The Wave Got Me Moving. The Lighthouse Got Me Home

What the Lighthouse Knows.

There’s a version of me that got a little lost once. Not dramatically, no thunder, no movie scene. Just quiet. Like someone slowly turning the dimmer switch down on a house while you’re still living in it. Room by room. Moment by moment.

But here’s the thing about dimmer switches, someone always turns them back up. And that someone is residing in you. That someone was always in me. And that one morning, I just felt like opening my eyes.

I didn’t have a plan that morning. I never do when the best things happen. I just ended up at the edge of the ocean, barefoot, at that impossible hour right before sunrise, when the sky can’t decide if it’s night or day and just splits the difference with this outrageous orange glow that no filter has ever done justice to. Believe me, I’ve tried. Many times. Aggressively.

The foam touched my toes first. Cold. Then not cold. Just there.

And something in me, something that had been holding its breath for a long time, finally exhaled.

I wasn’t fixed. I wasn’t healed. Nothing that tidy. I was just suddenly, quietly ready. Ready to put down what I’d been carrying. Ready to stop performing and start being. Ready to meet myself, the actual, unedited, still-becoming version of me, right there at the water’s edge.

The waves kept rolling in, patient and unhurried, like the ocean already knew and was simply waiting for me to catch up.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, there it was. A lighthouse. Standing at Jupiter Inlet, solid and certain, cutting through the last of the darkness with this steady, sweeping beam of light.

But it wasn’t white.

Every lighthouse in every painting, every postcard, every Pinterest board I’ve ever lovingly over-curated, white. Always white. This one? Red brick. Bold, warm, completely unbothered by everyone else’s idea of what a lighthouse is supposed to look like.

It just stood there. In its own color. Doing its job. Showing up.

And its light, circling, steady, gloriously unhurried, swept across that fading sky like it had nowhere else to be and nothing to prove. Just turning. Just shining. Again and again and again.

I stood there and felt something shift. Like a door opening inside me that I didn’t even know had been closed. Like the chaos behind me was suddenly, simply, behind me.

Here’s what makes me smile now, looking back. The moment that rearranged something permanent inside me wasn’t a breakthrough session or a mountaintop epiphany. It was cold foam on bare feet and a stubborn red brick lighthouse that refused to be white like all the others.

But maybe that’s exactly the point. The lighthouse doesn’t chase the lost ships. It doesn’t move, doesn’t search, doesn’t explain itself. It just stays lit. Stays itself. Trusts that the right person will look up at exactly the right moment and find their way back.

That morning, I was the right person. That was my moment.

I used to think I needed someone else to be my lighthouse. Someone steady and certain so I could finally feel safe enough to bloom.

But lighthouses don’t rescue you. They illuminate the path and let you walk it.

So that’s the work now, and honestly, it’s the most exciting work I’ve ever done. Not waiting for someone else’s light. Becoming my own. Red brick and all. Unbothered. Steady. Showing up in my own color, doing my own job, trusting that the right people will find their way to my light exactly when they’re supposed to.

The wave got me moving. The lighthouse got me home. And now? Now I’m just out here, staying lit. Being my own Cheekyda.