Sarah's anchor

 Sarah loved the sea with a ferocity that bordered on the devotional. For her, the Atlantic was not just water; it was a kinetic, joyful chaos. She reveled in the "fun of the seas and sand"—the shocking, delicious cold of a breaking wave, the gritty perfection of sand between her toes, the triumphant shrieks of gulls. Here, she felt a version of herself that was whole, a creature of salt and sun and present sensation.

But Sarah carried an unseen anchor, forged in a different yesterday. It was the memory of a last, vicious argument with her mother, words like shattered glass left unswept on a kitchen floor, followed by a silence that became permanent. The regret was a deep scar, not of the skin, but of the spirit. It played on a loop: her own sharp retort, the slammed door, the phone call that came too late. Yesterday didn't just visit Sarah; it consumed her quiet moments, turning the roar of the ocean into a faint backdrop to the louder, haunting theater in her mind.

One bright morning, as she stood at the shoreline watching a child build a sprawling, moated castle, the familiar ache surged. You never made peace. You built nothing but walls. The fun of the moment evaporated. The sparkling sea blurred. She was back in that kitchen, the ghost of her mother's hurt face superimposed on the sun.

But then, a wave, larger than the rest, crashed with a percussive thump that vibrated through the sand into her very bones. The force was physical, undeniable. It jerked her awareness, not with gentleness, but with the pure, present authority of the now. Sarah remembered something she’d read: You cannot be well in the moment if your awareness is not.

Instead of fighting the memory, she did something new. She Named it. "This is yesterday," she whispered to the wind, "consuming my present." Just saying it made the memory feel like a object she could observe, not a tide pulling her under.

Then, she Anchored. She forced her senses into the brutal, beautiful now.

•        Three things she saw: The impossibly blue, crumbling lip of the child’s sandcastle. The precise, emerald vein in a wave as it crested. A sandpiper’s frantic, perfect stitches along the wet shore.

•        Two things she heard: The hissing retreat of foam over shells. The child’s giggle, pure and unburdened.

•        One thing she felt: The sun, a warm palm on the crown of her head, and the cold, firm sand yielding beneath her feet.

The past didn't vanish. The scar remained. But its consuming power receded, like a wave pulling back to reveal solid ground. In that space of awareness, a new thought arose, not from the old story, but from the present self who loved the sea: She loved the hydrangeas by the old porch.

It wasn't forgiveness, not yet. It wasn't the end of grief. It was a single, present-moment action, a small stone to place instead of the crumbling castle of her regret. That evening, Sarah didn't go home to the haunting silence. She went to the florist. She bought a pot of blue hydrangeas, the color of the Atlantic under a clear sky. She placed it on her own balcony, where she could see it from her kitchen.

She was not building the life she had wanted before the scar. She was, with painful, conscious slowness, creating a new one. The sea still roared its joyful chaos. The scar still ached. But her awareness was no longer a prisoner of yesterday. It was the hand, finally steady, holding the pen. And she was learning, wave by wave, how to write in the sand of the present, knowing it would wash away, and knowing, too, that she would simply begin again.