In the Churn

Went to San O the other day, down by Dogpatch and Old Man's. Surfline said 2-3+. I should know by now that the little "+" at the end of the wave height prediction does a lot of work. That little + means anything can happen. And anything did. It didn't look too bad from the shore -- low tide, so waves were breaking pretty far out. That's the thing about San O, though, you just expect a long paddle out. Waves were not particularly harsh -- they are always soft there, we call them "Labrador Retriever waves" -- but as I paddled out, they got bigger and bigger, and outside kept moving further outside. I must have paddled for 30 minutes, constantly getting rolled by these big waves; sitting up thinking I'm finally outside when another giant wave forms right in front of me and I've got to paddle for my life or ditch the board again. I did more swimming than paddling, just couldn't get over or around them. It was turtle rolls and ditching/diving under the whole way out. I was exhausted and in the middle of it for what seemed like forever. I did finally get outside to rest a minute, then caught a beauty and rode it in for what must have been a whole 20 seconds. I haven't had a ride like that in a while. It was AMAZING. So, at least 30 minutes of serious challenge for 20 seconds of joyful freedom. I did it twice more that morning, then was done. LOL. What a sport!

Doheny State Beach

Being in the churn like that is physically and emotionally challenging in a number of ways. I never felt afraid -- never feel afraid out there -- but I know that is a challenge for some people: managing the fear. I know I'm a good swimmer and I'll be alright. But physically, I can still use some work with respect to my fitness. A 20-30 minute paddle out is nuts. Way too hard. I know I will only be able to do that one or two times in any session. These big waves continually knock me off my board or, if I'm doing a turtle roll, will rip the board from my hands. I actually love duck diving under a wave and feeling my body escape the churn, feel it ride over me. I sometimes try to get over the wave but misjudge when it's going to break, or catch a wave too late, and I get caught in it -- absolutely in the churn of it, the washing machine, body being rolled under water or simply taken by the lip of the wave and slid toward shore, not on my board in surfing position but me and my board just getting dragged along in the flow of it, rather unwillingly. Nothing to do at that point but go with it. Cannot fight the ocean. I will lose. I don't even try. That happened a lot at San O this time. So much so that I came home with the most exquisite set of bruises everywhere on my body. Worst ones yet.

But mostly, I have learned to work with the churn in a physical way. Surf Sister Sherri noticed the other day that, when I tried to catch a wave too late and was nose-diving, I rolled my body up into a ball as I hit the water. I didn't do that consciously, but protecting my head is something I always do now as I go down. I know that my body will spin within the wave under water, hopefully I won’t hit my head on anything under there, and then the wave will pass and it will be over. Most of the time, I land with my feet on the ground under water, or at least my head is up, after the spin. I also naturally go up toward the surface after getting spun. I have never gone down after a wave passes, been so disoriented that I have gone deeper under water. Either because I’m naturally heavier on top, so the physics of the spin puts my head in the middle of the centripetal force — my legs spin around, my head stays at the hub of the wheel and my legs then naturally land on the ground — or because I naturally and spontaneously see the light and go toward it after the wave passes.

So after these two years of surfing, I can surrender to the spin. It's one of my favorite things, to spin with a wave under water. I'd rather surf the wave -- don't get me wrong -- but the spinning makes me giggle like I've just been on a ride at Disneyland. I just give in to it and enjoy the experience. So there is this deep surrender in getting spun by a wave — no other choice, really. The instinct to fight it gets extinguished fairly quickly. It actually feels kinda good -- just letting go and letting the force of the wave take me.

Doing the same thing on land feels a bit different. I am constantly fighting the natural flow of existence. Constantly feeding the illusion of control. This summer, I am trying to go with the flow, surrender to the larger forces of life, be absolutely in the moment, and find that flow state that Gil Fronsdahl mentioned in my last post. Those flow states that just take over and make me an instrument. We really don't have any choice anyway, but we fight it tooth and nail. What will it take to let go? To let that instinct to fight it be extinguished? I have been looking for a job for two years now to no avail. Maybe there's something totally different out there that I cannot imagine - that my limited imagination cannot envision for myself, so I'm trying a different way this summer: I'm trying not trying. Surrender.

