Blackies

On most days, the water is so clear at Blackies, you can see right through it. See the few shells on the bottom, the little fish swimming by, the ripples in the sand on sea floor. When the sun reaches a certain height, tiny grains of sand dispersed throughout the water reflect the light, and it looks like I'm swimming in a sparkling snow globe, shimmering within a crystal clarity. For me, the clarity of the water sometimes makes it hard to catch a wave, because I don't know I'm on it. There's nothing to see. I stand up on my board and it feels like I'm ten feet in the air, because I cannot see the water between my board and the bottom. It feels like I'm flying through the air. Magical.

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Clear water off the Newport Beach Pier at 21st Street.

I also love Blackies because of the beautiful people who are there. Surfers, for the most part, are a pretty special bunch of people. Riding waves is inherently joyful. It's hard to be unhappy when you're so connected to nature, though some people do deny this bliss and achieve a startling unhappiness out there. Blackies is a beginner break, too, so we rarely experience the greedy, ego-driven "core lords" that dwell in Huntington Beach. Obviously, some people find a way to be miserable, but mostly, I've found surfers to be quite relaxed and pleasant. My favorite person at Blackies is Don. Don was 85 years old when I met him three years ago and he absolutely shreds. He has been surfing since before I was born. A tiny Asian guy, he shuffles across the beach to the water, carrying his bright green board with old movie posters embedded in it at his side. His pop up is better than mine will ever be. He is out every day on his longboard, gliding on big and baby waves. He is friendly and supportive. Always a big hug, a new sticker for my car, the local surfing newspaper, or a word of advice, I love seeing Don at Blackies.

Blackies will always be home for the Sisterhood. It's part of our origin story -- taking those classes at Endless Sun Surf School brought us together. And we are still together, though part of having an origin story means that the current story is different. We are changed and I have changed -- and we are all continually changing.

The Sisterhood is different now, expanded and fractured into little subgroups. Like those causes and conditions of life, we are ever evolving -- coming together and breaking apart. We are still a presence. Surf Sister Reihna got plowed into the other day on a busy day at Blackies – some aggro male just ran her over on a wave. She was bruised, but mostly shocked. The Surfline surf cams showed that the guy saw her and just kept going. She did drop in on him – she was in the wrong. But there’s no call for creating injury. The guy was way out of line -- some idiot on a foamie pretending to be a core lord. The whole chat blew up in defense of our friend.

A critical mass of us still gets together on occasion, but it’s no longer every weekend as a big group. There are many separate chats and subchats as people find who they are closer to within the big group. It is still a positive and supportive place overall, but typical group dynamics have set in and typical changes in people's lives have affected how often they can go out. We never could have kept up that initial intensity. People flow in and out of the group. No big break ups, no startling arguments, just the natural ebb and flow of life drawing people together and sending them apart. Across the seasons and the years, there is more and less activity depending on conditions. Everything, it seems, behaves as a wave, even us.

And my relationship to it has changed. This community has been and continues to be instrumental to my healing. I could not have done it without their positive influence, support, and initial consistency. These amazing women showed me a new way to be in the world, a new way to parent, and a new way to be with each other. It has been so empowering. At the beginning, I’m sure I idealized them. I mistook proximity for intimacy, confusing my emotions with what others are feeling. And now, as we all settle into our little subgroups where we feel most comfortable, I am reminded how hard it is to keep anything together for long and I am learning new lessons. We only learn in community and often, the lessons are painful. Losing the ideal is painful. So, I am reorganizing the Sisterhood in my mind to something less than it was, but also more appropriate -- not idealized, but still pretty amazing. As I heal, I am able to see and accept everyone’s humanness, including my own, more immediately go to compassion instead of defensiveness, and understand more deeply that each of us is on our own path.

