Keep Walking

March 25th marked the two year anniversary of my father's death. As I contemplated what I wanted to write about this week, it seemed only natural to share a letter that I wrote for the first writing class I joined just six months after my father's passing in September 2010. Our class assignment was to write a letter that could be sent as a message in a bottle. Wearing my grief and innermost feelings on my sleeve has always felt inherently unnatural for me, but it was as if a force greater than myself was at work pushing my pain through my pen, exposing my grief, vulnerability; squeezing pieces of my very soul out onto the white pages I passed out to a dozen or so perfect strangers each Tuesday night. It was an amazingly cathartic first step towards healing- reaffirming to me that as we allow ourselves to surrender completely to the moments, we are strengthened, reshaped, and refined in ways that are impossible to comprehend while in the process. Our growth is limited and often arrested when we clench tightly instead to our own perceived powers, abilities, and limitations. Today, I marvel at my experience; my capacity to trust in myself, those thirteen fellow writers and a teacher who read, listened, and even wept with me as I openly grieved the passing of my beloved father. Two years later, I miss him everyday as I Keep Walking and writing...


Dearest Beachcomber,

If you find this letter, know that it was written as a token of gratitude for the sea more than anything else. I wonder what beach you're standing on? What burdens you might carry with you today; whether your favorite beach is as comforting a place for you as my little beach has been for me...or if what I have to say will resonate with you in anyway? Who have you loved and lost? Did you have someone beside you to lean on for repose when you thought your heart would surely break... or did you stand alone? I wonder if you will think I am just a crazy middle aged woman who still believes if you write a letter and seal it up in a bottle, someone will actually find and read it? Perhaps what I write won't interest you in the least. I just know I must release this and keep walking...

My year has been as unprecedentedly cold and gloomy as the weather here in Carlsbad. I too have been socked in. How glad I am that the sea and her marine layer didn't mock me with warmth and light. It made it easier for me to come lay my burdens at her feet. I walked miles each week, marveling at her ability to mirror me on any given day. On those occasional, beautiful Southern California days we had this past summer, I intuitively came to her anyway, knowing she always gave to me exactly what I needed. I lapped up her warm, delicious offerings like a hungry, orphaned child.

As I met with the sea at her shoreline, I mourned the loss of my father: my person, my whole life through. I questioned with her out loud the notion that God never gives to us anything we cannot handle. She let me ask all the questions, knowing that when I was ready to receive the answers, they would come to me. Many times when simply walking beside her was not enough, I would throw off my gauzy cover up, stepping into her, as if to say, " I need a hug today." Within her, all my thoughts and feelings (moving as freely as her liquid currents) poured out to her in perfect trust. I would then lay back into her releasing what seemed like buckets of salty tears and choking, childlike sobs into her buoyant, maternal creche; somehow I was preserved for just a moment. She felt kindred to me. Her ebb and flow not much different than my own soul's stillness and searching, or my heart's break and continuum, reaffirming that with every breath there is a rise and fall in each of us. I heard her whisper to me, as if entrusting me with a great confidence, "This is the rhythm of ALL living."

As I walked each day, I stopped to gather pieces of her to take home with me: smooth stones, diminutive driftwood, small shells and cloudy shards of glass. I took this precious time to gather me as well: lost pieces of self, either forgotten or shelved. How could my father's death, the worst thing that has ever happened to me, hold the possibility of bringing out the best in me and help me find my way? My suffering forced me to go deeper, contemplating who I was and what I wanted to do with my life before I die. Six months spent in thoughtful introspection, brought with it the realization that I had made life too small for myself. I was living a boxed life and had only a few small air holes poked at the top in which to breathe. My profound loss and desperation forced me to begin to loosen my tight grip on life, allowing me to both reach and surrender: a parting gift from my free spirited father.

And so along with this letter in a bottle, I share with you, my beach combing friend, my love and gratitude for these: my personal gifts from the sea. I hope and pray that you might find all that you are searching for today, as you too keep walking...

Julia