How Surfing Helped Me Love My Body

I have always been a big girl. And that bigness colored my relationship with pretty much everything in my life with a negative tone, until I realized that it didn’t have to.

First I was just tall —so much so that my kindergarten photo when I was five years old was put in the school yearbook with the 7-year-olds in second grade. It stuck out, though, even though I somehow fit in.

I was wearing a colorful red dress in a funky 70s pattern with a red apple pinned to the top. The second graders at Holy Saviour School in suburban Philadelphia, however, wore the plaid uniforms in their school photos. A photo of a curly-haired, dark-eyed girl in a red dress was incongruous, like a bride wearing pink.

This bigness continued through puberty, when my hips and breasts swelled and I had what I realize now were enviable curves by the age of 12. But I just felt big, as I also reached my full height of nearly 5'9" at that age, literally a head and shoulders above many others in my class, especially the boys.

I was bullied pretty much consistently and constantly from when I started to get chubby at 9 years old until about 14. The worst of these experiences was when I was about 10, and a group of boys put flea powder on my coat when it was hanging up in the coat room and called me “Rover” for an entire year because they said I was such a dog.

Thinking about this experience now still stings as I sit here, at 48 — an accomplished and happy freelance writer and surfer in a loving relationship residing in a beautiful village on the southwest coast of Portugal.

The effect of feeling too big and thus somehow not good enough because of my size lingers to this day. The most persistent manifestation of this has been a consistent effort to shrink myself not just in size but in personality.

This carried with me when I moved to Aljezur, which is about equally distant in both geography and temperament as Norristown, Pennsylvania, the suburb of Philadelphia where I grew up. It is not just my physical home now, but where I feel at home, which I’ve learned in life is so much more important.

Aljezur is also where I learned to surf, the passion that changed my life. I arrived here on holiday at one of the first yoga/surf camps in the area (now there are many) in 2008 just before my 37th birthday. I’d been living alone in New York City for the past two years, single and lonely and wondering if my mounting credit card debt was worth the experience.

It wasn’t until I returned two months later with a friend that the surfing bug bit me, until I experienced *that* feeling that only a surfer knows when I finally was able to stand up and catch a wave. From then on I was hooked.

I moved to Portugal permanently in January 2010, chasing that love for surfing and a desire to live closer and more in harmony with nature. In light of the current global scenario, under the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, this decision seems quite inspired now, and I couldn’t be happier about having made it.

Surfing didn’t come naturally to me, being tall and rather heavy due more to the size and density of my bones rather than lots of excess fat. Once I fell in love with it and committed to learning, however, my love for the ocean and enthusiasm made up for what I lacked in skill.

That along with my general intelligence and observational skills allowed me to become proficient enough to really enjoy surfing my longboard in the right conditions, and confident enjoy to the challenge and exhilaration of being in the ocean (and know when to get the hell out of there) during the “wrong” ones.

Surfing has given me a confidence in myself and my body that I never thought I would have. I love that my bones are strong and heavy and can help me navigate days when the waves are a bit bigger without fearing injury.

I love how my strength allows me to carry my longboard down cliffs and across beaches to get to the water, to paddle out past fast-moving whitewater to get to the calm out back.

Most of all I love that feeling that surfing gives me — not just catching a wave but the whole experience — that sense of joy and then peace of mind that, even if it just lasts the rest of the day after a fun session, makes me feel as if all is right in the world.

Still, the bullying of my childhood and the awareness that I am not the typical surfer-girl size is never far below the surface, even when I’m in the midst of enjoying something I love so much.

Just the other day I paddled out for a sunset session at my local beach. The waves were small and perfect and the crowd also relatively small. I’d been away on a road trip with my partner for two weeks with no surf, so was quite happy to be back in the water for the first time in awhile.

That day the ocean decided to bless me with a number of waves. It was one of those sessions in which I always seemed to be in the right spot, and the generous crowd cheered me on rather than got pissed off that I was catching more waves than some others. There were plenty of waves to go around, so it wasn’t a problem to go on anything that came my way.

But as I always do when the eyes are on me as I’m taking off on a wave, I couldn’t entirely squelch the feeling that I would mess up the wave somehow. I thought maybe I would fall on take-off, or somehow or otherwise be a waste of time and space on a wave that someone else would have used better— a common fear for me when I surf in crowds.

I worried that people were observing my size in my wetsuit and thinking I couldn’t possibly surf well or be any good at this sport that is well known for highlighting hot surf chicks in bikinis, not middle-aged and slightly chubby women. I also felt like I shouldn’t surf too confidently or joyfully for fear that people might think I don’t deserve to enjoy my session that much.

As it was, I didn’t fall nor did I waste any waves that day. The break from surfing had done some good and the waves were perfectly suited to my ability and style. I surfed waves with confidence to completion and shared jokes and smiles all around with the small crowd of surfers in the water.

Later, driving home with a calm and happy heart, I allowed myself a moment to recognize the feeling I had of inadequacy in the water and its relationship to my body.

I made peace the way my image of myself and lack of body acceptance has colored so many parts of my life, and honored myself for going out there and enjoying my session anyway.

It is a daily, constant struggle, but that day I counted as a small victory.