The first major lesson is around self-blame and agency. From Tricycle’s Dhamma Wheel course, "The phrase 'seeing ownership of deeds' refers to karma. Recognizing that everything that happens is a matter of cause and effect gives rise to equanimity. It is not raining to spoil your picnic, your toothache is not a form of punishment, and you are not having a bit of luck because you deserve it. When we regard things as the result of conditions rather than as entangled in our own sense of self, equanimity begins to develop." None of this fracturing of the Sisterhood has anything to do with me -- in a good way, very little has anything to do with me. It wasn't my job or anyone else's to keep it together; in fact, one of the best parts of the Sisterhood was its self-organizing nature. We still connect once in a while. We are still there. It's just not as intense. And maybe at some point, it'll all come back. Who knows what will happen? My own self-blame is almost entirely gone. Almost. I'm still sad about it some days, and I still wonder if there is something I can do to bring it back. These thoughts are echoes of self-blame, but they are whispers instead of screams.

The ebb and flow of personal relationships has allowed me to not take things so personally. To realize the causes and conditions of life just unfold and have consequences. Those consequences are sometimes painful, but are almost never personal. I think depersonalization, the antidote to self-blame, is the biggest lesson I've learned here -- why we need people, how to need people, and how to navigate the changing nature of relationships as they grow and contract, grow again, and fade away. We are constantly weaving in and out of people's lives, touching briefly, perhaps deeply, and sailing forth -- each on our own wave. Just like Blackies on a good day, you can see several surfers up at the same time, some going right, some left, several waves have riders, some on a party wave, some alone. It's a beautiful ballet of surfers, syncing with the energy of the sea and sometimes, with each other, but each on their own board. I feel great peace when I watch these days unfold from the beach. Now, I am learning to find peace as these days unfold on land, knowing that I am a part of the unfolding.

This is a hard lesson to learn for me and for anyone with insecure attachment. Having grown up without that secure base, I have been constantly latching onto relationships as if they are a lifesaver and I'm a drowning woman in a stormy sea. It has been my job to keep everyone and everything together for several decades, so releasing that job description has been quite a feat. Letting everything be as it is, knowing things will change, and also knowing I have little to do with that change? Finding peace amidst the constantly changing conditions? This is a monumental shift in perception. Relationships have been really hard. They are now less hard, because I'm not asking things of them that I shouldn't be asking.

I was recently visiting friends of mine -- two of the most loving people I know. People who I have known for about 13 years. All weekend, I was attuned to the love and kindness they spontaneously poured out into the world: into me, into each other, and into their children and grandchildren. It was not perfect. I noticed how often commentary and conversation drew painful responses, how often criticism and hurt were a normal part of the day. These moments were interspersed with incredible acts of generosity and kindness, loving attention and care -- a warmed coffee cup, a good morning hug, a gift of lip balm offered without asking, the constant banter in the family group chat, the frequent phone conversations and words of understanding and encouragement to loved ones far away. The painful moments existed, but were bathed in an aura of love, little dots of red in a sea of blue and green. Frankness was common. Apologies were also common. Acceptance. Complete acceptance of the "full catastrophe" seemed the norm -- not an absence of pain, but the pain that doesn't overwhelm the love.

I wondered again what it would have been like to have such support. What would that feel like? For the weekend, I was a guest in the house of love. I could see it and feel my portion of it, step into the flow of it and be carried along with it, and now, several days later, still feel buoyed by it, but it was a weekend visit. What would a constant dose of that kind of loving kindness do for a person? My friend was reading an article when I was there about what makes adult children keep in touch with their parents over time. The author wrote, "What stood out wasn’t getting it right every single time. It was steadiness, emotional safety, repair, and presence." Several behaviors led to a secure attachment that abided over time.

• Emotional safety: "Not just physical safety, but the feeling that they could tell the truth without being shamed, that mistakes wouldn’t threaten the relationship, and that there was a place to land when things got hard." The relationship felt "steady." And, "When kids believe the relationship can hold conflict, they are more likely to come back later, during adolescence, young adulthood, and beyond."

• Showing up: "People remembered parents who made the effort to be there, like at events, during hard seasons, and in ordinary daily moments. They remembered feeling prioritized."

