Groundswell's Birth Story
Witten by: Natalie Small (LMFT and Founder of Groundswell Community Project)
(While Groundswell’s birth story here is told from my perspective and personal experience as Groundswell Community Project’s birth moma, founder and Executive Director. The work that has been held in the current non-profit container and name “Groundswell Community Project” and “Groundswell Surf Therapy” is not new, it is ancient! While she was birthed through me with this specific name and container molded by the social constructs and times we are in. Indigenous peoples and animals around the world have come to the sea in community for their healing since time began. Women have been coming together in circle and riding waves to reclaim, celebrate, and honor their relationship to their bodies, each other and this earth for centuries. This is simply my story. And in writing it, there are so many moments, people, places, plants, animals, and waves that where a huge part of my learning, adventure, and birth of Groundswell that I was not able to include them all, but know my heart, body, and mind holds each closely with deep gratitude)
A Groundswell in the ocean:
A “Groundswell” (meaning a deep energetic upwelling in the sea) does not disappear once it reaches the shallow shore, peaks, breaks, and is surfed :). That energy goes back out to sea, to the depths, to regenerate and continue its eternal cycle. Like a groundswell, Groundswell Community Project is just one wave expression over this energies eternal life span. So we give gratitude to the women, communities, and movements who have come before us, whose waves have smoothed out rugged coastlines, turning stone into sand, who have paved channels allowing energy to flow and be held. Those who have made it possible for us to show up in this work today with the hope that our work and fullest expression will allow future groundswell’s of women to experience more ease, power, and liberation as they continue to grow and live and thrive in ways beyond what our current minds can even dream of.
The below is simply one vein of Groundswell’s birth story. There were so many people, experiences, places, plants, animals and waves that I consciously know supported in her birth and expression in this current day and time and there are many who I may never know but yet are essential in this story. I send waves of gratitude to my teachers and mentors Graciela Botoni, Shannon Thompson, Ruth Yeo-Peterman and so many other women that supported me, encouraged me, and kept me accountable. Gratitude to the women in my lineage who did their healing work and used their privilege to stand up against oppression. I give gratitude to the places, cultures, communities, and individuals that opened my mind and heart to other ways of being in relationship with self, each other and the world. I give waves of gratitude to all those that were brave and bold to step up and say yes to give of their trust, time, energy, skills, and passion to care for Groundswell through all her seasons and expressions. I give waves of gratitude to mother ocean for being a consistent teacher and creator. I give waves of gratitude to the women whose names are not remembered, whose voices where not heard and yet they loved and healed themselves and the earth so that we can be here today.
The Seed is Planted
While the birth of Groundswell Community Project starts from a very loud and clear voice in my 10 year old self’s heart … i’ll start in 2010, when this calling started more clearly and tangibly manifesting and revealing its current form.
2010 I finished my masters in Marriage and Family Therapy, where I worked in the public school system as a school therapist. By the time graduation arrived, I was unsure if I had made the right choice for my career path. Practicing talk therapy in the traditional therapy space and expectations felt off and sterile. So I sold all my belongings and headed to the sea, which lead me to using my experience living aboard a 28ft sail boat in san diego to working on mega yachts in Miami, which eventually ended with relocating to Buenos Aires where I found work as a chef in a local BnB and as a culture shock support counselor for au pairs. In Buenos Aires, I found it refreshing how having a therapist was like having a gym membership. Roads were named after famous therapists. Therapy was normalized as a common health practice. Through a random combination of events, I met Graciela Bottini, the South American president of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Associationg and trained me in her expressive arts practices and model where I fell in love with therapy again as the body was welcomed back into the healing process. During my western schooling there had been only one chapter in one book in one class on expressive arts therapy. From her training and mentorship I was re-invigorated to return to the states to continue my therapy practice exploring the intersection between all my passions; healing, the arts, and connection to the body and the sea. I dove in…moved back onto my 28ft O’day Sloop sailboat in San Diego Bay, worked as a social worker at San Diego Rescue Mission homeless shelter, joined a private practice. I started teaching surfing again through supporting a Bay Area non-profit to launch after school surf empowerment camps for young girls in San Diego. And became an instructor and facilitator of First Aid Arts providing art based therapy trainings and curriculum for first responders of natural disasters, war, and trafficking.
