(M)otherhood and the Ocean

This idea that we’re separate individuals is such a strange one when you think about it. We literally begin life inside another being. We share waters. That’s how we start.

So, what can we learn from that now? I keep coming across this idea from different writers that mother is a verb. It’s an action. A force. A way of being in the world.

And yet that kind of caregiving energy is often dismissed as something soft, almost powerless. But when you think about the process of becoming a mother – the emotional, physical, and mental transformation – it’s incredibly powerful. It’s such a huge transformation.

At the same time, every experience is unique. But I found it so supportive just listening to other women talk about their experiences. Even if their stories were completely different from mine, there was something powerful about hearing them.

Now I’m really interested in the bigger, more universal message. What might change if mothers reclaimed their power? If that role was recognized as vital?

Because to (m)other is really about relationship – how we relate to one another, to other species, and of course to the ocean.

Yeah. And I think that’s something people don’t really look at – the importance of all those small, everyday things that mothers or caregivers do.

It’s just expected. Everything we do for our children is expected, whether we’re biological mothers or caregivers in another way. But it’s rarely talked about as this huge force that shapes the next generation.

In some ways it felt like relearning the gifts I’d been given from my lifelong connection with the ocean. That relationship has always been a source of power for me to draw upon – a place that gives me tools and skills to cope with life on land.

Once I became pregnant with twins, it was like I was suddenly treated as a patient. The whole experience was very medicalized. There’s this hierarchical system where you’re told what’s happening to you, rather than being encouraged to trust your body.

But the ocean was always there for me. Even when I wasn’t surfing, just being immersed in the water brought me back into my body. It reminded me to trust what was happening inside me.

That connection helped me enormously when things didn’t go as planned. Because I had that deep trust in my body – something surfing had taught me – I didn’t respond from a place of fear.

Surfing big waves taught me to drop into that calm, blue-mind state in the face of challenge. Birth became the ultimate wipeout moment. And I could access that same training.

Afterwards, the journey was really about acceptance. There was a strong sense of loss at first. The ocean – where I had always felt at home in my body – suddenly felt unfamiliar.

But gradually I reconnected. And I realized that becoming a mother is truly a death and rebirth. Your old self disappears and something entirely new emerges, what’s called matresence. A word I never came across until I read Lucy Jones book with the same name, during my pregnancy. Having a language and lens to understand that radical transformation has really helped.

One thing that fascinates me is the science behind pregnancy – microchimerism. During pregnancy cells are exchanged between mother and baby. So, at a cellular level, we’re literally intertwined, blurring the meaning of the individual self.

When you then think about the ocean – how entering it changes your microbiome, how you inhale sea spray full of life – you realise that exchange happens there too.  

After becoming a mother, I felt that connection with the ocean in a much deeper, embodied way.

I feel like my experience might be a bit different.

When I became pregnant, I’d broken my arm in quite a traumatic accident, so surfing was taken away from me anyway. I couldn’t get in the water for about four months.

That feeling of shock is such a good word for it.

Those first years are about slowing everything down. But the rest of the world expects you to speed up again.

Exactly. And I want to slow life down more than ever now.

I want to bake bread, grow food, cook meals – live slower. But the pressures of everyday life don’t always allow for that, I think to be able to slow things down is a real privilege.

In the beginning the sea was escapism for me. I needed it to reconnect with myself.

But as Billy grew older, the ocean became something we shared. Now we often surf together.

It’s become one of the most important ways we connect. Watching the sea through his eyes has changed my relationship with it completely.

Surfing isn’t just standing up on a board. It’s understanding the whole environment.

With Billy it started with observing the wind, watching birds, looking for jellyfish. Sometimes we’d paddle out together and just talk to people in the lineup, introducing him to our community.

It was never about catching waves.

Now he loves the ocean, but that love came from building a relationship with the whole ecosystem.

I love that.

(M)othering is about creating and protecting webs of kinship that extend beyond biological kin and gender – relationships with people, places, and the more-than-human. Surfing teaches that naturally. Like you say, you learn to read the wind, the birds, the tides. It’s a form of embodied knowledge.

And hopefully that connection shapes how our children relate to the world.

For me, surfing has changed a lot since becoming a mother.

My relationship with surfing is constant but always in flux. Now I’m looking for play and pleasure in the water. My expectations are low. I might only have an hour, so I surf whatever is there.

In a strange way that limitation feels freeing. Some of the deepest flow states I’ve experienced have happened since becoming a mother.

I can totally understand that, sometimes being forced to not surf can be very freeing, to release you from the constant hunt!

After becoming parents, we really tried to build family life around surfing, so the hunt did continue it was just different and now we’ve gone from tag teaming on the reef or the beach to surfing a lot more together as a family, making all the extra effort worth it.  

I feel like I appreciate the wholeness of surfing more, everything that comes with it – the sunrise, the birds, the feeling of being in the water.

Something we talk about a lot at home is protecting the ocean.

When we were children, environmental protection didn’t feel like such an urgent responsibility. But now it really does.

At the same time, when we talk to our kids about these issues, we must empower them – not overwhelm them.

They need to feel like they can make a difference.

Maybe the takeaway is this: How might we mother, care for, the ocean?  

The ocean continually reminds us of the power and importance of our full-bodied presence in the face of challenge and uncertainty. That intimate relationship moves us to act with love and care in response to the needs of the source of all life – Mother Ocean.