I recently marked the fifteenth anniversary of my husband’s death.
Fifteen years ago, I felt as if I had been violently cast into deep water, caught in a riptide. One minute I was swimming along. The seas weren’t calm, but I could manage the ebb and flow. Then suddenly, I was being pulled out with terrifying force. I didn’t know what to do. Panic took over. Fear flooded in. My instinct was to fight. But fighting a riptide is futile. And staying calm when you’re in its grip is easier said than done.
So I fought.
For three years, I railed against the tide, the waves, the wind, and the sheer injustice of it all.
They say the best thing to do in a riptide is to go with it. Don’t swim against it. Don’t fight the current. Don’t panic. Stay calm. Swim sideways. Assume the starfish position and float on your back. Call for help. The riptide won’t pull you under, it will only pull you away from shore.
But I did panic. I swallowed water. I was pulled under more than once. I struggled to breathe. I exhausted myself fighting a force I could not overcome. Eventually, I understood: if I didn’t stop resisting, I would drown. Letting go wasn’t surrender, it was survival. And it was a conscious choice. So, I turned onto my back. I stretched out, and let the current carry me. I didn’t know where I was. I had no compass, no clear direction. But I was no longer being dragged under. The water was calmer.
For a while, I half-expected rescue to arrive… something cinematic. Maybe Tom Cruise dropping from a helicopter. Maybe Bear Grylls roaring in on a jet ski with a ragtag band of SAS, or Navy SEALs.
But real life doesn’t work that way. There was no dramatic rescue. No sudden return to safety.
I had to make my own way back…kicking, slowly, steadily, toward shore. It took time. It took everything I had. But I made it. I reached solid ground battered, bruised, and completely spent.
And I wasn’t alone.
The Alliance of Hope community was with me the entire way. They surrounded me with support. Every time I felt myself slipping under, someone threw me a lifeline. When I cried, “I can’t,” they gently insisted, “You can.”
And they were right. I did. I made it back to shore.
Fifteen years later, I’m standing on that shore, but I don’t stand here alone. In my role as AOH Forum Manager, I’ve been given a front-row seat to quiet resilience. I’ve watched people arrive in that same churning water; panicked, disoriented, certain they won’t survive. And over time, I’ve seen the light return. I’ve seen them learn to float. To breathe. To believe, again, that reaching shore is possible.
I carry with me every voice that called out when I couldn’t go on. Every hand that reached for me when I was slipping under. Every reminder that I could survive this, even when I didn’t believe it myself.
The ocean is still part of my story. But so is the rescue, not the dramatic kind, but the quiet, steady, human kind.
And now, when I see someone else caught in that current, I know exactly what to do.
I reach out my hand.