I developed a therapeutic art curriculum specifically to support girls and women reclaiming their healing and power after extreme abuse and trafficking based off of my mentorship from Graciela Bottini and provided local therapeutic art small groups for women over coming trafficking and abuse at Generate Hope under the supervision of Susan Munsey, in the jungles of Peru with International Justice Mission, to the waves of Huanchaco, Peru with El Milagro School and Save The Waves. I connected with First Aid Arts at a Justice conference in LA and was so excited to meet an organization that was supporting providers and first responders through trainings in an art based healing curriculum. We instantly saw the alignment and they invited me to one of their trainings in Seattle, which lead to me joining their facilitation team and providing trainings for community healers and first responders from the Philippines to Wisconsin. Noticing the barrier to the arts being affordable supplies and seeing the abundance of plastic waste that impacted the health of the community and earth around the world, I started a project called 1Bag1World where I worked with safehouses in the philippines, mexico, and peru to create upcycled plastic trash art that could then be sold to build financial sustainability, independence, and freedom from falling back into the trafficking cycle. The process of collecting, cleaning and creating with the trash was a therapeutic journey of reclaiming their value, healing, beauty and power.
Through sitting with, listening to, creating with, and learning from the diverse communities and individuals I worked with, I found that we really are all the same at the core…each of us are simply humans living within cultural constructs who have had adverse experiences in our lives that have altered our relationship with self, others and the world around us. Often the world defines us by these trauma experiences and we feel stigmatized, diagnosed, labeled, and segregated into categories. Talking about those traumas over and over can in itself be a heavy re-traumatizing experience, not just for the individual but also for the care provider. Whether we have financial abundance or have lived on the street for years, we all want to be seen, heard, and honored. We all want to know we are not alone in the world. And we all deserve the right to feel and experience joy no matter how big our trauma and grief may feel.
Being a water woman, the ocean had always been my own personal reconnection point to self, spirit, community, and expression. When i was happy and in love; i’d go to the sea. When I was grieving, heart broken, raging; I’d go to the sea. The ocean from a young age was my sanctuary, connection to all that is greater than me, she was my greatest teacher, and a place where I felt free to fully express whatever was alive in me and find connection to the present, I always knew her abyss could hold me, each wave a baptism back to self.
8 women survivors reclaim their power in the waves and birth Surf Therapy
While doing my 8 week therapeutic arts curriculum with a group of women overcoming sex trafficking and abuse at the safehouse, Generate Hope, one of the prompts to explore together was “what art modality do you naturally go to when you need to express, work through something, or let go?” The girls shared dance, playing with their child, painting, journaling, going for run, cooking…then they flipped the question back to me, “what do YOU do to express and release?” I sat with it for a moment and really thought…I go to the sea! I surf.” They begged to be taken to the sea and learn to surf her waves. I looked for surf therapy models, programs, guides to do this and found nothing, so I thought there must be some ethical, legal, logistical reason why this does not exist yet. So I told them it was not possible, but they did not let up. Eventually their house mom gave in and steps were put into place. I reached out to my friends at South Coast Surf Shop who donated wetsuits for the girls to have as their own, Coconut Pete’s surf board repair for used soft tops, and called my girlfriends with experience teaching surfing to come support as our first volunteers. That first session at the sea was re-wilding! We held the same therapeutic container and curriculum as the therapeutic art groups but rather than drawing, journaling, painting, or dance we surfed! In the sea I witnessed women who I had been working with for weeks within the 4 walls of the office that were detached, resistant, closed, dissociated, and shut down…in the sea they came alive! Women who would barely talk with each other were cheering each other on. Women who had experienced every abuse imaginable to their bodies, reflected feeling strong and powerful in their bodies. When we circled up after our time in the sea together I asked “what did mother ocean show you about yourself today? What did she teach you about you?”. I will never forget, one womans response “I can’t remember the last time I felt joy but today as i rode the wave in on my knees I felt joy and seeing the other ladies near me cheering me on, I felt like, if i can do this imagine what else I can do!”
From this point on we shifted all our session to the sea. The house mom reported increased emotional regulation, interpersonal skills, self awareness, resilience, and joy in the women. And their therapist reported deeper releases and healing taking place during their individual therapy sessions as the ocean provided powerful metaphors to work with and lived experiences of reclaiming their power, control, safety, trust, and intimacy which their trauma experiences had robbed them of. The women were reclaiming their healing, power, and belonging in the sea together and integrating those experiences back into their life on land!
