiness, but because I’d simply allowed myself to be here.
I’d come here wanting to stop performing healing, to let my body speak instead of my mind controlling every line. And somewhere between the dock and the center of that spring, between the steam and the silence, it had spoken. Not in words, but in breath. In the way my body knew to float even when I thought I was drowning.
My body already knew how to find the surface. I just had to let it.
I still had three more days ahead of me. Three more days of hot springs and strangers. Three more days to practice staying present.
I thought learning to float meant I’d finally figured something out.
I didn’t know yet that floating alone was only half the lesson.
Continue the Story
I thought learning to float meant I’d finally figured something out. That staying present with myself was the work.
What I discovered in those next three days: being present alone is practice. Being present with someone who triggers every old pattern is the actual test.
I've Been Running From Heartbreak My Entire Life
By evening, the guy from the hot springs, the beer, the “you looked peaceful,” was in my trailer eating noodles.
About This Series
How the Fuck Did I Get Here? is a memoir-in-progress told through interconnected chapters. Each piece stands alone, but together they trace a journey from numbness to presence, from survival to integration, from choosing between two halves to learning to be whole.
This isn’t a story about healing being linear or easy. It’s about what happens when you finally stop running from yourself and ask the hard questions. When you sit with the uncomfortable answers. When you realize that breaking generational cycles means learning to hold both strength and softness at once.
This is the heroine’s journey told in real time: the messy middle, the ongoing practice, the moment-by-moment choice to stay present even when everything in you wants to run.
How to Read This Series
This is a choose-your-own-adventure memoir. Throughout each chapter, you’ll see key words and phrases underlined as hyperlinks. Click them to discover other stories exploring the same themes. Or browse the tags below to find what calls to you.
This interconnected web lets you:
Follow specific themes across the series
Discover related chapters organically
Navigate by what resonates with you
See patterns and connections emerge
Start anywhere. Follow the threads that call to you. Each chapter stands alone, but together they reveal the larger story.
Explore By Theme
This chapter touches:
The Journey
Finding Freedom | The Five Years | Returning Home | Breaking Cycles | Reclaiming Passion
The Relationships
Heartbreak | Self Abandonment | Strangers | Building Community
The Struggles
Religious Trauma | Substance Abuse | Fear of Abandonment | Fear of Exposure | Foundational Safety | Desire to Run
The Work
Presence | Being Witnessed | Witnessing Others | Body Keeps the Score | Giving Up the Facade | Masks | Performing for Safety | People Pleasing | Narrative Control | Worthy of Love
The Context
Military Service | What It Cost
The Places
Click any theme to explore related stories.
About the Author
Alisa Sieber is a writer, former Marine Corps pilot, and mother exploring the intersections of healing, motherhood, and breaking generational cycles. Through raw, embodied storytelling, she examines what it takes to move from armor to integration, from choosing between strength and softness to learning to embody both.
She writes openly about complex trauma, postpartum depression, military identity, and the ongoing practice of staying present. Her therapy is her writing: public, accountable, and in real time.
She lives on a small farm in Northern California with her husband, two daughters, and too many animals. She’s building Chez Serendip, a cultural sanctuary and intentional community space centered on movement, creativity, and transformation.
Share How the Fuck Did I Get Here?
How the Fuck Did I Get Here? is a personal essay series exploring generational trauma, healing, and self-transformation. Through raw storytelling and deep introspection, it unearths the past to understand the present: reckoning with the cycles we inherit and the courage it takes to integrate what the world tells us to split.
If this piece resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to know they’re not alone.
Subscribe to How the Fuck Did I Get Here?
New chapters published weekly. Subscribe to follow this journey of breaking cycles, staying present, and learning what integration actually means: not perfection, but practice.
Free subscribers get:
Select chapters from the archives
Access to select new chapters for 2 weeks
Newsletter in your inbox
Comment access
Paid subscribers get:
Full archives
Access to all new chapters
Unlimited commenting to process alongside others
Gift subscriptions to share with people who need to see if this resonates
My gratitude for supporting this work
Connect with Alisa
Instagram: @alisa.sieber
Youtube: @alisa.sieber
Join the Conversation
Real talk: This shit is hard.
Breaking cycles. Staying present when it’s unbearable. Learning to hold anger and love simultaneously. Some days it works. Some days it doesn’t. Most days, somewhere in between.
If you’re doing this work too (asking the uncomfortable questions, sitting with what doesn’t resolve, practicing integration even when every instinct says run), join the subscriber chat. That’s where we process between posts, share what we’re learning, and stay present together.
And leave a comment below. Not to perform insight or prove you’ve healed. Just to be witnessed. To witness others. To let the messy middle be exactly what it is.
Healing isn’t linear. Let’s stop pretending it is.
You’re not alone in this. Your presence here reminds me I’m not either.