Written by
Anna Larson
We don’t meet ourselves on the easy days.
I dug my toes into the sand, arms wrapped around my knees, and the sun beating down on my shoulders. It was an unusually warm day on the Oregon coast. I’d come prepared for rain clouds and overcast skies. Instead, I found three perfect weather days.
When I left my hotel room that morning, I walked to the place where the cold Pacific Ocean waves crashed onto the sand. Bare feet inched forward until the chill of the water swirling around me took my breath away.
I stood rigid, enduring the cold, knowing that the shock would quickly subside. My eyes glanced up and down the beach. To my right and left were miles of mostly empty coastline. The occasional shapes of families splashing in the waves, people walking their dogs, or beachcombers searching for unbroken seashells appeared in each direction.
Overwhelmed from decision fatigue, I felt the anxiety building—to the right or to the left? Even simple choices carried the weight of consequences.
Choosing the Way
Ultimately, I turned to the right and began walking. Two hours and seven miles later, I sat in the hot sand nibbling at the lunch I’d packed and thought about Albus Dumbledore’s wise words to Harry Potter, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Harry Potter, I thought, is a good story, and I love a good story. My mind wandered to the birth of my babies. Both emergency C-sections, the births were traumatic and dramatic but ultimately had a happy ending. I remember my snuggly daughter curling her tiny body into mine. The shock of the blond tips on her dark hair and the way her nose crinkled when she smiled. My son had big blue eyes and a head of ringlets. He wrapped his tiny fingers around mine and held on tight. Almost like he understood we had just barely made it.
“Barely made it,” I thought. That’s what every hour of every day felt like right now.
Waves of Uncertainty
Two months earlier, my carefully planned life shifted unexpectedly. Like the cold Pacific Ocean, I was once again standing in waves of chaos and uncertainty, asking myself, “Why is this happening to me?”
Sitting on a beach alone had not been the plan. I very nearly cancelled the trip, but something told me I needed to go. I fought it at first. Who needs another character-building moment? I don’t need to remind myself I’m resilient and adaptable. I was a military spouse. That was essentially the definition of my life. So, what was it that I was supposed to learn on a beach in Oregon by myself?
It could have been the long walk. Or the peace I felt at the beach. Maybe it was the repetitive motion of poking my toes up through the sand over and over again. I looked back at the seven miles of beach I’d walked that morning. I saw my footprints preserved in wet sand and others disappearing beneath the tide. Two young children chasing a purple kite shaped like an octopus, young lovers holding hands—him sweeping her into his arms when the waves threatened to soak them both, and a man laughing and whistling to his dog as he threw a stick into the ocean for him to fetch.
Who I would be at the end of all this was the choice that stood before me.
And the honest answer was that I didn’t know.
I didn’t know where I would be living. Or what the next year would look like. I didn’t know if I could put back together all the broken pieces.
Second Breath
I lifted my face to the sun. I was sitting on this beach with my toes in the sand because I chose to go on this trip by myself. I chose to search out happy moments despite the uncertain future. I chose to leave my room that morning and walk on the beach when I could have stayed in bed.
And because of those choices, that morning, I stood for a moment in the cold Pacific Ocean and let the shock of the cold water wash over me. And do you know what? The shock did not last forever. It did not break me. It did not make me run.
I will survive what feels unbearable in this moment and the next and the next. I cannot fix it. I cannot change it. I cannot escape it. Like the first wave on my feet, it had taken my breath away.
But then I caught a first breath. A second breath.
And then I remembered that my body knew what to do, how to adjust, how to choose to stand in it. To stay standing in it. The Cold, Chaos and Uncertainty. And because I made that choice, I would emerge on the other side having met a version of myself that I never would have found in the easy days.
I stood up, brushed the sand from my legs, grabbed my backpack, and began the long walk back.
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ANNA LARSON is a writer, storyteller, and Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths Coach who helps people find meaning, direction, and purpose through their stories. As the founder of MilSpouse Transition and owner of NomadAbout, LLC, she combines strengths-based coaching, marketing strategy, and compelling writing to support military spouses, veterans, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. Her work has been featured in Military Times, Stars and Stripes, Motherly, and other national publications. Whether she is writing about transition, identity, leadership, or everyday life, Anna believes stories have the power to connect people and create change.
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