But the transformation was not just taking place within the clients, but also my girlfriends who were volunteering where experiencing their relationship with their body, community and the sea shifting and deepening. They expressed the desire to share this therapeutic experience with their friends experiencing postpartum depression, domestic violence, eating disorders, addiction, displacement, and grief or lack of community. So we started opening up the surf therapy circles to the public and welcomed women from a diversity of trauma labels, cultures, financial wellbeing, ages, and identities coming together at the sea. Each wave washing off all the labels the world had put on us, and holding us as the human that we are. It was an equalizer and connector.
I witnessed the transformations happening in these sessions on the sand and then how it trickled back into radical changes at home. Women reclaiming their voice and power in the work space and relationships to creating art or taking action in ocean conservation movements… I assumed there must be others doing this somatic, nature based, community based, body based work through surfing. I wanted to partner with them, learn from them, and do this “surf therapy” more. But all I could find was programs that increased access to the outdoors for youth, summer camps that included surfing as one of their activities for youth, or programs for wounded vets. All beautiful, but none of them held within a therapeutic container and intention or for the invisible injuries like mental health. And nothing for adult women looking to heal the impacts of trauma on their relationship to self and the world around them.
Groundswell’s birth doulas
I could feel the seed that planted when I was 10 starting to come out of hibernation and begin taking its first root. A life was being born that I could not even begin to imagine! As it continued to grow more and more signs kept pointing me to embrace and surrender to it. And I knew that for me to do it well, it needed my full attention. So, I shared with my boss at the San Diego Rescue Mission what something was growing inside of me and asked if I could take a 3 month “maternity leave” to be with it fully as it birthed. He laughed at my boldness and told me “I can’t give you a maternity leave but take your time and go for it, We’d love to have you back when/if you are ready”.
So, I took the next 3-ish months living out of a backpack and fully diving in and being open to seeing the signs and being in the flow of her process. My solo surf trip to cuba turned into 6 girlfriends joining me to spend time sharing our stoke for surfing with the sole local female surfer of cuba, Yaya Guerrero and her community of future surfsisters. Through time sharing waves and meals together, teaching local girls how to surf together, and exploring the coastline together …magic was happening. Long time friends opening up and sharing their vulnerable truths around depression, suicidal ideation, identity, loss, and body image and how they felt alone in these trials, but here despite speaking different languages we all spoke the heart language of the sea and where able to shed our protective armor and really see, hear, and honor eachother. It was my first time feeling the true power of vulnerable authentic sisterhood.
From Cuba I boarded a 70ft schooner along with an all female crew organized by eXXpdition to sail from Trinidad to St Lucia. Women of all different ages, professions, and sailing experience came together to share long night shifts, sea sickness, and cramped quarters because of our united love for the sea. Along the voyage we collected ocean water samples and tracked the plastics found. On shore we shared our findings with the local communities, met with everyone from government officials and big corporate hotels to schools, marine biologists, and the local dump. From the conversations at sea to back on the islands, the intersection between ocean health and human health became inseparable. When we heal the sea we heal ourselves and when we heal ourselves we heal the sea. When I arrived to St Lucia I landed a boat-sitting job where I found myself completely alone and isolated for about 2 weeks where all that I had experienced in Cuba and at sea over the last 2 months started weaving with the voices of the women back in San Diego…Women's health, mental health, and ocean health are interconnected. Each are in dire need of healing and support. To heal one is to heal the others and that would be a radical Groundswell of change this word needs!
So after a year of wrestling with my own fears, and I’m too… Or I’m not enough… I reached out to my mentors (Teri Hedman LSW and Shannon Thompson founder of Shakti Rising) and asked for their support as doulas in the birth of Groundswell’s first official curriculum and model. Before this, everything was swelling inside me and the act of birthing her onto paper with the support of sisterhood was an experience filled with tears, laughter, ocean screams and play, fear, joy, surprise, and surrender.
