The Pacific: On Leaving, Listening, and Letting Life Write Through You

I never would have believed that an entire season of life could exist for the sole purpose of meeting one singular person—or experiencing one particular thing. Not until I wrote my book.

I initially moved to San Francisco after leaving the Midwest in search of greater truth regarding my existence. What I was really searching for, I now understand, was a way to unlock the layers of my person and soul that had been pressed firmly—face and palms first—against the glass ceiling of my normal life. My acceptable and productive life. I carried this quiet awareness that my consciousness was contained in ways I did not yet know how to articulate.

Years earlier, I had visited San Francisco and remembered a particular hike that traced the edge of the Pacific Ocean. When I returned to live there, I sought it out again. Land's End I came to learn like backyard terrain. Some days I went to just observe the Ocean. To stand in awe, watching the waves thunder against the rock formations. Other days, I was mesmerized, watching the slow undulation of the power held in its belly and feeling my own power pulsate in response.

When I moved, I also started a new position in my medical career. This was noteworthy only in that it indirectly permitted the dissolution of the idealistic fantasies that upheld my commitment to self-abandonment up to that point in my life. The ER by nature, is a gritty place. A demanding place. The sleepless nights, poor diet, caffeine dysregulated nervous systems were its toll. Yet, it was reverent, in its own way.

The dim lights and austere tones feel like a bow to the tragedies it held, and to the people who returned to witness them, day after day. Death was a regular, though unpredictable, visitor that marched the halls, claiming the souls it felt rightly belonged to it. The hardest days were the ones when it stole those that should have never been taken. With ache so heavy it curled my shoulders in some days, I visited the Ocean. On the days I wondered why exactly life had brought me to California, I visited the Ocean. On days, when I simply wanted to hear the conversations in the trees that lined the path, I visited.

This job offered me truth I was not yet prepared to accept. I came to see that each clinical encounter, each moment of supposed care, was laced with invisible negotiations—profit, documentation, productivity metrics. The sacred heart of the work was buried deep, outpaced by systems that rewarded efficiency over presence. Far down on that list was the original true nature of what the work was meant to be. On the day I decided to leave, I visited the Ocean. I wanted it to tell me that I was doing the right thing. The noble thing. I remembered it was uncannily still. No grand waves, no displays of power. Just stillness.

I packed up my life into a small storage container and left, with more questions than I had arrived with. What was this all for?

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When I returned four months later, I found a small studio in Oakland, California. One with beautiful natural light, a view of a community garden and palm trees—an odd combo, I thought—and just enough space for me to feel safe enough to start untangling the knots in my consciousness. The writing flowed intuitively from this place of questioning and restructuring. I wrote, not because I initially intended to write a book, but because the questions would not stop coming. And finally, I was rested enough to hear the answers. I also began working again. This time in a smaller county ER, just outside of the metropolitan buzz. And even there, from across the bay, I made the ritual pilgrimage to Land's End whenever I could muster the courage to face the Bay Bridge traffic.

Writing this book required distinct stages, though I only realized that in hindsight. The first was seeking permission—permission to write at all, and then also to be open enough to write.

The former went something like this: I'm not a writer. I'm a doctor. I do write, but only in journals I've kept since I was a child. I do read quite a bit, I suppose. And I think that if I work my way through this whole existential unraveling I'm having, I could have something meaningful to share that could help others. Okay, let's give it a try. Let's learn and grow through this.

The latter task—granting myself permission to be open enough to write—proved much more difficult. The topics I was drawn to were deeply innate. They lived in raw, vulnerable places. The only way I could write something honest—something true—was by going into those recesses. I had to ask myself: What am I afraid of? What areas of my psyche still feel like tender wounds? What do I believe the point of my existence is?

I asked, and answered, through writing. Over and over. I created containers for all the questions I carried, and filled them with what I'd come to understand—through experience, through reading, through witnessing humanity.

The day after I completed the final draft of my book, I visited the Ocean, this time in celebration.

And she was gleeful. She thundered and misted, and rolled high onto the rocks. The sun was also as bright as I had seen in a while through the typical San Francisco fog. My breath quite literally arrested when the realization came over me:

I came to California to meet the Pacific Ocean.

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