The Sea & Me
A reflection on authenticity, connection, and the healing power of the ocean.
I write this blog while looking out at a line of family wetsuits hanging to dry, their salt-stiff arms swaying in the breeze. The scent of salt and seaweed drifts through the air — familiar, grounding, alive. It feels like the right moment to pause and reflect on what the sea has meant to me over the years: not just as a place of joy and freedom, but as a mirror, a teacher, and sometimes, a lifeline.
There is a tension in my work as a therapist: how much of me do I share? Self-disclosure is a delicate tool. Too much, and the focus drifts from the client’s story. Too little, and the bridge of trust may remain incomplete. Yet when used with care and intention, it can strengthen empathy and connection.
Because most of my clients don’t see my social media, I’ve chosen this space to share a little more about why I do what I do — particularly my lifelong relationship with the sea. It feels exposing, as I’m a private person, but it also feels necessary. This is me asking permission for gentle support in sharing something real.
The Sea & Child Me
Childhood is patch in my memory — flashes of smell, touch, and sound. I remember the clunky ring of a house phone, the feeling of climbing onto rooftops, laughter from adult parties downstairs late at night, fear of the monster under the bed.
And I remember the sea. Sailing, salt, the shimmer of light on water. Those moments became my first lessons in freedom and connection. They continue to ripple through how I parent — not through perfection, but through awareness.
In therapy, I often invite parents to explore how their own early experiences shape the way they love and respond now. Conscious parenting begins in reflection — in noticing what we carry forward and what we wish to release.
The Sea & Teenage Me
Few people know that by age 12 or 13, I was depressed and self-harming. At the time, there wasn’t much awareness of mental health, so it felt confusing and shameful. I remember feeling numb and lifeless, burdened by the belief that I was unlovable.
I was lucky that my family took me on yearly surf trips to Cornwall. The first time I caught a wave, I felt a rush — a wild, electric buzz of survival. I didn’t understand it then, but that experience was shaping my nervous system and my sense of self.
As a psychotherapist, I now understand why. The teenage brain craves risk and sensation — the ventral striatum, which reacts to excitement, is less active during adolescence, meaning we need more stimulation to feel the same “hit.” Surfing gave me that safely: movement, awe, and belonging.
I scraped together money (earning £5 a week at my first job) to buy my first surfboard. I also began yoga classes — where I was often the only teenager in a room of “older” ladies who inspired me with their strength. I was starting to come back to my body, and to a spiritual thread within me. When I finally had my own board and paddled out on my own, I felt transformation, progress, belonging. I’m deeply grateful for those opportunities. And if not everyone is lucky enough to find them, that is partly what fuels my work now.
Those early moments of flow and freedom became the foundation of my work today. I know how transformative access to supportive relationships and experiences of play, connection and movement can be — and how devastating their absence often is.
The Sea & PTSD Me
Years later, after a traumatic bereavement, I was living with symptoms of PTSD, the sea again became both mirror and medicine. There were moments I wanted to swim out into the wild, stormy ocean and never return. It was the only force that felt as powerful as what was happening inside me. My emotions swung from numb stillness to overwhelming tidal waves of rage, grief, and fear.
Supportive relationships — and my own psychotherapy — became like a surfboard or small boat, helping me to navigate the currents. My therapist encouraged me to express what I felt through movement and sound, to let emotion move through the body instead of trapping it. So I did: I sprinted until my lungs burned, screamed underwater, danced to heavy metal, breathed, sobbed, swam.
The ocean held me through it all — vast, indifferent, yet alive. I am forever grateful to the people and the sea who helped me stay afloat.
The Sea & the Parent Me
Parenthood deepened my old habit of caring for others before myself. The exhaustion and burnout that followed led me toward work that blended healing with the natural world.
I quit my job as a teacher and started to work for The Wave Project, delivering surf therapy for children and young people with mental health challenges — and I loved it. Later, while training as a psychotherapist, I worked in mainstream schools, special education and SEMH schools, and incorporated surfing and yoga into therapeutic groups. I applied for—and was awarded—£10,000 from the National Lottery to launch a surf therapy programme. I had already been offering nature-based yoga sessions for children and young people through my business ‘Wild and Free Therapy’ so it made sense to expand it. With the support of an incredible team, more training - as a surf coach, beach lifeguard and adaptive surf coach, we delivered surf therapy programmes for children, young people and parents/carers.