…Simultaneously…
We had 10 women, attend the first official 8 week Groundswell Surf Therapy program, half from a Shakti Rising, a recovery program for women in San Diego, and the other half from the community. I was supported by a team of surfsisters who I trained up in trauma awareness and emotional regulation tools plus how to hold safe and brave space in the water. Our goal was not to stand up on the board, but rather for women from all different ages, cultures, trauma stories, financial statuses, and backgrounds to come together in Mother Ocean to reclaim their healing, power and belonging together. Women whose lives might have never crossed paths became life long friends, supporting each other, being resources for each other, and keeping each other accountable towards their dreams. At the end of the 8 weeks we went together to a surf program for kids with various abilities and volunteered, sharing their newfound competence in the sea with children living with a variety of mental and physical abilities. Women whose depression was so heavy that they felt they had nothing to offer the world, cheering and supporting a young girl with cerebral palsy in the waves. By the end of the 8 week program, women (both participants and volunteers) were reporting making big changes in their life to better support them towards their dreams by changing jobs, leaving toxic relationships, and shifting their lifestyle to be more ocean conscious. Their therapists reported lowering their psy meds as their depression and anxiety decreased and the ocean became their new medicine. Women who had been doing emdr and trauma therapy for years finally where having breakthroughs. the medicine of mother ocean, our bodies, and community was radical!
Groundswell takes roots as a non-profit supporting local community and beyond
As Groundswell kept growing I started looking for a place for her to be home. I looked into fiscal sponsorship, keeping it as a simple grassroots surf group, or a program that was part of a bigger org. I knew Groundswell was meant to be in community but could not find a place that was ready for her or brave enough to take the risk to welcome in something that had not been done before. I had so many stories and fear around why I, as just a therapist, could not start a non-profit or business. But as the demand increased so did the support which lead to Groundswell Community Project becoming an official non-profit in 2016. The mission was to hold safer and braver spaces for women to reclaim their healing, power, and belonging through surf therapy and ocean conservation.
In 2017 more women and orgs in the community were asking for opportunities to take part in our unique Groundswell Surf Therapy programs, so I took a leap of faith and left my stable job (once again) at a private practice to fully commit to developing the therapeutic model and curriculum and increasing access to Groundswell Surf Therapy as more than just an 8 week surf therapy program, but building the systems to support what it had grown into…a community of women celebrating and elevating each other as they reclaim their healing, power, and belonging in the ocean together. We held our first Surf Therapy international volunteer programs and retreats in Cuba, Peru, Mexico, and Costa Rica. Through this initial surf therapy work and training local women in Cuba, Scotland, and Peru are now radically providing surf therapy and increasing access to surf for local women and girls in their own communities.
In 2018 I trained up our first teams of facilitators to better support the diverse communities of women that were coming through our programs and desiring community and sisterhood in their healing journey. Due to ongoing requests we began providing programs in south and north San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area all run by local women facilitators and volunteers. I supported the development, trainings, and launch of our first official branch, Groundswell Scotland, and we were invited to join the International Surf Therapy Organization as 1 of a handfull of organizations around the globe providing surf therapy, committed to data collection and research to increase awareness and access to surf therapy around the world. While at the conference I recognized that I was the only trauma informed practitioner and licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the room, Groundswell one of the only programs co-facilitated by licensed mental health clinicians, and the only organization that emphasized the importance of trauma informed awareness and training for facilitators and volunteers. We saw a gap and a way we could not only support our local communities but also the growing surf therapy providers and orgs through sharing our resources, trainings, and curriculums to support their own development in the work too.
Due to continual calls and requests for training and mentorship in how to hold a trauma informed surf therapy program, in 2019 we developed our first in person Surf Therapy For Trauma Recovery Training. We had 30 women from around the globe who were therapy practitioners, founders of non-profits, and surf coaches that attended the weekend training to gain a deeper understanding of why and how surf therapy is a powerful tool for trauma recovery so they could implement these Groundswell practices and tools within their communities. I also became a certified Clinical Supervisor allowing therapy interns and practicum students to gain training, supervision, and practice facilitating trauma informed somatic surf therapy as hours towards their professional licensure. Many of these early interns and trainees have gone on to found their own surf therapy orgs or have integrated surf therapy into their clinical practice (like Waves of Recovery, Sea Love Healing, Surf with Amigas, and Hang ten Therapeutics)!
