This paper articulates a methodology for exploring systemic change: Making the Water Visible. Developed as the author attempted to make sense of the Grenfell Tower Fire in which 72 people lost their lives and used as a structure for her 2021 book ‘Catastrophe and Systemic Change: Learning from the Grenfell Tower Fire and Other Disasters’. The approach is codified in the hopes that others will further develop it to explore complex challenges and help us learn. It is as much a story of a complex journey through despair, grief, and sense-making as a method for making the water visible.