• Belief and interest: "Many described having at least one grown-up who truly believed in them. Someone who noticed their strengths, encouraged their efforts, and held confidence in them when they couldn’t see it themselves. That belief shaped how they approached challenges. It influenced their willingness to try, to risk, to recover from mistakes. To clarify, being believed in didn’t mean pressure to succeed, but it meant knowing someone was in your corner no matter the outcome. Over time, those external messages became internal. The way parents speak to children often becomes the voice children carry into adulthood."

• Respect and trust: "People who stayed close to their parents often described feeling taken seriously, even when they were young. Their feelings weren’t brushed off. They were allowed to ask questions. Hard conversations didn’t automatically lead to humiliation or shutdown."

• Repair: "No one described parents who got everything right. In fact, many said what mattered most was the ability to repair. Parents who could reflect and say, 'I didn’t handle that well.' Parents willing to come back after conflict and try again. That willingness to repair teaches something powerful: conflict doesn’t end connection. When children see accountability modeled, they learn that mistakes are survivable and relationships can grow stronger after hard moments."

• Acceptance: "Another consistent theme was being allowed to be oneself. People remembered parents who guided them without trying to mold them into someone else. There was room for personality, interests, and individuality. When children feel accepted for who they are, they are more likely to maintain closeness because the relationship doesn’t require them to shrink."

These behaviors are a pretty good operationalized definition of unconditional love. "Love didn’t disappear after mistakes. It didn’t depend on agreement, achievement, or behavior. Love remained steady, and was always there. People described how powerful it was to know the relationship itself wasn’t at risk, even in the hardest moments. That certainty shaped how safe it felt to take risks, to be honest, and to come back when things fell apart." Certainty. Certainty. That's what caregivers who are secure can give to their children: a certainty that they are loved and ok as they are, that they are worthy of love and belonging from the very first moments of life. Though this article was not scientific, it describes beautifully what I witnessed over this weekend with my friends. Those grandchildren know they are loved. They rest on solid ground.

That solidity is what I've been looking for in friends and lovers, and it just doesn't exist in those places very often. The kinds of friends who offer solid ground are rare -- I am very lucky to have friends who give me a taste of what that certainty feels like. But most of our relationships are not like that. I remembered an old friend of mine who had similar attachment issues told me a strategy her therapist gave her to help her sort out relationships. My friend was often giving her whole self to everyone she met and had other issues with boundaries and expectations when it came to relationships. The therapist gave her a numerical rating system -- literally 1-10 -- for people in her life. Appropriately categorizing people helped her accept what a person could give, not having excessive expectations and then excessive disappointment when people didn't give much back or turned away. Here are the categories. They sit in a triangle, with ones and twos on the bottom. A wide base of civil society is whittled down into an intimate connection at the nine and ten top tier.

• The ones and twos are the people you bump into every day: the bus driver, barista, or grocery store clerk you chat with, for example. You are friendly and depend on them for a specific task, but you're never going out to lunch together. Our interdependent societal network depends on these connections.

• The threes and fours are people you see and interact with more seriously every day: your work mates, for example. There is collaboration on a deeper level toward a common vision and goal, and an occasional meal shared, perhaps, but the relationship is bound by the job. It has a specific purpose.

• The fives and sixes are people you see socially, but might also be bound by and focused on a specific activity. It's possibly a more personal relationship, because it depends on a mutual interest or something you love apart from the work you do, but it might just be related to the hobby. For me, most of the surf girls should be here. Surf friends. We enjoy each other's company when we surf together. There is a level of care and cooperation, and it may stop there.

• The sevens and eights are the subset of the Sisterhood who bonded more closely on a personal level. These are your friends -- no qualifying adjective in front of the word friends. These are people you share things with that are a little deeper than just the activity you happen to be doing together. There is a closeness that develops and you do things together outside of the activity. So, some of the surf girls will get together and do a surf trip, or go to the movies, or just get a drink and get to know each other better. The relationship has extended out of the water.

• And the nines and tens are an even smaller subset of people you know you can absolutely count on. They have your back. You can tell them anything and you will find love and acceptance. You can call them crying and they will hang in there with you. They love you and you know it. Nines and tens have an element of that certainty. For me, these people feel easy -- I have no doubts about them. I understand them, they understand me, and we have pure support and love for one another. I never doubt my place with them; I know I am in their mind even when I'm not with them.