From the 10% Happier with Dan Harris podcast episode with Rich Roll, Roll said, “When your heart has a certain yearning and you honor it, my experience is that ultimately you will be guided, and you don't get to know what that looks like, and it's never going to be on a certain type of schedule that you have in your mind. But I think when you are in a place of surrender to that, that's when these magical gifts that you couldn't possibly whiteboard are allowed to like blossom and flourish. And so you have to be in the humble surrender of it and get comfortable with not knowing."

There's that not knowing again. Buddhists are all about the not knowing. I've written about that many times. I've gotten so many clues that this is what the deal is here on planet Earth: get your self (ego self) out of the way and good things will happen. I've learned this from surfing, too: there's a mutuality to our existence. I work with the ocean to surf -- it's not all me, very little is me, actually. I look for waves, try to catch them at the right time in the right place, and I try to stand up and allow the force to take me. Very little of this process is me. So that’s what I’m doing this summer — surrendering in the same way on land. Giving up the fight in the best way -- giving up the resistance. Allowing the world to do what it will and I’m just there for it. In the churn, happily. I’ve quit job hunting, quit trying to control anything really. I’m witnessing the scenery of my life and appreciating it so much more now that I’m not fighting the bits I don’t like.

The surrender is also the product of my genuine not knowing. Ever since Sedona, my normal ways of functioning just haven't worked. I'm just not interested in the things that once interested me. I don't really watch TV or movies anymore. I'm not interested in getting the kind of job my CV says I'm qualified for. I'm not even playing the NYT games anymore -- and that's after several years of perfect attendance and completion of the Spelling Bee and Wordle. I just have no interest. Matthew Ratcliffe, philosopher on grief, wrote in a recent article entitled, "On being unable to continue as oneself, "Talk of no longer being the same person or who we once were often relates to gradual life changes that occur over many years, following which we look back and remark on the gulf between who we were then and who we are now. However, in other circumstances, people report having lost a certain sense of self or identity without having established a new one....There is an experience of loss and transition, which is sometimes described in terms of ceasing to be a certain person and—over a period of time—coming to be someone else." It is apparent that I am in this middle bit, figuring things out, and I need to go about the figuring out in a new way, too, to match the person I am becoming. The old ways simply do not work anymore and I have no idea what to do next. I'm doing a lot of sitting and surfing. Like someone who quits smoking, I don't know what to do with my hands.

So, I’m only acting where it’s possible to act, where my heart and intuition tell me to act. Less mind, more body. But in a responsive, calm way, not a controlling, grasping way. Staying right here, present moment. Three tenets. Equanimity. After a lifetime of white knuckling the illusion of control, I’m admitting I have only been swept away by the waves anyway. I can learn how the waves work, ride them out, stay within my agency, and see what happens next. Not three months from now see what happens next, but the next minute see what happens next. Do only the next right thing.

There's a physicality to it, too, this surrender. I remember BTG said that he learned in the Mindful Self-Compassion program that they used to say that "values are from the neck down." There is a whole body response when you value something, whether enjoying a good book, appreciating a sunset, or falling in love. I know this to be true, too. I know I value something when my body moves toward it, makes it happen. What am I doing this summer? I'm surfing. I'm meditating. I'm reading. My body keeps doing these things. They are not conscious decisions, my body just moves. Figuring out what I value, what I want to do with my life, lies in paying attention to where my body moves. What do I actually do, say yes to, in each moment?

I mentioned in past post from April of this year, where I wrote about responding to this inner yes, James Hollis, too, said, “In the end we will only be transformed when we can recognize and accept the fact that there is a will within each of us, quite outside the range of conscious control, a will which knows what is right for us, which is repeatedly reporting to us via our bodies, emotions, and dreams, and is incessantly encouraging our healing and wholeness.” Accepting this reality has finally happened in my body. My mind has begun let go, to relinquish it's harsh and grasping control.

So it seems I’m a year behind this blog -- I write and then months later, I can actually enact what I've written about. In a post from April of 2024, I quoted from Glennon Doyle's book Untamed, "We lived, for a while, as if life were less precarious than it is, as if people were better than they are, as if our kids were tougher than I believed them to be, and as if 'things generally work themselves out.'" I am now living as if things generally work themselves out. Such anxiety around knowing, seeking certainty, avoiding the reality that we really don't control very much in this world. That has been the majority of my life: planning ahead for every possible contingency. How many opportunities have passed me by because I had a clear vision of how things were 'supposed to be' and didn't see what actually happened in front of me? I am leaving that way of being behind this summer. I am finally free to live in the moment. Free of my own resistance. It's not 100% by any means, but there are whole days and weeks in which I have relaxed into this.