Navigating the waves of 2020
I rung in 2020 in Peru with my new peruvian tios, primos, and esposo after celebrating our marriage together over the holiday. My New Years resolution for groundswell was sustainability; to elevate the voices of our community and team to help share the truly diverse impact and leadership of the work. My personal resolution was to make Huanchaco, Peru home while we waited for my husbands visa to be processed. Despite Huanchaco being in the middle of one of the most desolate deserts (green makes my heart sing!) and surrounded by all left point breaks (i looooove surfing right!), my soul was home in new ways I had never experienced before!
Huanchaco has a surf history dating back to 500 AD and the fishermen still ride their catch to shore on the ancient caballito de tortora (a reed woven craft). The desert coastal town is snuggled between the longest left point break in the world, and 2 sacred pyramids: Sol y Luna and Dama De Cao. The discovery of the mummified priestess, covered in tattoos of water animals and serpents, completely altered the peruvian history, to her-story. This land originally was under egalitarian rule, women were essential in the decision making and utilized their connection to the moon and the sea to govern the peoples. You can still feel the undercurrents of feminine power there despite the culturally dominant machismo brought in by the conquistadors.
That january, (peek summer time in peru) we welcomed over 50 local girls to Groundswell’s “Hermanas Del Surf” summer surf camp and started the first moms sea group. 5 years prior there were only 5 local girls who had created their own surf club with this support of some expat lady surfers. So needless to say, when 50 local girls, with boards gathered in circle at the beach to do yoga and practice their pop-up, the whole community was in shock and awe. Volunteers from all over the world came to share their love for surfing mother oceans waves as well as various healing modalities like sound bowls, rubber stamp making, water color, acro yoga, and meditation while the local women shared cacao ceremonies, cooking recipes, dance moves, and song. It was a powerful interexchange of cultures, stoke, and love for the sea.
In the middle of one of the session I got a call from my dad telling me that my grandad had passed. Surrounded by 50 local girls ages 5-20 we sat in circle and they let me cry, hugged, and we all shared about the loved ones we have lost, speaking their names and what we love about them, then we went to the sea and enjoyed the gift of this life together. Little did we know that 4 weeks later a pandemic would hit that would dramatically impact our individual and collective grief as almost every family I worked with in Huanchaco lost a loved one to COVID or the lack of resources in the hospital due to the overflow of need.
1 week after our summer programs wrapped up with our annual Sisterhood Surf contest, we left for the mountains to celebrate a beautiful summer and a mini honey moon…2 days in we got the shut down notice. Everyone had 24 hours to provision and go to the address on their ID card for a military lock down. 15 days turned into 6 months of no access to the sea or community, and my husbands visa process went from a 2 month time frame to indefinite. It felt like I went from a vibrant intimate community with plans to travel to Sri Lanka, Africa, and Europe to visit Groundswell sister sites and support in community surf development for girls and women, to feeling like we were out at sea in a 40 ft apartment with just my husband and occasional runs to shore to get provisions. It was a beautiful time and a challenging time.
The need for mental health support was at an all time high as isolation, grief, and the lack of stability increased. I did what I swore I would never do as a clinician and started offering telehealth through my private practice to support the mental health crisis. To my surprise somatic therapy was possible despite the screen! Our bodies are always with us! Past Groundswell participants, who had been able to stop their psychiatric meds thanks to their new medicine of the sea, where reaching out in a panic…and then we remembered we are nature! Everything we experience in the ocean is always alive and can be accessed within us. With the support of Shannon Thompson and Teri Heidman from Shakti Rising who had been providing online telehealth recovery support groups and virtual trainings for years, I was able to shift our Groundswell programs, curriculum, and trainings to the virtual space…and not only did it work but we were able to expand into a global community of surfsters. We launched virtual weekly WAVES providing somatic ocean based mental health tools. Our once San Diego based training was now a year round virtual program that welcomed women from Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Costa Rica, California, New York, Florida, and South Carolina. Meeting virtually at our “zoom beach” each week experiencing the Groundswell Surf Therapy Curriculum and unpacking and exploring what it means to do this work within a diversity of cultures and ways of being. We became the first accredited Surf Therapy training CEU (continuing education) provider through California Association of Marriage And Family Therapy. And we are still the only resource for surf therapy trainings to support individuals and organizations in trauma informed models, tools, curriculum and supervision.