Nines and tens are rare. Very rare. I am so grateful for them in my life. In the beginning of the Sisterhood, I assigned the wrong number to most of my sisters. I love them all in their own way -- but I had expectations for many that were inappropriate. So, I have reorganized people in my mind. This allows me to have appropriate expectations of the relationship; as in, I'm not clinging to everyone for my life. That's not fair to anyone. I'm finding that when I can recognize the appropriate level of relationship, then I'm at peace with what people can give. From Tricycle's Dhamma Wheel course, "This might even be a good definition of mindfulness: feeling content with whatever is happening by not wanting it to be anything other than it is." Perhaps if I had the internal sense of certainty from secure attachment, this knowledge wouldn't be such a source of study and conscious application for me, but would have grown naturally over time from many conversations with my caregivers. That didn't happen. That six point bulleted list I shared above? My fam is 0 for 6. So here I am, doing my best to surf these waves at an advanced age, a kind of very late adolescence. I'm grateful to have found the support necessary to learn a new way to be in BTG, Surf Sensei, and the sisters I remain closest to, as well as my old friends who have been around for years. Enormously grateful. My relationships with my surf sisters have taught me by showing up and by separating. Both/and.

That bulleted list is also a good operational definition of the grief I experience every day not having those things. No step on this journey is taken without sorrow. From Sallie Tisdale, "Ikkyū, the 14th-century Zen monk said, 'We must sigh for those taking this path of intimacy with demons.'" Indeed. It is not easy. This being fully human thing -- not easy at all. In The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, Francis Weller wrote, “Every one of us must undertake an apprenticeship with sorrow. We must learn the art and craft of grief, discover the profound ways it ripens and deepens us. While grief is an intense emotion, it is also a skill we develop through a prolonged walk with loss. Facing grief is hard work. It takes 'the outrageous courage of the bodhi heart,' as Pema Chödrön calls it. It takes outrageous courage to face outrageous loss. This is precisely what we are being called to do. Any loss, whether deeply personal or one of those that swirl around us in the wider world, calls us to full-heartedness, for that is the meaning of courage. To honor our grief, to grant it space and time in our frantic world, is to fulfill a covenant with soul—to welcome all that is, thereby granting room for our most authentic life.”

The full catastrophe.

I made myself a little primer of statements and strategies to help me cope with relationships. This is the state of my mind at this point. I find it helpful. So, what do I now know about relationships?

• The good friendships -- those tens? -- they grow over the long term. No ten happens overnight. My current tens are signposts for me of what a secure base feels like. But most of my friendships will not be the tens.

• Good friends are willing to be in the muck with you. To sit with you when you ugly cry. To abide when you're making the same mistake AGAIN for the fiftieth time. To take you to the hospital. To bail you out.

• That rating system? There are different levels of friends -- different purposes and conditions and kinds of friendships. Having expectations appropriate to the level of friendship will make for a lot less disappointment and suffering.

• Sometimes, you go a long way with someone. You ugly cry with them; you think you can count on them. And then some new condition arises and you see a new side to them. Maya Angelou said, "When someone shows you who they really are, believe them." Believe them the first time.

• People will weave into and out of your life. Appreciate the connections while they last and try not to cling to them or want more than they can give. Appreciate them like a sunset -- a temporary delight we expect to end.

• Healthy relationships have a give-and-take to them, a mutuality, that is not transactional, but joyful. People give because they want to. Love and generosity are spontaneous and unconditional. I'm allowed to have needs in relationships. Being seen and reflected accurately is one of those needs. A person in a healthy relationship will want to know what my needs are.

• Seeing others and reflecting them accurately is my own responsibility. I need to watch out for idealization, jumping in too quickly to the deep end of a relationship, and emotional reasoning -- projecting my own feelings onto the relationship expecting others to feel the same. I can stay centered and actually see what is in front of me. Grow things slowly.

• Sometimes, people can't go with us for very long. I'm always going to try to take a relationship to a deeper level, because shallow connections are unsatisfying to me. But not everyone can go with me. I don't need to look at that as rejection, but as simply not a good fit for up-leveling.