Wow, it took a lot of work to be able to do this. How much crap — internalized societal beliefs, criticisms, and values not my own, sexism and male gaze, patriarchy, absent fathers and terrified mothers, all the bullshit — so much to move out of the way before I could relax into my own being. Feel ok enough to just be here, not have to earn my place in the world. Feel free enough to declare a summer off from planning, feeling less than, and diving into more of my shit in the context of therapy. I’m relaxing now. Deeply, in my body, lower back and belly soft, relaxed. Not terribly fussed by anything.

I think one of the things that helped this peacefulness arrive is one last gift from therapy: leaving therapy. Leaving BTG provoked a huge reaction. Deepest pain yet. Massive transference in the absence. Cried for hours at a time, went on for a couple of weeks. I think my absent father, abandonment wound was tapped and the suppressed pain of a lifetime poured forth. The last barrier to peace fell. The control was all about not feeling that abandonment - not feeling the worthlessness of that rejection. And I felt it. Not too much in my life worse than that -- my deepest fear exposed my deepest longing, to have a father who showed up for me. It's where this all started -- seeing dads teach their daughters how to surf at Blackies.

I have always felt this emptiness inside of me, and I finally dived into that emptiness. I found a wonderful book by Jungian analyst, Dr. Susan Schwartz, The Absent Father Effect on Daughters. In it she describes that with significant others, there is presence, there is absence, or there is loss. My dad was absolutely absent, so I attached to the absence to avoid the loss. Schwartz writes, “These daughters emoted the needs, longings and wishes for the presence of a good father. This common and necessary desire has sadly gone unmet through generations. The need for the love of a father is made more painful and apparent by its absence and loss. The accompanying melancholy and the residual lack remain palpable.” I never knew where this emptiness and melancholy came from. I now have an explanation.

Schwartz goes on, “Psychic growth occurs in relation to a father and a daughter’s experiences with him. When a father is absent, he neglects the relationship with his daughter. He becomes associated with yearning, sadness, frustrated love, anger and rage, oppression and desire. These contradictory feelings cause stress to body and soul, and from this comes the urgent need for the daughter to find herself. The emphasis here is on the father’s betrayal, his breaking of the good paternal promise, the deprivation of support and love and its effects on the daughter’s mind, body and love for self and other. ‘The primary context in which betrayal is experienced is the family, for it is there that the first love pact is sealed, a pact that menaces and at the same time makes possible individual psychological birth’ (Carotenuto, 2015, p. 43). An absent father oppresses to the extent he is and is not there. His absence contributes to a self-image as inadequate, infantile and dutiful. The daughter might also be ambivalent about her life, angry and depressed.” Thanks to leaving therapy, I got to re-experience this wound in the present; really feel that pain. The father wound might be my most deeply felt rejection. And I got to sit with that demon for a good long time, until it lost its intensity. It still hurts, but so much less.

More insight came from another podcast, the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy podcast with Dr. David Puder. I listened to the episode on Depressive Personality Style with Dr. Jonathan Shedler and it was so helpful to nail down my experience. Having words to explain myself has been invaluable and this is another resource that has given me words and explanations for my experience. BTG explained much of this, too, but over time. There is something useful to me in having a nice, little bundle of information, neatly packed and digestible. Not everyone likes that -- makes them feel like something is wrong with them. I already felt like something was wrong with me and I didn't know what it was. For me, it is helpful to have the explanation.

