About a month ago I took my family back to my family home in New Jersey. I just had to take them to Red Bank Battlefield Park in New Jersey which is a quiet stretch along the Delaware River where time feels like it moves a little slower. I used to come here as a teenagerd. It was one of the few places that offered peace without demanding anything in return, especially after I learned to drive and could go on my own. A place where I could pick up smooth stones and send them dancing across the water, pretending for a moment that stillness and motion could live side by side. I brought my boys wanting to show them a piece of my own childhood. I thought I was bringing them into my memory, but what unfolded became something else entirely.

The three of us stood at the shoreline, each scanning the ground for the right rock, just the right size, just the right weight, and just the right feel. It was great, no instructions, no performance, just instinct. It was quiet in that way summer moments sometimes are warm, open, and familiar. Beneath that calm, something caught in my chest. Because we weren’t skipping rocks together. We were skipping beside one another. In parallel and in our own rhythms and in our own little orbits.

It wasn’t until my youngest shouted, “Dad! Did you see that? It skipped five times!” that I realized that I hadn’t seen any of their attempts. I hadn’t been looking. I was lost in my own search for the perfect stone and how many skips I could make, consumed by the gentle meditation of it. And in doing so, I missed the spark in his eyes as the ripples spread. My older son didn’t say anything at all. He skipped his stone in silence, let it fall where it would, and turned back to the ground. No celebration. No sharing. Just moving on.

That moment hit me harder than I expected. Because I saw a reflection of myself. Of all the times I’ve been near the people I love but not with them. Of all the times I thought presence was enough when what they really needed was my gaze. My witnessing. I realized how easy it is to live in our own corners of the shoreline. To be in the same place but not the same moment. And when you’re neurodivergent like me and when your brain pulls inward, when sensory input can feel like thunder, when inner focus becomes a form of both survival and creativity then it’s even easier to drift into your own tide.

I’ve spent so much of my life thinking I needed to manage myself first before I could show up for others. That I had to get my own thoughts in line, my own emotions smoothed out, and my own internal spirals calmed before I could truly be there for anyone else. But what I’m learning through parenting, through coaching, and through stumbling and standing again is that presence doesn’t require perfection. It requires attention and not just listening for the report of someone’s success. But noticing it in real time. Being a quiet observer of their joy before it needs to be spoken aloud.

That moment at Red Bank wasn’t just a summer memory, it really was a mirror. A reminder that time is slipping by, not in big ways, but in tiny skips across water. And we only get so many chances to look up and say, “I saw that. I’m here. I’m with you.”

And maybe that’s the invitation especially for those of us wired to feel deeply, think endlessly, and sometimes forget to look up from our own searching. Maybe we don’t have to choose between reflection and connection. Maybe the key is simply to pause for just long enough to let our eyes meet the moment.

This is something I explore often in coaching which is how to build a bridge between your inner world and the one around you. How to stay grounded in yourself without disconnecting from those you care about. It’s not about fixing who you are. It’s about finding the rhythm that lets you be fully present and without losing your center.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re living beside the moment instead of in it, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to figure it out alone, either.

Sometimes the most powerful change starts not with a leap, but with a glance upward, toward the people skipping rocks right next to you.

​Let’s look up together.