Guest Blog: Has This Been Doing This My Whole Life?

By Dorris Walker-Taylor, Sr. Ambassador & Graduate Advisor and 2012 Graduate

When I first came into the program in 2009, my life had been full of trauma, fear, violence, darkness, and survival. I had seen the underside of bridges. I had seen pain. I had seen things no woman should ever have to live through. But I had never seen the beach. I had never seen the ocean. I had never stood in front of a body of water so big, so beautiful, and so alive.

I was on a trip to Florida with Thistle Farms. Becca Stevens was there, Shawna was there, and Tim Fudge was there too, who is no longer with us on this earth. On the way there, Becca kept saying, “Dorris, when we get there, we’re going to the beach.”

And I was terrified.

At that time, I was only about 3 years clean, and I was still full of trauma. I also had a real fear of darkness, so the thought of going to the beach at night scared me. I remember thinking, “Oh no, we cannot go to the beach at night. The alligators will come out!” And Becca, in her Becca way, said something like, “Dorris, alligators very seldom come out and bite you.”

We didn’t go that night. We went the next morning.

And when I got there, I was amazed.

I had never seen anything like it in my whole life. The water was so big. The waves kept coming in and going out, coming in and going out, all by themselves. I could smell the salt in the air. I could see the driftwood. I could feel the sand under my feet. It was fresh, clean, beautiful, and glorious. It smelled like healing. It smelled like sea salt and driftwood before I even knew how to describe it that way.

And Becca always tells this part in her own way. She says that as soon as my feet hit that sugar sand, I raised my hands in the air, tilted my head back, and with that big Dorris voice, I said, “Has this been doing this my whole life?”

And Becca said, “Yes, Dorris, since the very beginning of time.”

That moment touched something deep in me.

Because for the first time, I realized there was beauty in the world that had been going on even while I was just trying to survive. There was peace that had been moving all along. There was wonder that had been waiting on me. There was something bigger than my pain, bigger than my trauma, bigger than everything I had lived through.

The ocean had been moving my whole life.

And I was finally free enough to see it.

So when I think of Sea Salt Driftwood, I don’t just think of a scent. I think of that morning. I think of the salt in the air, the driftwood, the sugar sand, the waves, and the healing beauty that had been waiting on me all along.