This information helped me reframe my experience by personality style rather than attachment. They are related, but perhaps different terms. Key points from this pod included a clear delineation of how self-blame develops in kids who were mistreated in some way and how they become "other-oriented" and people pleasing, how they feel like a burden. Shedler said that the absence or loss of any real caretaker stays with us and is experienced as an "emptiness within." How anger is suppressed, because it's not safe to express it, and is often turned inward, resulting in self-criticism and self-denial. I couldn't get my needs met, so I stopped having needs, blamed myself for even having needs. I continued to hide, even from myself. If I am so other-oriented, then when do I get to know myself? Shedler said, "It's very difficult to get what you need, what you want, if you can't allow yourself to know what you want. The essence of the problem or challenge [for this personality style], the point of therapy, is the person is not getting their needs met in life, but the person who is obstructing getting their needs met is themself." So getting to know myself in a new way, getting to know my agency, are the goals moving forward.

Schwartz writes that the father is the link with the external world, the key to effective agency. “The father is supposed to foster emotional life and value but does not. What the daughter gets instead of love is emptiness which she can neither securely attach to nor separate from. This is often accompanied by masochistic and unloving attitudes, mostly turned onto herself. The result is confusion and denial of autonomy. She is, in effect, imprisoned with the absent father and in this place remains unconscious." I have struggled with agency this entire time. Understanding what is mine to control and what isn't has always been confusing to me. Very few ideas in this life elude me intellectually; agency is not a difficult concept. So it is great for me to now have an understanding of potentially why my understanding of agency has been impaired, and I can turn things around. It's amazing how simply having words to express my anger and angst has helped integrate it.

I also got some insight on agency from Dr. Harriet Lerner in her book The Dance of Anger. Women are given confusing messages about agency. “As mothers, we are led to believe that we can, and should, control things that are not realistically within our control. Many of us do feel an excessive need to control our children’s behavior, to prove to ourselves, to our own mothers, and to the world that we are good mothers. However, the mother who is dominated by anger because she feels helpless to control her child is often caught in that paradox that underlies our difficulties with this emotion. We may view it as our responsibility to control something that is not in fact within our control and yet fail to exercise the power and authority that we do have over our own behavior." Mothers, women, have been given responsibility for everyone, but also told we are not capable of being in positions of power and authority. No wonder I've been confused. I am responsible for everything yet capable of nothing.

This constant pressure on moms to be the primary caregiver and control their children has consequences, “Often in relationships, women overfunction by assuming a “rescuing” or “fix-it” position. We behave as if it is our responsibility to shape up other people or solve their problems, and further, that it is in our power to do so." Lerner continues, “Our society undervalues the importance of close relationships for men and fosters their emotional isolation and disconnectedness. Women, on the other hand, receive an opposite message that encourages us to be excessively focused on, and fused with, the problems of others, rather than putting our primary “worry energy” into our own problems. When we do not put our primary emotional energy into solving our own problems, we take on other people’s problems as our own.” I have felt responsible for people and things not mine. Self-blame permeates my existence.

Lerner discusses how women have been "de-selfed," and she guides us in that book to examine "some of the roles and rules that define our lives and serve to elicit our deepest anger while forbidding its expression." When looking at power in DEI work, I always taught my students to look on three levels: societal, institutional, and individual. People are oppressed and have power at all three levels. Society has given me confusing messages about my worth and agency as a woman. I have internalized those messages, but also have examined them, and have great ability now to question those messages. I have also learned about my value and agency from the institution that is my family of origin. I believe I have processed a great deal many of the big issues that have plagued me here. And then individually, I have had my own unique reactions to these messages that have both helped and hurt me in my quest for a meaningful life. What a relief to finally define for real what is mine and what isn't mine to control. And there is very little within my control. I would say now that I only control my behavior and my awareness of my thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings come to me unbidden. With awareness, I can see them and decide how I want to act in response to them -- including not acting on them at all.

Referring to one of her clients, Lerner wrote, "She felt the rage of her buried self but hadn't yet been able to use it in order to make changes." Getting in touch with that abandonment pain helped release the anger. Anger has a lot to do with action. Anger gives us energy to respond to injustice, claim our place in the world, notice boundary violations. First, I misdirected my anger at myself instead of where it belonged, and then I dwelled in the anger directed at my parents, which just turned into whining, resentment, and bitterness. Lerner's book is all about directing anger effectively. Agency is, in part, effectively directed anger. It's energizing to know what's mine to do.

