Beyond the White Water

When I was a teenager, the ocean pummeled me.

I was surfing when the fin of my board sliced through my chest. I came out of the water a bloody mess, and somewhere inside of me, the ocean stopped being a place of freedom.

It became a place of fear.

So I stopped surfing and the decades began to pass.

Somewhere in the middle of those years, there was Wolley.

Wolley loved me with the kind of love only a dog seems capable of giving. Complete. Uncomplicated. Fiercely devoted.

He was also terrified of the ocean.

Every time we went to dog beach, the second the water started creeping toward his paws, he would run away from it. It was objectively pretty funny to watch this enormous, beastly dog react to a few inches of water as though it might swallow him whole.

Then one day, I went for a swim in the ocean.

Wolley stayed on shore watching me. I had seen his relationship with water enough times to be completely confident he would remain there, so eventually I stopped paying attention to him and swam farther out.

I made it beyond the whitewash and started playing around. Diving underwater. Coming back up. Looking toward the horizon. Feeling a little like a mermaid.

Then I turned around.

And there was Wolley.

I was in pure shock- he was halfway between the shore and me.

In the ocean. Battling his way through the waves.

Then I began to panic because I didn’t know how he knew how to swim since he’d never done it before! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

This dog who wouldn’t willingly let water touch his paws for his entire life, had somehow decided to come all the way out there.

And it was for me.

I don’t know what he thought was happening. Maybe he was projecting his own fear onto me. Maybe he sensed something in my body that I couldn’t. Maybe he simply saw the person he loved somewhere he wasn’t convinced she was safe.

I’ll never know.

What I do know is that Wolley didn’t suddenly become unafraid of the ocean that day.

He was afraid. And he went in anyway.

When we finally made it back to shore, I was ecstatic. I was applauding him and telling him what a brave boy he was, and Wolley started jumping around with this wild joy I had never seen from him before.

I was proud of him. But the most beautiful part was that he seemed very proud of himself too. He knew he’d done something extraordinary.

And I never forgot it.

It was the first time I remember seeing so clearly that fear doesn’t always have the final say. Sometimes something else becomes more important.

For Wolley, that something was love. His love for me was greater than his fear of the water. So love went in.

Years passed.

Eventually, I lost Wolley. I went through painstaking grief that seemed to never subside. And sometime after he died, a friend got me back on a surfboard. I knew this somatic movement would help me process the grief that had been trapped inside.

I was 37.

I wish I could say I paddled into the Pacific and triumphantly reclaimed the part of myself I’d abandoned as a teenager.

Absolutely not. I was terrified.

Sometimes getting through the breaking whitewater required me to almost leave my body. My arms would keep paddling, but mentally I just wanted to get through it. And by the time I made it past the white wash, my nervous system was so wrecked that I couldn't move to even try and catch a wave.

It was a very slow process of actually trying to catch waves again. I found safety in a giant foam board that became my beloved little 'foamie homie,' and I held onto that thing for dear life.

I kept going back. And when I was scared, I thought about Wolley.

I thought about that enormous dog standing on the beach all those years ago.

I thought about how much he hated the water. And then I pictured him coming toward me anyway. Wolley hadn’t waited until he wasn’t afraid. He had simply found something that mattered more than his fear.

Wolley had a reason. Yet, I didn't consciously know why I kept going back and putting myself through that stress of facing my fear. I couldn't quite grasp what my reason was.. but somewhere deep down, my soul kept dragging me out there.

If Wolley could walk into something he feared because he loved me, I could paddle into something I feared because I loved him. So I kept showing up.

Scared.

Again.

And again.

And again.

For two years, I fought through whitewater. I prayed for safety. I learned the ocean. I learned my board. I learned what happened when waves broke in different places and how to respond when things went wrong.

Eventually my friends decided my foamie era had gone on long enough and teased me relentlessly until I finally graduated to a real board.

I needed that little push.

Because on the other side of it, something changed. I could feel my body underneath me. I could feel the board. I knew how to move it instead of feeling like it was moving me. When a wave came, I knew what to do. When I fell, I knew I could recover. When the ocean became chaotic, I didn’t need to mentally disappear until it was over.

I stayed.

And one day I realized I wasn’t praying for safety anymore. Not because the ocean had become safe.

It hadn’t.

Because I trusted myself in it.

But something else had changed too. Somewhere in those hundreds of times paddling back out, I stopped needing to remember Wolley at all.

I started doing it because I wanted to be there. I loved the water. I loved the challenge. I loved what my body could do. I loved sitting beyond the break and looking back at the shore. I loved catching a wave and having absolutely no choice but to be inside that moment.

I loved being scared and doing it anyway. Somewhere along the way, grief had quietly turned back into appetite. Into empowerment.

I wanted my life. I ran my life. I wanted to be alive in it.

For years I had thought safety meant making sure frightening things didn’t happen to me. But life doesn’t offer that kind of safety.

Bodies get hurt.

Dogs die.

Waves knock us down.

People leave.

Things we love can break our hearts precisely because we love them.

I couldn’t make life harmless. And I didn’t want to spend my life standing on shore trying to make sure nothing ever hurt me again.

I wanted to go in.

I thought I was learning how to surf again. Really, I was learning how to participate in my own life again.

Not once I was certain. Not once I was fearless.

Now.

While it’s happening. While the water is moving beneath me. While I still don’t know exactly what the next wave will do.

Maybe being fully alive was never going to feel completely safe. Maybe that’s part of being alive. The point isn’t that I’m no longer afraid.

It’s that there is finally something I love more than I fear.

Being Alive.

The little soul who taught me that fear doesn’t get the final vote. 🐾🌊