A Salty Girl’s Christmas: What the Ocean Taught Me About Giving

As I spend yet another Christmas down under, happily trading cold mornings and grey skies for sun-kissed shoulders and salty hair, I’ve found myself reflecting on what the ocean has taught me about giving, loving, and living. Not in a loud or preachy way, but in the quiet lessons you only notice when you slow down enough to listen.

The ocean doesn’t single you out based on your physical abilities. She doesn’t care if you’re an Olympic swimmer or a first-time toe dipper. She will humble you regardless.

One day you’ll have the best surf of your life, gliding and laughing and feeling completely in sync. The next, you’re fighting for your life in a rip, caught in the break zone of a never-ending set, wondering if this is how it ends. Mother Nature is capricious and she rules all.

That unpredictability is exactly why the ocean is such a powerful teacher. She reminds you that sometimes it’s not about how strong you are, how prepared you feel, or how hard you’ve worked. Sometimes, just like life, the conditions are off and it’s simply not your day. As someone who is relentlessly hard on herself, constantly critiquing her abilities and doubting whether she is enough, that lesson has been grounding.

The ocean doesn’t punish effort. It just is. If you keep your cool, listen, and ride the wave instead of fighting it, you’ll usually come out the other side okay. Slightly traumatised, coughing up a lung and with a bruised ego, but okay. You can’t stop the waves, so you may as well learn how to ride them.

The ocean also has this incredible way of making you feel like a child again.

Some of my earliest ocean memories are from family holidays in Cyprus, snorkelling in impossibly clear water and floating above rocks and fish that felt like an entire hidden world beneath the surface. That’s where I first fell in love with the sea, not through science or conservation or purpose, but through pure wonder.

I remember watching my dad playing around in the water, completely carefree. No self-consciousness, no responsibilities, just joy. I think about that often now and how rarely we let ourselves exist like that as adults.

The ocean constantly reminds me to bring that version of myself back. Whether it’s messing about on a casual surf, playing mermaids with my fully grown adult friends, or getting absolutely annihilated by waves on a date, the ocean always delivers belly laughs. The kind that make your cheeks hurt and your lungs burn, not from stress but from joy.

It strips away the seriousness we wrap around ourselves. The pressure to perform and to have everything figured out. In the ocean, none of that matters. You fall, you get rinsed and you come up laughing anyway. Every time, it reminds me that life isn’t meant to be taken quite so seriously. Joy isn’t something reserved for childhood. It’s something we’re allowed to keep. Life is meant to be playful, messy and full of adventures that don’t need a purpose beyond making you smile.

Believe what you want, but I will always stand by the idea that the ocean supports you when you need it most.

Recently, a friend came to visit me who was having a genuinely terrible time. I did what I could. We talked it out, drank through the pain and pretended everything was fine. The next day I took us to the beach and we quite literally drowned our sorrows.

We spent hours being thrashed by waves, floating in crystal-clear water and getting knocked over again and again. After a few solid tumbles we were short of breath, but whatever air we had left was used to laugh. Proper, uncontrollable laughter that shakes something loose inside you. Later that day he texted me to say thank you and that he really needed that.

I’ve had those moments myself. Whenever I find myself in a slump, when my skin prickles, my chest tightens and I want to disappear, I turn back to the ocean. Ten minutes later I feel noticeably better. Not because my problems have vanished, but because they’ve shrunk.

I don’t fear the vastness of the ocean or its depths. I don’t fear the undiscovered species or unexplored spaces. I find them fascinating and comforting. When I reflect on my own worries through that lens, everything feels more manageable and I feel less alone.

I’ve found comfort in opening up to the ocean in ways I often struggle to do with people. There’s something oddly reassuring about trauma dumping onto something that can’t respond. Given that my dog is half the world away, I’ve found a new therapist and she’s always with me.

I kick off my shoes, strip down into my bikini and run from the burdens I leave on land. In the water, you’re weightless and the waves are the best listeners. There are things I’ve left in the ocean that I didn’t know how to carry on land. I’ve whispered confessions to the waves, things I’ve never said out loud to anyone. They don’t judge and they don’t interrupt. My words dissolve as the waves break onto the shore, soaking into the sand.

I leave lighter, heard and held. You can call me crazy, but I’ve never felt better.

Another thing I am utterly terrible at is resting. Truly awful at it. This has resulted in a long-term, on-again-off-again relationship with my most toxic love, insomnia.

I work two jobs and I’m training for the London Marathon. I go and go until my body forces me to stop, something I learned the hard way when an unfortunate series of injuries left me unable to run for weeks before my last big race. But the ocean has slowly taught me something radical. Rest is not something you earn.

After a long shift I go for a swim. There is no distance, no goal and no pressure. I don’t track it or optimise it. I simply float. No productivity, no self-improvement, just being. Floating, drifting and letting go. The ocean taught me that stopping isn’t failing, it’s listening.

Loving the ocean doesn’t mean exploiting it. It doesn’t mean constant content or performative activism. Sometimes it looks like picking up rubbish without posting it, choosing gentler ways of living, taking only what you need and leaving places better than you found them. Loving something enough not to use it up.

This Christmas, I hope we learn to give the way the ocean does. Without keeping score, without demanding recognition and without expecting anything back. I hope we give the ocean respect, not just when it’s convenient, but when it’s quiet and unseen.

And I hope we give ourselves permission to soften. To rest. To play. To laugh like children again. To float instead of fight.

As for me, I’m asking Santa for strong knees, a shin-splint-free training block and maybe, just maybe, a world that learns to give back to the ocean the way she gives to us every single day.