When I am experiencing a wave of difficult emotion, like a disappointment or some kind of suffering, what can I do? I have a couple of "don't panic" strategies now. I remind myself of a few things when I am faced with my own emotional difficulties, my own and others' suffering.

• I tell myself that I can surf this wave. I can abide in this disruption, this event, this experience. I can tolerate difficult emotions. The intensity will not last forever. And I know my reactive mind is an unreliable interpreter of events, so I need to regulate before I can think clearly.

  • Generosity: Can I give another person the benefit of the doubt? Can I think they are doing their best? Understand that whatever is happening is likely to not be personal or have anything to do with me?

  • Patience and steadfastness: Can I stick around long enough for possible repair?

  • Equanimity: One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, "Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm." How steady do I feel here? What I can do to steady myself?

• I can examine the context. I know I tend to idealize people at the beginning of a relationship and dive in really far, really fast if things are going well. I can learn to move more slowly and get to know people better before deciding they are my BFF. I can learn to categorize people more accurately and temper my eagerness. When something disappoints me and I want to bail, I can recognize that feeling, take a pause. I can ask myself questions and breathe through the answers.

  • Is this person appropriately categorized in my life or have I idealized them? Is this the inevitable disappointment from an idealization that no one could survive for long? Have I set up unrealistic expectations for this person, this relationship?

  • How is my general community feeling? Do I feel safe within it? Is it solid, secure, steady? Or are things in flux generally and that's making me feel less secure?

  • Is this situation tapping an attachment wound? Is one of my buttons getting pushed?

  • Have I focused only what's going wrong? Can I look at the larger context and appropriately place this event within the context?

  • How's my energy? Does this thing invigorate or drain me? Has this reaction happened once or many times? Is it time to abide or time to bail? Can I let it be for awhile if things are unclear?

In this way, I have found a steadiness in relationship. In this way, I am learning to surf. It is a hard won clarity that continues to evolve.

Insecure attachment is incredibly common. Studies have shown anywhere from 40-92% of people grow up with some form of insecure attachment: 40% in western countries, well over that internationally and at different levels of wealth. Over 80% of people with Borderline Personality Disorder have insecure attachment and, depending on the sample studied, 75-90% of people with BPD are women. One article discusses how Borderline is a "chronic shame disorder" and has an inherent bias against women. The author Susan Mahler writes, "Many feminist authors have characterized women’s development as one of affective connection. Gilligan has described a moral system in which feeling takes precedence at times over rationality, but she has also documented crises in girls’ development at times when they are overly affected by the feelings/opinions of others. In other words, women developmentally may be primed to attend to the nuances of relationships, and their self-concepts may be more affected by relational upsets. Given this, it seems plausible that people (not only women) who have become attuned to others’ feelings and for whom relationships are critical to self-worth might, under duress, become over-concerned about where they stand in relation to others. Their sense of self might founder. They might be prone to emotional displays, including anger."

Due to the great deal of overlap between BPD and insecure attachment, it might be hard to separate one from the other. Insecure attachment might be an example of moral injury -- the betrayal of not being cared for when it was reasonable to assume that care would be forthcoming, as well as the betrayal of self-abandonment in an effort to find love and belonging and safety in the absence of that care. We changed ourselves in order to be more acceptable to our caregivers. Anger and

other "emotional displays" might be an adaptive defense. Chris Germer in the Mindful Self-Compassion for Shame course said that anger was something he admired in his clients who were dealing with shame. It was an inner sense of self that knew they didn't deserve what they were getting, that yelled, "I matter!" despite all evidence to the contrary. Dealing with all of the betrayal and shame, the anger and disappointment, the incredible fear from a lack of security when I was very young -- these are all demons I have faced, understood, and have begun to integrate. I'm not afraid of them anymore. Along with grief and sorrow, they are welcome here too.