As ocean access and freedoms started opening up in the US, borders were still closed in Peru. If I left to support Groundswell in the US, I might not be able to get back to my husband and home for an indefinite amount of time. So in my mind, programs for 2020 were off. But, thanks to a number of volunteers, facilitators and community partners up and down the coast of California, they insisted that now more than ever programs must go on! People were in dire need of outdoor community spaces to be seen heard, honored, and to heal. Women in the groundswell community began stepping up into various leadership roles and with the financial support of our donor community during such an economically strapped time, we were able to bring on program managers and an office manager to help support and build sustainability of our programs in California while I continued to support as director, trainer, grant writer, and stoker virtually from Peru.
Tracey Chester, an LMFT and certified grief counselor was witnessing and feeling for herself the grave impact of personal grief and collective grief now with no place for ritual and ways to grieve in community. She supported in building out a community drop in grief curriculum utilizing the Groundswell Surf Therapy model. And thanks to the norm of virtual spaces, we were able to train surfers and therapists around the world in this unique community based eco-play-art therapy curriculum for grief so they could gather at mother ocean’s shores the second saturday of each month to honor their grief and feel the power of the ocean connecting us all.
As various news and documentary film opportunities came in asking to interview me about groundswell’s unique surf therapy model and programs and how they have supported the increased need during the pandemic; I got the opportunity to say no to the interviews and elevate the voices of our diverse facilitators, volunteers, and participants. Aligning with my new years resolution; to let the community be the voice and face of groundswell rather than me! From National Geographic IMPACT docu series, to paneling at the Super Girl Pro. I felt like a proud mom seeing my baby growing into herself and speaking her voice through all these powerful women who were finding their leadership, power, and healing through Groundswell Surf Therapy.
My mentor, Shannon Thompson, the founder and birth mama of Shakti Rising, was an essential life line for me during this time where I was no longer on the ground doing what I do best: facilitating therapeutic healing circles, but falling into traditional non-profit structures and roles as Executive Director. Her feminine leadership and business model gave me hope. Looking to nature as our guide, following the seasons, and turning patriarchy and hierarchies on their head, and dismantling what being a female leader really looks like and means. We envisioned together radical new ways of non-profit work from the structure of the board to finances, and operations. And how women centering trauma informed non-profits could go from being overworked, underpaid, and burnt out to united in the work easing each others load so we could all be more alive and thriving. (I still have hope this is possible!)
Full Summer Energy
The next couple years, as the world began to open back up, were radical! Getting to see surf therapy grow and expand beyond the non-profit sector into clinics, surf schools, and retreats. To get to train, mentor, supervise and walk alongside Masters and PhD level students as they re-learned what healing can truly look like and feel like as they welcome the body, nature, and community back into the field. Through our virtual Surf Therapy Facilitator training I got to be in circle with over 200 women and men from over 15 countries and states with all different backgrounds, cultures, herstories, and professions. While they were coming to Groundswell to learn our trauma informed model and surf therapy practice, they each taught me so much, and our weekly circles at our “zoom beach” were the highlight of my week. People have been coming to the sea for centuries for healing, grieving, celebrating, and medicine…and these circles were a powerful space of re-membering who we really are and that everything we need is already with in us!
With the surf therapy world growing, we shifted from running branches up and down the coast of California to supporting the local communities growth of surf therapy in their own unique ways. Groundswell Surf Therapy™ Collective and Waves of Excellence was created to more powerfully and sustainably support the access to trauma informed tools, resources, workshops, supervision, and community for leaders and facilitators in the field. We boldly and bravely were training other orgs in the Groundswell Surf Therapy ™ curriculum so they could have a foundation to grow and adapt trauma informed surf therapy for their unique communities. We were invited to share our model and work at conferences like SHiFT and ISTO and CALPCC and the World Surf City Network. Groundswell’s work was featured in books, magazines, podcasts, and news stories. I got to co-create new curriculums for advanced surfers with Holly Beck and Jess Ripley, youth programs in both English and Spanish with Groundswell Peru and Waves Within, and an adapted curriculum for those living with chronic pain with The San Diego Pain and Trauma Institute.
