Brave Enough To Be Bliss

The one thing I didn’t accomplish on our first trip there was learning to paddleboard. I hadn’t ever done it, but it looked like it would be fun. When we first arrived, the water was perfectly calm, but by the day I was supposed to get signed up for paddleboard lessons, the weather had changed. It was too rough, and they weren’t allowing paddleboarding. So, this time, I decided to pay more attention to the weather and make sure I got it in. It wasn’t as calm as the last trip, so I decided to sign up on the best weather day, but it was already full. They did say I could take one out by myself though and gave me some basic verbal instructions. They also said, if I was going to do it, I ’d better that day because it might be too rough the other days of my trip. So, I took the board and headed to the water. I felt self-conscious, on display and like everyone was watching me at first, but then I remembered that was actually just the voices sneaking up from the basement, so I pushed them back down and locked that door. Then I decided the worst that would happen was that I wouldn’t be able to do it and other than wasting some money and feeling embarrassed and not accomplishing my goal, there really wasn’t anything awful about it. I sat on the board at first and just got used to the feel of it. I paddled out to an area where there weren’t any people around and proceeded to slowly stand up. I told myself no matter what happened, as long as I was able to move along for a bit, that counted enough for the bucket list since I was doing it without any real instruction and by myself. That felt brave and accomplished enough for my standards. Once I was out there, the ocean was much rougher than it looked from the shore. The waves were coming onto the shore, and I was trying to paddle along the shoreline. I did fall off once , but I decided that wasn’t too bad. And most of all I had fun and felt good about myself.

When I got back to the shore, though, I had the realization that my thighs had never burned more which is what this photo was about as I explained the experience to Kylee. The next summer I bought a paddleboard and learned it’s much easier on a lake than an ocean. The only problem I ran into on this trip was I forgot my face cleanser and moisturizer. I have very sensitive, dry skin and there were limited options there, so I just had to buy what they had, and everything made my face hurt even more. I actually ended up leaving one day earlier than I had planned because my face hurt so badly. But that was in line with the goals for the trip. Do what was right for me

and felt good to me at all times. It didn’t matter what the plan was, if the plan didn’t turn out to be r ight for me, then the plan would change. All that mattered was that I listened to what was right for me at the time.

It was a wonderful trip, and I returned home the night before my 53 rd birthday feeling like I had done something very important for myself and like maybe I could start trying to do that even when I was at home.

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.” Akshay Dubey

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