September is a month that brings many changes, and quite a personal one this year for our family and 7 Fathoms. One of our central partners, a founding member of 7 Fathoms, our daughter Phoenix is heading off for university. 7 Fathoms has influenced her worldview, presenting to her a direction towards the sciences. We are proud parents to hear she has chosen to study biology, with an expressed interest in microbiology.
It’s been a reflective time as we prepare to wish our daughter farewell. On the eve of her departure, we realize not only what we have taught her, but on the contrary, what we as parents have learned from our child, how Phoenix influences us and 7 Fathoms. Before founding a seaweed skincare company ever crossed our minds, her child’s eyes let us see our familiar environment free from previous experience, notions, or assumptions, put us in touch again with that particular human capacity for wonder. It gave us the vision for 7 Fathoms.
Pho
The Official Origin Story of 7 Fathoms
On many stages I have narrated the genesis of 7 Fathoms. It began during a fateful family walk on the beach in Grates Cove, when out of curiosity and desperation, I gripped a bundle of oozing seaweed in my hands and rubbed the raw extract on the inflamed skin near my ileostomy. But the official story begins before. Indeed, it starts with Phoenix.
Years earlier, Courtney and I were young parents, tired, stressed, and with an energetic daughter, strolling the beach in the evenings to let her explore while we rested from the day’s work, gathering our energies for the challenges tomorrow would bring. Phoenix was always exploring, enthusiastic about nature. Except to make sure she stayed safe in this extreme environment, we didn’t pay too much heed to our surroundings the way she did, too distracted by the big picture of life.
One Father’s Day I was laid back on the beach rocks, my mind drifting on the momentary calm, when Phoenix, being the investigative and playful child she was, suddenly shook me from my respite. She was slapping me with blades of seaweed. In playfully whipping me, it’s as if she were making me conscious of the matter of our environment, a place, which by her estimation, fresh, innocent, and full of discovery, I was taking for granted. It was an elemental awakening, the most significant empirical lesson of my life.
From then on I put my guard down as a parent, learned not to take myself so seriously, to submit to my child’s wonder of the world. There was a clairvoyance in doing that, a value to be gained, one that later became the founding principle of 7 Fathoms. Everything is experiential, from our choice to settle in Grates Cove to refining the formulation of our seaweed extract. As parents we’ve done our best to convey this principle to her, even if it was her who initially wisened us to it. Had Phoenix never picked up those blades of seaweed in the first place, then in the end I never would have either.
And so that’s how the real story goes.
Growing Up Exposed to the Elements in Grates Cove
Her upbringing in the unique setting of Grates Cove instils in her a keen eye for detail. It's not a town that has forests. It has a great deal of wide scope and exposed view. Vegetation is at ankle level. As a kid growing up here, she would spend a lot of time literally near the ground. She would be on hands and knees, crawling around to take a closer look at the micro environment, those minute details people often overlook. Whether jumping off of a rock, climbing into a cave, edging along a cliff, she was always in it. Watching her, I remember thinking she was fearless, fearlessly embracing her environment. We have adopted this embrace into our own operations. Interaction and immersion in the environment tunes us into finer details, raises mysteries, lines of inquiry we endeavor to understand. The sense of connection gives me that enthusiasm a kid would feel discovering a spider crab or sea urchin for the first time. “To always be in it” is one of the main codes to our work ethic.
Phoenix’s detail oriented view has developed from exposure to the environmental conditions in Grates Cove as naturally as the seaweed tumbling in the tide. It belongs to the wisdom of this community, this coastline from which “Seawise” receives its namesake. Throughout every stage of 7 Fathoms’ history, we have always respected input from Phoenix with equal esteem as our own. Her coming of age with the company shows there is more power in living alongside nature rather than trying to exert power over it.
Imagination, Potential, and Confronting the Wild
We raised Phoenix in a family environment different from our own, one that supports the liberty of exploration and accepts doing things differently. We have forged our own path, somewhat rebellious against the conventional wisdom of raising children. A life closer to nature, confronting the wild, has at once grounded her while also encouraging her to pursue paths of inquiry, whether they be scientific, humanistic, or those that lead to personal-development and joy. She has grown to have a sharp sense of self, confident to question presumptions about the world, to problem-solve the challenges her generation faces.
I believe it more now than I ever have in my life that it's okay to imagine, to consider potential in yourself, and potential in the world around you. Although it was all around me, I almost lost sight of this potential. That is, until my daughter, her seaweed whip spurring me into the future, restored my ability to see it.
Thank you Phoenix. Your Mom and I are humbly proud of you, thankful for your contributions to 7 Fathoms, and above all, for everything you have taught us these last 18 years.
