It is almost like the ocean beckons me, calls to me the same way it does to surfers, wanting me to explore it. Nothing creates more excitement in me than breaking down and analyzing the mysterious beauty of the sea and its thunderous waves. Photo: Underwood.
In an instant, your life can change. Flash back to January of 2013. I had no idea that day at the library that something big was about to happen to me. I went down an aisle I don’t usually go down, looking for a friend. I see a book title, and yank up the book without even thinking about it. The book is “The Wave” by Susan Casey. I felt alive, and excited reading the stories about the surfers. After reading it six times, I decided to go on a mission to understand female surfers. In one part later in the book, a short description was written about Maya Gabeira. I felt a burning desire to know more, about the women, the waves, everything about surfing, and I did not understand entirely why. As I researched surfing, the more I realized how bittersweet it was. Women don’t always get the respect they deserve; they don’t get paid the same amounts as men, and have to fit a stereotype in order to truly make it in the business. However, my mission continues to understand and to support these women. There is too much talent in these women to be swept aside and ignored.
Interestingly, I am someone who does not surf, and yet I understand deeply what draws people to the ocean. This beautiful powerful force is something I have longed for my whole life. I look back and see myself in my twenties, going to the beach, seeing the big wide sea open up before me. Once I was across the street from the ocean, I would frantically roll down the windows to suck in the thick salty air. I would go to the beach, and want the salt water all over me – I did not want to shower afterwards. I felt the ocean had something to tell me, and I would leave confused over the mystery of it all.
As I sat on the shore on Pompano Beach, Florida, in December of 2001, something happened. Darkness extended from the clouds, to the east and the west of where my friend and I were standing. We were playing in the water, laughing. Directly above us, oddly, the sky opened. The sun’s rays poured through the heavens like God was staring at us. We stopped dead in our tracks. The water was a lit emerald green, and again, everywhere else, was stormy dark except where we were standing. I will remember this moment forever, and I will never understand how the ocean made its way into my life again, from so far away.
It is almost like the ocean beckons me, calls to me the same way it does to surfers, wanting me to explore it. Nothing creates more excitement in me than breaking down and analyzing the mysterious beauty of the sea and its thunderous waves.
Sometimes I think I can smell it, or long to, as I sit in my room, on my couch, planning and writing about female surfing. I live in the woods, in a quiet life, far removed from the grasping white foam of the ocean. It seems as if it is tapping me on the shoulder, every day. I may not surf firsthand, but I can imagine what it would be like. To feel alive, and slide down the face of a wave at a speed, with a powerful movement under your feet, a force that is bigger than you, pushing you along. You feel like you are part of something unfolding all around you, and you want to surrender to it all. As this union between the surfer and the waves continues, I want to be there and breathe it all in. The women now drive my spirit, and fulfill me as I watch them succeed, and I know this journey is changing my life. I was depressed, and beyond hope, until the ocean made me come alive, and fight back for my future. The experience of interviewing female surfers, advocating for them, believing in them, is where I am meant to be. I am fascinated with the world’s most amazing sport, and it is all because of a book. Isn’t life sweet?
