When I was a little girl the beach became my place of safety.

We lived just behind the houses that were right on the water-front and beside the house our flat was in there ran a little laneway that led directly to The Esplanade. I would run there as soon as I got home from school to keep safe. Or I would run there afterwards to let the sea-gulls and the ocean waves console me for what I had just endured. It was how I survived. The beach, the ocean, the waves, the sheer timelessness and immutability of the vast ocean kept me connected in a way I will never fully understand with the idea of hope.

Day after day I would find myself sitting or standing, looking out at the sea and know that there was something much bigger than me, there was something much bigger than what I was living with, and somehow I would be okay.

There were days I would sit, with tears bursting out despite my efforts to hold them in. I was always so scared that someone would see me cry and ask what was wrong. The thing I knew above all other things was that if I told anyone anything there would be trouble - for me, for Dad, for Mum, everyone would be affected. It was a burden too heavy for anyone to bear, but I had no choice. So I kept my troubles between the waves and the gulls and myself and never breathed a word to any human being.

I was fourteen when we left the sleepy English seaside village, bound for a 'new start' in Queensland. I had seen pictures and knew that there were places in Brisbane where you could live near the sea, but none of the houses my family liked had any proximity to the ocean - not even by a bus ride. I felt cut off from everything that would assuage my daily pain, or anywhere I could run to to keep safe. I was like a ship that had been wrecked on the rocks - tossed about and getting more broken up all the time.

Eventually I found other things that kept me connected to hope and eventually I was able to find the ultimate place of safety - I left home, but sadly I never again lived near the ocean.

Until Peter said he'd love to get a yacht big enough to live on board and sail.

It still amazes me how, with no specific intention, I have found myself in this idyllic place, living this life I longed for but could never attain!

There were so many times in the intervening years when I wished I had somewhere I could escape to like when I was young. Family holidays were almost always near the sea - it was a compulsion I had to go with - I needed the refreshment, the bolstering that being near the sea always gave me. Somehow, even through the difficult years of my first marriage I still found that when I was alone on a beach I felt more hopeful, more able to return home with some sense that somehow all would be well one day.
I remember a time when I was first a single mother, having decided that I was a good enough driver to tackle the Clyde mountain, and had set off down the coast with the children for a day. I remember sitting on the beach watching them play and feeling a surge of joy welling up inside me.


Someday had come!

The implosion in my marriage that revealed its broken-ness to me had been a cloud with a silver lining indeed! Through it I knew that the time had come to go back and start to unravel the tacking stitches that had held me together for all those years where keeping the family secret was more important than my own wellbeing. Unravelling and unpicking the things I had done to keep safe but that were no longer needed in my adult life left me with a sense of how well I had done. I had survived 17 years of almost daily abuse and yet I was ok. I had stuff to work through, but I was doing that. I watched my children playing and knew that the journey I had been on had affected them, but that their resilience would see them through too.

The journey to health for me was at times difficult, but often joyful. It still is. And the ocean is still a part of it. A big part. Each day I count my blessings - but I never finish - there are too many!

Being near the ocean, always surrounded by its scent, its sounds and its serenity has become a normal part of my life again. I feel that I have come full circle - but my circle is more of a spiral - starting in the centre when I was little and circling outwards and in an ever expanding and increasing pattern.

I'm not the girl I was back then - I'm so much more - and yet, I know that I wouldn't be who I am today if I had not had those secrets to keep, or that capacity to find ways to endure. The ocean was my strength - my hope for tomorrow and my comfort for today. It's not that so much for me any more - it reminds me of who I was and who I am becoming and reminds me that no matter how dark the night, there is a dawn and a new day - if we hold on and wait for it!