top of page

Stand at the Ocean's Edge of Your Life: TAKE YOUR LIFE BACK!

Writer's picture: Kerry HoffschneiderKerry Hoffschneider

Updated: Jan 20



Before the wide world was awake, I walked to the ocean’s edge at the southernmost portion of our nation, deep down in the Lone Star State I have grown to deeply love. 


Nearly alone on the beach, I stood there, looking at that giant forever. Life is a giant dream for the taking too isn’t it? But sometimes we have to ride the waves of this life so hard that we miss the actual life part, or it misses us, or circumstances steal portions of our lives and we have to tread water just to live through them. 


Life comes in waves and wavelengths structured by the Creator and his starry design. I stood there and considered those waves on the ocean’s edge in this unfolding age of Aquarius, the powerful symbol of water we are entering into on the astrological chart. I stood there and the moment in time told me something brand new. It said, “This is your time and you best sail my child.” 


“Sail,” the voice announced again. “Because ships age, and come to screeching halts. Sometimes they even do that before they reach the bay. Sometimes they do that before the mighty sails are even sewn together. Sometimes they die before they see the water’s edge. And some miraculous times they figure it out and walk on the waters of the lives meant for them.”


Yes, it’s true. Archaic systems can steal lives, and so can poverty, abuse, family dysfunction, even farms, and those sometimes merciless voices of our ancestors we hear pounding in our heads to keep pounding status quo sand. We too often listen to the pound, pound, pounding of our hearts, beat, beat, beating ourselves up for not being enough of something. 


My friends, I am writing to you today to tell you, you’re each more than enough. Stop beating yourselves up. We’re just pillars of salt souls here, tumbling out of wombs onto planet earth. We have so much in common. Our entries and exits begin and end the same. 

But inherited expectations often lord over so much of our potential, and lives get buried by fools sometimes who don’t dare to dream. Back out of their traps. There’s help. Those holding you back are weak, or they are simply afraid you’ll find the inner resolve to finally be that person they are most afraid of: you being your confident self. Then what will they do if you do? Oh, most likely cling desperately to someone or something else. Or, maybe they will be inspired and try and rise up into themselves too. 


Because when love becomes just a thing, people do too, until they don’t want to just be a thing anymore. They get tired of standing on the shores of their lives, to appease the anchors someone else is chaining them to. It’s messy, this stuff of life. We get stuffy. We get lazy. We get just plain tired. 


The learners, learn, and still stumble through sometimes too. And some of us, the descendants of pioneers, still do what they are expected to do, according to the Homestead Act, Kinkaid Act, or whatever nose to the grindstone precedent that is still woven very much into our rural DNA. 


“By God, we will work our way out of here,” we tell ourselves. But, we often work ourselves to death instead. And we bludgeon those real feelings inside of us, the real us, until they drift down deep inside into those Fort Knox compartments. Those compartments that sometimes spring leaks, because the pressure to be oneself is just too great. And it is great, so great, to finally free yourself. 


That relentless pressure will beat on the chained chambers of hearts, until it takes the life from inside people, or until its floodwaters explode and they either choose or are forced into the journeys meant for them. No matter what, they always explode someday. Or, they go to final sleep before gifts get the chance to grow from seeds to blooms. 


So often we are stifled because we hear voices inside us say, “Well dad or mom or grandpa or grandma, or whomever would have wanted me to be this way instead.” Try to take that dream for your own sailors. Taking it all the way the way you uniquely were designed to take it will help the world the way you were meant to help it, the way you were meant to be in the moment of it. It:  this singular chance at life. 


You know what you love. You absolutely know it. It’s in there. You know how you dance when no one is looking. You know the difference between glances of genuine connection and indifference. You know the conversations that fill your cup or smash it to pieces, or worst of all, simply ignore the presence of you. 


If we’re honest with ourselves, we truly know ourselves. I have been trying to walk out of myself into myself for a lifetime now. I get it. I was conditioned to dodge dysfunction, and I learned how to dismiss myself really young. I know I am most certainly not alone. 


But now my sister and I have room and time in our lives to tell each other real, buried truths. We have time to finish off the circle of healing and step up and out of deprived childhoods again. And, our final, precious true stories will be told, if they really are meant to help the world. We also have the discernment of generals in battle, and will strategically decide which of those stories will be released like canons of truth, or remain stealthily locked, steadfast in our hearts. 


Those were some of my thoughts on my walk to the ocean’s edge in the early morning hours, away from the vacation quarters I am keeping in order, so the family can focus on fun. I also reflected on the kids who aren’t little kids anymore. Now they are venturing out further into the oceans of their lives too. Further than I did by far at their age. A new generation raised on more love, and not guilt. They will be hard enough on themselves as they reach their edges of their life oceans. They don’t need the same rigors of self-loathing that were planted in my childhood brain. Children simply need love, protection, freedom, and grace. 


As I organize another vacation day, I also remember organizing the living room as a child on the farm, that evolved into cleaning the entire house when I was just six years old. Then, because of very real abuse and neglect, without those healthy boundaries established in my formative years, I also learned to neglect myself and took on other people’s entire lives. Other people who were dangerous even. I thought because they “loved me” I was supposed to keep their lives clean and orderly too. 


Yes, there are many unspoken truths in rural America. We clean around many of them. I write stories and walk to the ocean’s edge. The ocean many of our ancestors arrived here on. The ocean we have been dragging ourselves from to build lives for generations. Let’s stop dragging the extra weight. We can change for the better. 


The other morning as I stood at the ocean’s edge not busy-bodying around for once, finally the magnificence of the view was big enough to crack the tear ducts open and I cried. I really cried. The salty tears from my eyes tasted like the salt in the air and we became one. But the tears flowed for just awhile, because I am no longer the child, lost. I am the woman now, found. I am here, writing this message in a bottle to your heart too. I am telling you something from my heart to yours as you face the edge of your life’s ocean too. 


What I want to tell you is this, run across the world, shout it from the mountaintops and from sea to shining sea. This, this is the day, the moment, you have. You. You precious, soulful pillar of human salt. You may have looked back too many times. You may think you’re stuck in time. But, you’re not. Lift that anchor of your heavy heart up. Wear your hands and heart to the bone if you must as you do so. But please hear the siren’s warning call from across that mighty ocean of your life. If you want to give the world something, give it all the way. Express the desires of your heart before it’s too late, and that final wave comes over you and sweeps you to the great forever. 


Today, stand at the ocean’s edge of your life, take it back, and set sail.

2 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

LOVE!

Comments


bottom of page