The Girl Gang of Encinitas

Tribute to a living memory

of what unfolded between 2020 and 2025.

Because it was not ordinary.

It was not explainable.

It was something closer to… being held inside a mystery.

⸻

There was a time I had nothing.

No stability. No certainty. No clear map.

Just a quiet, unwavering pull toward something I could only describe as love.

Not romantic love.

Not even logical love.

But a frequency.

A direction.

A knowing that lived somewhere deeper than thought.

And I followed it.

That choice… changed everything.

What met me on the other side of that decision

was not ease—

it was initiation.

A descent into stillness.

Into silence.

Into long hours of meditation where thoughts dissolved

and something else began to speak.

I was receiving things I had no business “knowing.”

Insights that didn’t feel like they came from me—

but through me.

Looking back now, I understand:

That was my second life beginning.

That was the adolescence I never had—

finally arriving in my thirties,

after a body that had known illness instead of freedom.

It was true health. It was earned freedom. And it was learning how to live “life as my medicine.”

It was learning to live, by way of seeking out love under every rock and around every corner. I believed it existed out there but I just hadn’t found it yet.

It was as if life whispered,

“We’re going to try this again… but this time, you’re ready.”

⸻

And then… there were the women.

No searching. No forcing.

Just… convergence.

One day, we were simply in the same place.

And somehow, without ceremony or introduction,

we opened.

Fully.

The kind of opening that bypasses politeness

and goes straight to the truth.

We spoke our wounds out loud—

the same wounds, echoing through different lives.

It was almost unsettling how aligned it was.

Like five mirrors suddenly placed in a circle,

reflecting the same fracture

from different angles.

And then… we began to heal.

Not as teachers.

Not as experts.

But as women remembering each other—

And, subsequently, ourselves.

⸻

Those days feel like they existed underwater.

Soft. Distorted. Sacred.

Time didn’t move the same.

Everything carried meaning.

We would learn something in the morning: a truth, a boundary, a new way of seeing—

and by evening, life would test it.

Through each other.

Through the world.

Through the exact scenarios required

to anchor the lesson into our bones.

It wasn’t always easy: there were triggers.

Misunderstandings.

Moments where old wounds reached for control again.

But we stayed.

And in staying, something rare was built—

trust that wasn’t dependent on perfection.

⸻

We also lived.

Not in a polished, curated way—

but in motion.

Skateboards and saltwater.

Bike rides that turned into emotional breakthroughs.

Laughter that dissolved into tears.

Tears that turned into something like relief.

We were learning how to love again.

Not the idea of love—

but the practice of it.

How to hold each other

without losing ourselves.

How to see clearly

without turning away.

⸻

And somewhere in all of this…

without anyone naming it…

without anyone trying…

I began to believe in God again.

Not the version I had been taught.

Not something external or demanding.

But something woven through everything.

Something that orchestrates meetings

that no logic could arrange.

Something that places five women

with identical wounds

into one circle

at the exact right time.

Something that guides, quietly—

without needing to announce itself.

The most beautiful part?

None of us were trying to be healers.

And yet… healing happened.

Constantly.

Naturally.

Inevitably.

Because we loved each other—

and we knew we were loved.

So we chose, again and again,

to understand instead of defend.

Not perfectly.

We missed it sometimes.

We fell back into old patterns.

But the moments we chose love over defense—

they changed everything.

They didn’t just resolve the moment…

They healed deep deep wounds—

And they deepened the bonds.

That’s what sisterhood means to me now.

Not perfection—

but the willingness to return to love.

Like it was never ours to do—

Never ours to seek—

only ours to allow.

____

And now…

the tide is shifting.

We are dispersing. Expanding.

Being pulled into different directions,

different lives,

different expressions of who we’ve become.

Some connections stretching—evolving into new forms.

Others softening into memory.

Nothing feels broken.

Just… complete.

Because now we’ve each learned the true meaning of:

NAMASTE.

⸻

These years gave me something unshakable.

A foundation that doesn’t depend on circumstance.

A knowing that doesn’t collapse under pressure.

A relationship with life that feels rooted in something eternal.

Because I didn’t just heal—

I was witnessed healing.

Held while healing.

Reflected back to myself

until I could finally see clearly.

⸻

Encinitas…

you were my greenhouse.

My sanctuary.

My in-between world.

My place of becoming.

You gave me my sisters

in a way that can only be described as divine.

And even as we ride different waves now—

different tides, different directions—

I know this:

We touched something real.

And anything real…

never disappears.

⸻

Maybe one day,

we’ll find ourselves on the same wave again.

But even if we don’t—

what we built

lives on

in who we’ve become.

And that…

is forever.