There is nothing I find quite as soothing, quite as terrifying, as water.
This is a knowing I have found my thoughts wandering towards each time I have come to this place to tend to my heart. It has become a ritual of sorts; to take the solitary drive, always with my favourite music blaring in the car, only to sit silently and stare at the ocean. Many a time I have become so enthralled with the simple rhythm of the waves crashing along the shore, that I have forgotten to look up into the waving sunrises.
And yet that has been my favourite part. That the waves will continue to move, to climb one over the other, each with its own unique level of fervour, whether I am here to listen, to witness, to stand in awe of their magnitude, or not.
I liken this to my ancestors, to my spirit guides and light bearers. For all the ways that they have brought me back to this place, time and time again, to remember and revere their power. To remember and revere my own.
Today, it was the ocean that beckoned when I set the intention to cleanse my crystals. I watched as a single seagull landed beside me and went on to hop along close by. The sky was getting grey, threatening with the possibility of a heavy release, but it was here that my spirit felt most at home. Because even as a child, I always stood by a window as soon as the rain started to fall. I still open my windows and sit quietly to listen each time a shower comes to visit. It is my favourite thing in the world. I have never been able to really put into words why I love the rain, the ocean, water, so much – I may never be able to. But perhaps it is the silent breaks within my spirit that contain the answer to this curious love.
I only recently learned how to swim. I did not go for lessons with a professional instructor, only that one day just over a year ago, I put on my partner’s flippers and followed her in until I no longer felt the ground at a resevoir we liked to walk and picnic along. Within days, I was following her in deeper and deeper, until weeks later her father taught me the technicalities of the various strokes. I cannot say I have perfected my strokes, and that is far beyond the point of it all.
Because more than training to do a swimming race and snorkelling to my heart’s content has been the gift of silent spread-eagle floats to watch the stars. It is here that I have said my quiet prayers, Where I have listened, and felt the presence of those spirits I thought would only ever visit me in my dreams. It is in the stillness that comes with being carried by infinite bodies of water that those things that often bring healing can be just as dangerous if they are not respected. Which is not to say they should be feared. Only that I can never truly know my own power and that of the elements surrounding me, until I have honoured them as they should be.
I know I will continue to come to this place. Not only for the silence but for all that it has come to mean. It is where I began writing again. It is where I began healing again.
It is where I began to come home again.