Because I have removed more veils of my conditioning, faced so many of my really potent demons, something else has been revealed. Peacefulness. Patience. Equanimity. Calm. There is no urgency. So I can sit here and really pay attention to my life and how it is unfolding. Really attend to what my body wants to do and what it doesn't want to do. And so I am now being led by this whole body response. Not being driven by neurosis is incredibly freeing. There is time now to process, time to notice and feel; there is no urgency left to make me do anything on any particular timeline. My hyper-achieving, people-pleasing, self-blaming self has absolutely been put to bed for now.

Side by side with this peacefulness, there is also more intense feeling. It's like a channel has been opened, a channel within me has been opened and I am no longer blocked or defended. Joy is greater and pain is greater. There is no buffer between me and the world. Yet I am calm amidst these feelings. I can contain them. There is room for them to wash over me, go through me. The channel is clear and I am getting strong signals, yet I am strong enough to withstand them. Empty enough to contain them. The world is both harder to take and easier to understand in all of its messy complexity. And I no longer feel like its my job to clean the whole thing up. I can just feel compassion for everyone and figure out what is my job here to do in this moment.

One of the things I'm continuing to do is meditate. From the book Lack & Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism, David R. Loy writes, “The Buddhist solution to bipolar dualisms usually involves accepting the term that has been denied. If our worst fear is death, the answer is to die now. To study Buddhism is to study yourself, says Dōgen, and to study yourself is to forget yourself. The ego-self’s attempt to make itself real is a self-reflexive effort to grasp itself, an impossibility that leads to self-paralysis; Buddhist meditation, in which I become absorbed into my practice, is thus an exercise in de-reflection. To yield to my groundlessness is to realize that I have always been grounded: not as a sense of self, but insofar as I have never been separate from the world, never been other than the world.” By accepting my worthlessness and rejection, despair and emptiness, welcoming them in, I have claimed my place in the line up, not only as my own, solid self, but also as another wave passing by, another beautiful creation worthy of being here in the world. Going with the flow.

From the Turning to the Mystics with James Finley podcast, he says,, “Our meditation practice is where we ... come out from behind the curtain, and we risk getting vulnerable, we risk being empty handed, we risk living without answers, we risk learning to lean into the love that loves us so in our confusion, and we learn to sit there like an unlearned child, that this love might take us and guide us to itself unexplainably, which is our practice. But in our practice, we forget ourselves on purpose, all our obsessions are compiled.”

"The ego is like a wafer thin boat floating on a vast iridescent ocean of unconscious," said James Hollis. The relationship of conscious to unconscious is nowhere near 50/50, like me on the ocean trying to surf and in the churn. Maybe it's 90/10, the 10% being a generous apportionment to me and my agency. This summer, I'm leaning into the other 90% and seeing what happens. Let's try to live as if things generally work themselves out and life might have other ideas for me that I cannot imagine. Let's not wait for anything to happen or want anything to happen. Just watch to see what does happen and act from there. Knowing my agency helps me not know anything else. Not knowing might be the boon at the end of this hero's journey. Just quit knowing, sweetie. You can relax now. Enjoy the ride, my wafer thin surfboard flying over ocean waves.

We held our first annual Surfing Sisterhood Summer Solstice Sunset Surf the other night. Celebrating the longest day of the year will be another Sisterhood tradition. The setting sun filtered through dark gray clouds, the ocean a milky, celadon green and dusty blue. Warm, calm waters, baby waves. So few waves and so many surfers: to get anything, I just had to go for it. And go for it I did. There was a moment when I was on a wave, surfing straight in, and another surfer came down the line from my left. I held my "ground" -- I didn't bail off the wave, defer to the other. The surfer sailed close to me and then turned. We party waved it in side by side. I didn't give up my place. At Doheny, that's a massive accomplishment for me, both physically and emotionally. I didn't abandon the wave or myself. I kept my balance and held on, gliding gracefully to shore.

After the surf, we had a picnic. We sat as the light faded, talked and laughed, ate off each other's plates, welcomed new people and basked in the ongoing joy of the old, sharing our food and fire whiskey. The longest day of the year ended and we lingered with each other. Such joy and belonging. I’ll ride this wave as long as it lasts. Whatever else happens, the waves will continue to roll on by. Some big, some baby. Some so hard they will slap you around, some like Labrador Retrievers, lumbering and friendly. Some I can surf, some I will only survive. But I’m out there now. I’m in it. And this is better.