Sand and Water

I went fooling around inside myself this week, simply looking for something to heal. What I found was a massive wound—one that’s been bleeding since I was a child.

The pain didn’t crash into me all at once. It built itself quietly, circling, waiting. And then—for the past few days--there was a calm.

A deep, eerie calm brewing inside.

And it wasn't safe, either. It was popping with electricity.

The quiet before everything breaks.

I'm not sure if you've ever experienced a hurricane before, but as someone who has lived through quite a few (yay, Florida) let me just day this: when you leave the eye, when the backside of the storm comes through….baby, get ready.

The force is inevitable.

It rips trees out of the earth. It takes everything that isn’t nailed down and flings it into the wind.

And thats what happened the moment I stepped into the shower and set my coffee down—the levees broke and my feelings surged out.

The clearing of the land had begun.

I found myself sobbing—not in a quiet or pretty way. Not in a way that makes sense to say out loud. But the kind of bone-shaking sobs that make you glad the front door is locked and the kids are in class.

It did not matter that I had errands to run or a house to clean or a deadline that (is now) overdue. This poison had to come out of my system. There was no living life until whatever this was came out, so I purged it.

I let the water run down my skin.

What came pouring out of me and off of me wasn’t just tears. It was grief—pure, ancient, bone-deep grief. And before I could even realize what was happening, words were coming out of my mouth—pitiful, childlike.

I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be alone.

Maybe I’m just broken. Maybe this isn’t everybody’s experience. I’d like that to be the case. To know that some souls simply have it easier would be a relief in some way.

Like, maybe next time around, I’ll get a different hand. And my inner child will know smooth sailing instead of a life of survival.

But this time?

This time, she is still here.

And I realize now—this wasn’t me.

This was her crying beneath the blankets, afraid of being left behind.

All she ever longed for was a journey she didn’t have to take alone.

She searched for love everywhere around her.

We kept our heart soft and open and strived desperately to find something real, something true.

You can imagine how well that went—searching for the perfect peg to fit inside the gaping wound of a heart.

We found some really bad fits along the way.

We forced love that ground down the grooves of our heart until there was nothing left to grip, no way to hold it together. They made the wound bigger, more painful, tearing it wider until I thought it would never heal.

And then I found Matt—a love so profound, so safe, so real, that it made me exhale in a way I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath. The moment he showed up, something deep inside me felt a relief, believing—maybe even trusting—that the scary, soul-deep loneliness was over.

That I would never have to fight this current alone.

That I would never have to journey solo again.

But that’s not how love works.

Yes, in some ways everything changes.

But in some ways, nothing does.

When I was younger, my mom’s favorite CD was by a woman named Beth Nielsen Chapman. She’s a songwriter from Alabama—she wrote This Kiss and Happy Girl.

But those weren’t the songs that changed me.

That album, Sand and Water, was the story of her grief—the way she lost the love of her life to cancer at a young age.

You can hear the love in every track, the deep ache of letting go, the way she tries to reach through time and grab her husband back from death.

She sang, “All alone, I came into this world. All alone, I will one day die. Solid stone…it’s just sand and water, baby, with a million years gone by.”

I don’t think I realized it then, but the way I made peace with that music was by believing it couldn’t happen to me.

When I found that kind of love—the one that cracked me open and poured me out—it wasn’t going to fade. Or die. Or hurt me

It was going to wrap me up in Rescue.

Forever and always, amen.

I think I decided that’s what love was when I was a child, learning to meet my own emotional needs in a house where crisis was common.

I wanted to make myself small so I wouldn’t add to the chaos.

I thought love was about making things easier for other people.

And I spent 20 years doing that, believing if I loved hard enough, performed perfectly, added enough value, love would keep me safe.

That I would never have to journey alone.

But that’s not how love works, either.

And that’s the hardest truth I’ve ever had to face.

With Matt, I got exactly what I wanted.

No.

I got what I needed.

We journey together. He is my safe landing place.

But.

(deep breath for the big feelers, here…)

We are still two individual people, walking two separate paths, no matter how tightly we hold on to each other. There will always be places inside of ourselves where we cannot follow each other.

He knows that.

He has learned it in so many hard ways.

But I did not—at least, not until this morning.

And now, it’s all poured out. The truth of it all.

The feelings both big and small.

The fear and weight of being alive.

There is a duality in being a human in love—it is made of both grief and wonder. Sometimes it is more of a reckoning than a rescue, but there’s pain ahead of every bit of healing.

Believe me, pain is where the good stuff grows.

All this time, I felt love was a boat.

Something anchored deeply in safe harbor.

Something I could crawl into the bowels of and hide—so I’d never have to face dark waters.

But love, real love, is not about stillness.

It is a moment—impossible to hold on to, but always there.

No, Love is not a rescue boat. It was never intended to be.

It is the tide itself, carrying us forward.

And my soul is the sand and water.

Maybe, in a couple million more years I will feel as solid as stone.

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Dear friends,

It means the world to me that you’re here. Sharing these pieces of my heart is my way of pushing past fear, step by step.

I’ll always keep my words open and accessible because I believe encouragement and love should never come with a paywall.

But if you choose to support my work financially, know that you’re not just keeping the lights on—you’re keeping my voice alive.

Thank you for showing up alongside me on this journey.

With love and gratitude,

Mary Katherine