40 at dawn.
May 25, 2026.

I lived on the coast for 25 years and consecrated many moments by the sea. Big public ones: my baptism in the leftover surf of a hurricane in 2005, the sunrise of my 25th birthday, a paddle-out funeral.

Small, private ones: aging friendship, first dates, the death of a leader, falling in love, letting go of a dream. Job changes, risks taken or tossed, the weight of responsibility for my own pain or the pain I’d caused another. 

I’ve washed the wounds of false intimacy, broken boundaries, unrequited love, old trauma, and missed opportunities in brine. I’ve set grudges on the tide and watched them wash out, wave by wave.

I’ve explored my fear of death, insignificance, nothingness, and powerlessness. I’ve trembled, stripped bare but gradually steadied, like old coastal trees. Dissociation breaks down in salt air. Sadness dissolves into something cleaner and makes room for energy and courage.

I’ve played. Played hard, the same as I did at 10, no matter my age. I’m not letting that go. When I go to the water to process or celebrate or align or release, I return changed for the better.

35 wrecked me. I knew then if I didn’t do the work, 40 would break me. Five years didn’t seem like enough, but I could ignore it or embrace it. When the calendar day came, there was only one place to be.  

The timing was terrible, as my husband and I had just closed on our first home 940 miles from that One Place. Anthony’s great gift to me was sending me to the sea while he wrapped up the move alone. It was more than he bargained for, but still he called and texted to make sure I didn’t miss the sunrise. I was already in the water.

I felt the tide turn in my whole being. One era ended, another began. I looked back on all I knew of life and was astounded it fit into just four decades.

The water was not warm, but I let it slap me in the face. I gathered up all the richness and beauty and wonder of my years in gratitude. I released the failure, the ought-to-have-been, the disappointment and loss to the waves. The water knocked me onto my back into a birthing position. I released my childlessness too.

The water pushed me forward into a kneel just as the sun rose over the storm offshore. I spread my arms and hands into the foam and welcomed this new era, all the unknown wildness of it, the mortality and uncertainty and the total lack of a script. A fever of joy broke over me, the precipitation of a transformative touch from God. I laughed.  

What a beginning.

“She can laugh at the days to come.”