Vitamin Sea — Ocean Wave to Brainwave
In October 2014, I moved from one beautiful state to another and traded the majesty of the Colorado mountains for the healing powers of the ocean on the Redwood Coast of California. My sinuses thanked me.
The coast had been calling to me for quite some time, its voice becoming so urgent that I could no longer be content to just sit and listen to it. The new man in my life and I were fortunate to have been able to pack a rental truck full of our things and drive the 1,330 miles to our new home along the coast.
In California, I expected relief from constant spring, summer, and fall sneezing and stuffy headiness, of sinus infections, of not being able to go into the Colorado mountains for most of the year because of it, of sometimes crying myself to sleep because no relief seemed possible. I expected to take long walks under the redwood trees and to take in deep breaths of the brisk ocean air, all without compromising my sinuses.
And that is certainly what happened. But what I didn’t expect was how the ocean would heal my body from years of allergy abuse, as well as how it would heal my soul.
Three years and a few short months before I moved to be with the redwoods, I lost my husband Alan. Our marriage was the second for both of us, our bond stronger than any I’d had before.
The gods seemed to have orchestrated our connection and marriage. Alan proposed to me the day after we met, and at the time I wondered what took him so long to pop the question. When you know, you know, and we saw no time to waste. We were married 4 months later, and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 9 months after our wedding. Which is certainly not what can usually happen 9 months after a wedding (ahem).
Our love remained strong and unwavering throughout his illness, and that love will be with me always. We had been married less than 6 years. I grieved for him from the moment he had been diagnosed. My life turned into an ongoing grief-fest. But I have also continued living. I had to. Life presses onward, and we must move with it.
And move I did.
During my husband’s illness, I kept journals and notes, records of our lives together. Using them as a reference, I was determined to write a book about my transformative experiences and intuitive revelations that came from loving him and seeing him through the disease. However, I hit a brick wall the moment I began to work on the second draft. Grief would not allow me to write any more.
Grief overtook me. It put me into a depression where fits of crying carried me to more intense places than I’d been before, and I had been to some hellish locales. In short, I felt like I was headed for the funny farm and that I would certainly go crazy if I didn’t stop working on the book.
So I stopped. It pained me to stop, but I had to care for myself.
Just a little break.
And so here I am, by the ocean.
From the beginning, the sea would call to me. I’d go to it, walk along the shore, stand in front of it and sense its rhythm and power. I let the sound of the waves building and crashing entrain my brainwaves until we were synched up — ocean wave to brainwave — becoming one.
I consciously inhaled the air, full of sea spray and (I found out later) healthy negative hydrogen ions that helped balance my serotonin levels to increase my mood and decrease my stress (which I didn’t believe I had but did). I felt strangely energized and relaxed simultaneously.
And then one day, after 3 months of walking along the shore, my inner guidance system lead me to my laptop and opened the file I hadn’t opened for more than 3 years.
And I wrote. In November 2016, I published my writing as an ebook, The Grapes of Dementia: My Journey of Love, Loss, Surrender, and Gratitude.
Still hanging out with the ocean and the redwoods, I wrote a number of pieces that appeared in local and national publications and also began the planning process for my second book of memoir.
All is well.
We’ll soon be moving back to Colorado and the family and friends we left behind while on this healing sabbatical on the coast. Luckily, I’ve learned how to manage my allergies better, and they have settled down.
For now I continue my appointments with the sea, and it continues to take care of me. My time living here taught me that you can’t manage grief or the stress of grief. You can only let it out, ocean wave to brainwave, over and over again.
Here’s a minute of vitamin sea for you:
If you thought this post was kinda cool, go ahead and click on the hands applauding so I don’t feel ignored.