Over time, the workload of private practice, running a CIC, parenting, and endless responsibilities began to pull me away from what mattered most. I had poured so much of myself into serving through the sea that I forgot how to be with the sea. I turned my place of restoration into a place of giving, repeating that familiar pattern of care without reciprocity. In doing so, I drifted from my own centre — and from the quiet, authentic connection that once felt so natural. When I lost that, I didn’t just lose the sea; I lost part of my truth.
Now, as I write, I feel that connection returning — as a living, breathing relationship that continues to teach me humility and belonging. The friendships and family ties I’ve nurtured along the way reflect that same authenticity: relationships rooted in kindness, laughter, and real care. They remind me how to play again, how to listen, and how to meet both people and places with reverence rather than expectation. For them — and for the sea — I am deeply grateful.
Like the tide, I’m learning that what ebbs will always find a way to return — not quite as it was, but shaped by the movement itself. And in that return, there is space again for play, for joy, and for trust in the rhythm of connection.
I quit my job as a teacher and started to work for The Wave Project, delivering surf therapy for children and young people with mental health challenges — and I loved it. Later, while training as a psychotherapist, I worked in mainstream schools, special education and SEMH schools, and incorporated surfing and yoga into therapeutic groups. I applied for—and was awarded—£10,000 from the National Lottery to launch a surf therapy programme. I had already been offering nature-based yoga sessions for children and young people through my business ‘Wild and Free Therapy’ so it made sense to expand it. With the support of an incredible team, more training - as a surf coach, beach lifeguard and adaptive surf coach, we delivered surf therapy programmes for children, young people and parents/carers.
Over time, the workload of private practice, running a CIC, parenting, and endless responsibilities began to pull me away from what mattered most. I had poured so much of myself into serving through the sea that I forgot how to be with the sea. I turned my place of restoration into a place of giving, repeating that familiar pattern of care without reciprocity. In doing so, I drifted from my own centre — and from the quiet, authentic connection that once felt so natural. When I lost that, I didn’t just lose the sea; I lost part of my truth.
Now, as I write, I feel that connection returning — as a living, breathing relationship that continues to teach me humility and belonging. The friendships and family ties I’ve nurtured along the way reflect that same authenticity: relationships rooted in kindness, laughter, and real care. They remind me how to play again, how to listen, and how to meet both people and places with reverence rather than expectation. For them — and for the sea — I am deeply grateful.
Like the tide, I’m learning that what ebbs will always find a way to return — not quite as it was, but shaped by the movement itself. And in that return, there is space again for play, for joy, and for trust in the rhythm of connection.
Returning to Play
In rediscovering my connection with the sea, I’ve also rediscovered play — the spontaneous, joyful kind that loosens the tightness of daily life. In her book Salt Water in the Blood Easkey Britton writes:
“Play is one of the key ways in which we regulate our nervous system, activating our vagus nerve through reciprocal interactions and movement. In the water, the psychological benefits are enhanced even more, deepening our patterns of connection through visceral encounters of aliveness with the movement of waves, the texture of shifting sand and encounters with other species. It also helps us to build trust again – in our bodies, in each other and in the sea.”
I know this to be true through my own experience. The ocean continues to teach me trust — to let go, to feel, to reconnect through play and through presence.
This is what I intend to protect — for myself, for my children, for my friends, and for the ocean and all her life. To keep playing, to keep trusting, and to keep remembering that healing, like the tide, always returns.
Forever grateful to my sea brothers and sisters — Philly, Alex, Alan, Kate, Ben, Ellie, Emily, Zoe, Johnny, and Sarah — for the waves, the laughter, and the lasting connections the ocean helped us build.
“Play is one of the key ways in which we regulate our nervous system, activating our vagus nerve through reciprocal interactions and movement. In the water, the psychological benefits are enhanced even more, deepening our patterns of connection through visceral encounters of aliveness with the movement of waves, the texture of shifting sand and encounters with other species. It also helps us to build trust again – in our bodies, in each other and in the sea.”
I know this to be true through my own experience. The ocean continues to teach me trust — to let go, to feel, to reconnect through play and through presence.
This is what I intend to protect — for myself, for my children, for my friends, and for the ocean and all her life. To keep playing, to keep trusting, and to keep remembering that healing, like the tide, always returns.
Forever grateful to my sea brothers and sisters — Philly, Alex, Alan, Kate, Ben, Ellie, Emily, Zoe, Johnny, and Sarah — for the waves, the laughter, and the lasting connections the ocean helped us build.