As travel opened, I got to start providing our virtually developed trainings in person for our partners in France (Panasea), Scotland (Groundswell Scotland), Ventura (Hydrotheory), and Mexico (Native Like Water), Jamaica (Surf Girls Jamaica). Getting to be in person after 2.5 years of all virtual made my heart sing. Seeing these individuals go from seeding their dreams into full flourishing and abundant orgs brought tears of joy to my eyes each time. 4 years prior, I had paddled out into the waves of scotland wearing the most neoprene ever in my life and after sat in a cozy circle of local women healers, sailors, therapists, yoga teachers and mothers all gathering together to support Sally Harris birth Groundswell Scotland. None of them surfed, but all of them had a deep love and respect for the sea, women's health, mental health, and yearned for a space to dive into genuine intimate community. Now Sally has a whole team of surf women that run and facilitate Groundswell Scotland. They have completed powerful research on gender inclusivity in surf therapy and run annual Surf Festivals that bring women together across the country and beyond to connect through the sea, arts, movement, and the magic of community. Sally has been able to use the Groundswell curriculum and model to create a uniquely scottish surf therapy program that tunes to the unique needs of the community and the rich history and lineage of scottish women’s relationship with water. To see the Groundswell curriculum and model being used as a supportive foundation to support communities from california to Peru and Scotland…women ages 5-80, from vastly different cultures and languages all finding safer and braver spaces together to reclaim their ancient connection to the sea, their bodies, and community. (I could write a whole blog/book about each of Groundswell “branch” (scotland, peru, cuba) and partners (Native Like Water, Surf Girls Jamaica) about their unique water-stories and lineage, the powerful ways community came together and united in the work, and what the radical leaders taught me about leadership, being, and community)
2023
7 years of Groundswell
7 years: the time it takes for full cellular regeneration, a death and rebirth of self
In 2022, My husbands visa was denied, and that combined with various forms of heart break we decided to divorce and let each other go. While my marriage was ending, my relationship to Huanchaco and the community of water women there became a bloodline for me. Showing up for me to heal and being held during the waves of grief, loss, heartache, and reclaiming and redefining myself again. I had been doing so much holding of others and to allow others to hold me was new, vulnerable and radically healing. And I knew deep in my bones it was time to go back home to my roots.
Thanks to Holly Beck and Surf With Amigas I got a 6 month venture of solo time in the nomadic lifestyle of surf retreat facilitation before landing back in my roots (the US). Getting to be back on the sand and in the sea providing holistic surf coaching for women around the world of all different professions and experiences helped reconnect me to the heart of what birthed groundswell to begin with…the transformational power of being in intentionally embodied spaces, where I got to see, hear, and witness others as well as be seen, heard, and witnessed myself. It felt so good to be back in the work in this way rather than in the office as Executive Director.
I had taken on the ED roll kicking and screaming in 2019. I knew it was not my space, expertise, or hearts calling. But I also knew that it had to be done, and at this time and place in Groundswells birthing and maturing, my breast milk was her medicine. Up until this moment in 2019, Groundswell was 100% volunteer run. I had been able to simplify my life by being a house sitter, working on boats, and living off of 99 cent store rice cooker concoctions so I could ease-fully volunteer my time for Groundswell and still live the creative life I loved of gift exchange currency rather than financial currency. But as we hired our first staff member in 2019 as office assistant, I instantly felt a shift. Groundswell needed financial currency to support the team. While I house sat, staff had to pay rent and bills. With zero fundraising experience or grant writing experience my role quickly shifted from the clinical work to figuring out how to make groundswell financially abundant to support our growing all women staff.
As Groundswell continued to grow and evolve over the years I begged to find others with this calling in their heart to step up as ED. Through 3 years we brought in an operations directors, program managers and, partnership managers. And thanks to these brave and intelligent women, Groundswell was able to continue growing and flourishing over the years beyond what I could have ever dreamed. And even though we strived to create competitive wages and explored a diversity of currencies to support our staff, at the end of the day California cost of living didn’t match what we could provide, leading staff to being stretched thin, burn out, fatigue, and/or needing to transition to other work opportunities that could provide the salary and benefits that we could not.
I continued seeking mentorship, support and guidance from women who had founded and lead non-profits and businesses. Each one shared about the inequalities, broken systems, and struggles that existed in the non-profit model, especially as a female leader. I dreamed of a world where women could work within their heart field and not have to sacrifice their wellbeing or the wellbeing of their families. Where you actually get paid and valued more for your heart centered community work rather than less. But majority of grant funding is not allocated to pay salaries so we continued relying on private donors and gift exchange currencies to help make the positions joyfull and sustainable as much as we could.
