52 Waterfalls in One Year: Reflections on Hope, Resilience, and Men’s Mental Health

What Hope Looks Like When It Doesn’t Feel Hopeful

This time last year, I was set what looked like a fairly straightforward mission for 2025: 52 waterfalls in 52 weeks. Given how much time I already spend dipping in waterfalls across the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, it felt like an apt challenge - and a good excuse to explore new locations, hunt out hidden gems, and stay connected to practices that support my mental health.

Setting the Challenge

There was a clean logic to it - a number, a map, a simple ritual of heading out for a walk and getting into cold, running water again and again until the year ran out. When people hear about it, they often question the obvious challenges: breaking ice in January, water temperatures scraping below freezing in February, and wind chill biting through every layer in March. Those moments were hard, but they were also expected. They were part of the bargain.

What I hadn’t anticipated were the stretches where I couldn’t do it at all.

When the challenge becomes absence

A chest infection lingered for months. It was nothing dramatic - just physically and emotionally draining, making even small plans feel heavier than they should. Then, just as I was starting to feel physically stronger, the early summer brought a prolonged dry spell - less water, less flow, and in some places no waterfall to speak of.

A challenge built on water suddenly became a challenge shaped by its absence.

That was where it became psychologically more interesting. When the obstacle is cold, you can brace for it, breathe through it, swear at it if you need to, and take the plunge. There’s a clarity in that kind of difficulty. But when the obstacle is not being able to start at all, it introduces something more subtle - doubt.

It starts slowly, through self-criticism masquerading as questions you don’t notice you’ve begun asking: 'What if I don’t finish this?' 'What if this becomes another thing that trails off unfinished?'

Where despair often lives

For many people, that’s where despair actually lives. Not in crisis, but in the gradual sense that momentum has gone and that you’re standing slightly to one side, watching life continue without you.

During those stretches, I didn’t suddenly feel hopeful. If anything, I felt flat and frustrated. What shifted wasn’t my mood so much as my relationship with the moment I was in - learning to stay with it without turning it into a story about failure or giving up.

The distinction between 'paused' and 'finished', between 'delayed' and 'defeated', mattered more than I realised at the time.

Staying connected to what matters

When I couldn’t get in the water, I found other ways to stay close to what the challenge represented. During the illness, that often meant simply getting outside for a walk, no matter how small, and letting that be enough. It also meant planning, checking maps, and looking for the hidden places I might head out to later.

It was a way of turning up anyway, even when I couldn’t do the thing itself, and of staying in relationship with what mattered.

Living in the Lakes and the Dales makes it easier to remember that nature is rarely short of options, even when your preferred plan isn’t available. There’s something in that which runs deeper than cold water. Resilience, in this sense, isn’t always about pushing harder; sometimes it’s about adapting without abandoning yourself.

The role of other people

I’m also clear that I wouldn’t have finished this year on willpower alone, at least not consistently. What made the difference was other people - mates who joined me on walks and dips, mates who checked in, and mates who spoke about the challenge as if it was already done, even during the periods where I wasn’t so sure myself. There were also the special times when I dipped as part of a larger group

There was something reassuring about that. Not pressure or motivation, but a sense that I wasn’t doing this in isolation.

The more I notice it in myself and in the men I work with, the clearer it becomes that many men don’t struggle because they’re weak, even though that’s often how it feels from the inside. They struggle because they carry things on their own for too long. At various points this year, other people held the belief for me until I could find my footing again.

Small moments, real shifts

There were a couple of moments that felt like turning points. One was a remote wild camp, where I spent a few hours on a summer morning jumping in and out of numerous waterfalls, large and small. It wasn’t about ticking numbers off a list so much as remembering play and freedom, and being reminded that the body can still carry joy after months of frustration.

The other was just last week, when four freezing falls in thirty minutes brought me close to the finish line. There was nothing especially poetic about it, although there was a stark beauty to the water. It was brutally effective, and a reminder that progress sometimes comes in a burst when the conditions finally align.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll complete my final waterfall with a special trip up to Scotland. There’s something fitting about ending the year on the road, heading north, and doing something slightly mad on purpose.

Reflections on hope and resilience

So what has 52 waterfalls taught me about hope, despair, and resilience?

Hope, I’ve come to realise, isn’t the same as optimism. Optimism assumes things will be fine; hope allows for the possibility that they might not be, while still leaving room for movement and choice. It’s often practical rather than emotional - a next step, a short walk, a different plan, or a small return to the things that help you feel like yourself again.

Despair doesn’t always look like sadness. Sometimes it shows up as disconnection, irritability, numbness, or the urge to quit early, not because you’ve failed, but because you’re tired of carrying uncertainty on your own. The antidote is rarely a pep talk. More often, it’s contact - with yourself, with other people, or with something that grounds you.

Resilience, too, isn’t about toughness or gritting your teeth and pushing through. It’s about staying engaged with life when the plan falls apart, learning how to adjust without abandoning yourself, and allowing setbacks to be part of the story rather than treating them as the end of it.

Looking ahead to 2026 for men's mental health

As 2025 draws to a close and 2026 comes into view, I find myself thinking less about big resolutions and more about the kinds of commitments that genuinely support men's mental health and wellbeing - not performative goals or self-improvement theatrics, but practices that keep us tethered to what matters when health, mood, confidence, or circumstances wobble.

If this year has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t need to feel hopeful in order to act in a hopeful way. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is simply keep showing up, in whatever form is possible, until the water returns.

So, if you’re reading this at the end of a hard year where things didn’t go to plan, I’ll leave you with a gentler question than 'What’s your big goal for next year?'

What’s one small practice that helps you come back to yourself?

Because that’s often where hope begins.