Hold Fast

Weathering the Storm Without Letting Go

I wear a little metal bracelet on my right wrist. It doesn’t look like much. It’s not expensive. You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it. But etched into its face, in plain block letters, are two words that have kept me afloat more times than I care to count: Hold Fast.

I custom ordered it a week after my father died in January.

I didn’t want a tattoo. I didn’t need a mantra or a quote from some bestselling grief book. I needed something old. Something rooted. Something that didn’t flinch.

Hold fast comes from the British sailing tradition. In a storm, when the sea reared up and the rigging snapped and the deck bucked underfoot, sailors were told to “hold fast.”

It meant: grip the ropes, trust your training, trust your mates. Don’t let go. Not now. Not when it matters most.

It wasn’t about heroics. It was about survival.

This year, that phrase has come to mean more to me than I ever expected. At first, it was about my grief. Then it was about being there for my daughter, who’s been grieving too. Then it was about my health. Then it expanded—like a tide rising quietly—to the world outside my own storm.

Because let’s be honest. A lot of people are feeling adrift right now.

The economy is weird. Politics are... worse than weird. We’re lonelier. Angrier. Our trust in institutions, and each other, is frayed. People are slipping into conspiracy theories, addiction, despair—anything that offers certainty, or at least distraction. I see folks clinging to whatever floats. And some are starting to let go.

Hold fast.

It doesn’t mean ignore the pain. It doesn’t mean grip so hard you go numb. It means stay in the fight. It means reach for the rope—even when your hands are raw. It means you keep showing up for the people who love you, and maybe even for the ones who don’t understand you. Especially them.

You hold fast to your friends. To your church, if that’s your thing. To your work family. To good books and dumb jokes and long drives and late-night texts that say, “Hey, just checking in.”

You hold fast to decency. To listening. To not writing people off too quickly. You don’t have to open your door to toxicity, but maybe—just maybe—you leave a line of communication open with someone who sees the world differently than you do. Because they might be out in the same storm. They just grabbed a different piece of driftwood.

Every storm passes. But not everyone stays on deck.

The bracelet on my wrist is a quiet reminder. A bit of malleable metal. A bit of history. A bit of stubbornness.

And a promise: I won’t let go.