I often think this little three-year period of time has been my Tibetan three-year retreat or my bardo. The space between lives where I evaluate my previous life and make plans for the next. So much has changed inside my head. While ideas like karma and dependent origination (the causes and conditions of our lives are constantly unfolding in a specific context causing new conditions to arise), and depersonalization (it has little if anything to do with me) allow me to relax and know I control very little in this life, I also know I am not powerless. I can recognize what relationships can and cannot do for me. And I can find some sense of certainty, safety, and lots of love within my own self, which allows me to evaluate my relationships more accurately. Other people hurt me and other people healed me. Both/and. I can do a better job -- a different job -- of deciding who I keep close and who I let go. I can include myself in the circle of compassion and care.

From Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living, “No matter how many scars we carry from what we have gone through and suffered in the past, our intrinsic wholeness is still here: what else contains the scars? None of us has to be a helpless victim of what was done to us or what was not done for us in the past, nor do we have to be helpless in the face of what we may be suffering now. We are also what was present before the scarring—our original wholeness, what was born whole. And we can reconnect with that intrinsic wholeness at any time, because its very nature is that it is always present. It is who we truly are.” I grow more and more familiar with my intrinsic wholeness every day; with every interaction I successfully navigate and process, I can rest easier in my Self, and my Self gets simultaneously more solid and more porous with every passing day. As I feel more secure, it is easy to see that I don't matter as much. In the best way, I don't matter as much -- I control very little. More and more, I am undefended, flexible, and adjusting to the ever evolving conditions. Emotions pass through me like a surfboard through a wave. Remember surfer strength? That ability to ride the waves with an open heart, vulnerability, and care continues to develop.

I'm reminded of the Einstein "optical delusion" quote, which may be more accurately quoted as this, "A human being is a spatially and temporally limited piece of the whole, what we call the 'Universe.' He experiences himself and his feelings as separate from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness. The quest for liberation from this bondage [or illusion] is the only object of true religion. Not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming it gives us the attainable measure of inner peace." I am slowly but surely learning to overcome the illusions I learned a child. Sangha, Sisterhood, has been key to it all. Now, I can be a better partner in the mess with and for people as real as me. Being steadier myself, flexible and balanced instead of rigid, helps me be a better member of the sangha.

When I wrote about the whole atonement with the father ordeal, I mentioned a boon. Joseph Campbell, in his wonderful map of the spiritual path, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, described the boon at the end of a journey. My boon, which I realize in a new context now, is to realize that I have nothing to lose. I have nothing whatever to lose. The boon a few weeks ago was that I could sit there and talk to my mom and bear witness to her struggle without any nervousness. I was just really able to be there for her and recognize that none of this had anything to do with me. None of this had anything to do with me. Now, I realize the same thing with my surf sisters. Both by entering and exiting, they add to my life. I am grateful for them, for what they've taught me, for what I've been able to learn because of them. So I'm free. I'm truly free. I have nothing to lose, none of us has anything to lose, and that's the boon. Not that it's pain-free, but that pain is tolerable, normal, simply part of it. I can be here and just take it all in. Live my life.

Now, if only I could stay on this wave...clarity, it seems, also ebbs and flows. Impermanence applies to everything. Meditation helps keep me balanced on the board, sailing through the air over crystal clear, invisible water. Sallie Tisdale, in her great article "Self-Care for Future Corpses," writes, "Watch from inside yourself, unable to escape. Listen helplessly to the repeating chorus. Wait for the moment when you can witness yourself—that moment when you see yourself arising and abiding for less than no time at all, then falling away into nothing. The wave lifts from the sea, crests, breaks, and disappears back into the water. Nothing is lost. Wait for that moment. Wonder as your self appears and disappears. See the little girl, long gone, raise her head for a moment and wink. See the young woman fade from sight. See yourself going away.... Know that your precious, infinitely beloved, and irreplaceable self will dissolve like a sand castle, grain by grain—and what a relief it is to know. You exist in a great space of knowing, filled with the shared ephemerality of all things. You are like a spring the size of the world that begins to unwind, and you smile because you know it’s going to keep unwinding forever. Lean back, throw your leg over the side of the chair, look around, and say oh. Say yes. Yes. Everything will be all right. It’s going to be all right. You are already completely well."