The beginning of 2023 I felt myself hitting a point of exhaustion, fatigue, my capacity quickly depleting, creativity sucked dry. I knew something had to shift. I felt my nervous system and Groundswell’s nervous system so intertwined. I feared that if I burnt out that meant groundswell died too. I didn’t want to see this happen for either of us. I knew that I needed to move back into the clinical heart work that birthed groundswell in order to sustain my life force and groundswell’s. And thus, groundswell needed new leadership to carry her into this next season.
I took time to get lost in nature. I observed her patterns, watched, wondered, was in awe of such reciprocity, sustainability, and abundance that flowed as all the plants, animals, fungi, insects, ect were intricately connected, supported, and thriving because of each other. During time in the Appalachian mountains, my home eco-system, with sisters at Shakti Rising, I found myself overflowing with tears as I realized the importance of seasons, of winter, of death for rebirth. I had literally and figuratively been living in a never ending summer and my soil had been depleted. Just like all gardens, I needed winter to rest my soil, to compost, to pause and grow my nutrients again.
Simultaneously I had started a doula course where we were learning about the essential need for mamas body and the baby to have a year of resting, restoring, being soft and cozy. I felt my body, mind and heart pleading for this “maternity leave” to rest, restore, and nurture my soil and groundswell’s soil. “A year long maternity leave” kept singing in my heart. The idea felt radical, scary, impossible, but powerfully possible and right. What would happen if we took a year to simply be? To stop creating and growing, but to simply be with what is reciprocal and nourishing. To nurture, nourish, rest, listen in and realign. Nature did it, so why can’t we?
The world had radically shifted since 2016 when Groundswell was born. And my goal was always that Groundswell COMMUNITY Project was built, inspired, and powered by the community, not me. But I could feel our nervous systems so intertwined that what I was experiencing Groundswell was experiencing. I went through a divorce, groundswell ended our branch model. I was feeling sucked dry and stretched thin…so was groundswell. In order for both of us to return to our truest light, creativity, and capacity in the world, rest was necessary. And giving Groundswell truly over to the community felt like the coming back to the way it was always meant to be. A baby is only as healthy as it’s mom and a mom is only as healthy and abundant as the community circling around her. It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a community to raise a Groundswell!
So, like in 2015, when I asked for maternity leave from my job at the San Diego Rescue Mission to birth the Groundswell that was growing within me. I found myself asking for maternity leave again, not just for me but for groundswell too. A time for me to disentangle my nervous system from Groundswell’s so she can grow independent of me and become her own thriving being. And for Groundswell as a collective community, to take time to bring the ship to port, to assess, repair, restock and re-chart the navigational points for this new world she is sailing in.
As soon as I spoke the words “we need a year long maternity leave” I felt a rush of release through my body, i saw the light at the end of the tunnel, a spark of hope, creativity, and possibility. It was a radical ask, a radical letting go and trusting, but a deep knowing that this is what is necessary. The earth and all it’s beings winter and Groundswell needs and deserves to winter as well so she can truly carry out her mission and vision in the current waves of this world most sustainably and revolutionarily. Not to just numbingly do the status quo, but to ask the big questions, challenge cultural norms, and truly be the groundswell of change internally and out in the world.
The board sent an invitation out to the community to rally together to be doula’s in this rebirth of Groundswell. To care for her and nurture her during this year of rest. To listen and learn from the last 7 years of failures and successes, hurt and harmony. To challenge the status quo and ask the questions; how can we do this better? and what is it that is actually needed in this current time and place? rather than this is what we have always done, this is the system we are in, so this is what we will continue doing. Participants, volunteers, professionals, trainees, interns, old staff and new groundswell stokers all came together to give of their time, skills, energy, and stoke to support Groundswell over this next year of maternity leave.
As I enter into this year of wintering for myself, I feel excitement, hope, nourishment, and possibility. I sit in the mystery as I hand my baby over to her community, letting them care for her and nourish her, and grow her in ways I could have never even dreamed of. I am sure there will be times when I will want to step in, do it differently, interject…but my challenge for myself is to release all ego and simply trust. Groundswell was birthed to be Community and now after 7 years of breast feeding her, she is more than ready to walk on her own and grow beyond my wildest dreams.
