i started this blog as a method of expression and self care. i haven’t written in over a week and it feels like failure to me. like there is some rule about blogging and journaling that requires regular entries. i had to sit with that feeling for a while and process whether i wanted to continue a blog that made me feel like i was failing yet another thing in my life. it was while i was trying to figure out my feelings, that i realized something. i wasn’t writing entries about self care because i was doing self care. that’s the point, right? to live your life? to DO life?
at the start of this i wrote out who i remember being. a woman that loved the beach. loved writing, travel, baking, dreaming. this past week was my daughter’s spring break and i always make an effort to make it “an occasion”. we kicked the week off with a trip to the beach. toes in the sand. sun on my skin. i hadn’t been to the beach in almost a decade. it felt like home and it was bittersweet watching my children play in the sand. bittersweet because this was a place that i loved. a place that defined much of my life and here i was -just now- sharing that special place with them. i chose not to dwell on that and join them in the sand and the shallow water. it was life affirming.
the beach for me is more than sand and surf. as a child, my earliest memories are of my mother and i clasping hands and bracing for waves as they crashed at our feet. i remember the boardwalk, arcades, and eating crab at Redondo Beach every summer with my family. i remember bonfires and young love wrapped in blankets at Huntington Beach. I remember training for my first marathon and running that 22 mile training run from Bolsa Chica along the beach down to Newport and back. I remember taking the longboard out in San Clemente and getting thrashed but feeling strong. I remember strawberry blonde beer and girlfriends in Long Beach. I remember long dark walks in the sand and hard conversations. beach cruisers. bikinis. sunburns. life. the beach is where my life happened. i want it to continue to happen there. its my happy place. my sad place. my place of strength and recovery. it’s a part of who i am.
i’ve been staring at the edge of the water
long as i can remember
never really knowing why
Mom in Search of ME 