There was this one day I found myself standing on the soft sands of Tallebudgera Beach on the Gold Coast. It’s in our own neck of the woods, yet somehow it feels like a secret slice of paradise… a place where the turquoise water kisses the earth so gently it’s hard to believe it’s real. A couple of years before Covid, I had fallen ill with an autoimmune disease called Graves’ disease, and for lack of a better word, it was hell.
The heart races like a trapped bird, beating 150 times a minute while you’re just standing still. You burn through food like a furnace and yet never feel full. I remember waking at 3am, walking to the kitchen, and eating an entire family block of Cadbury Top Deck chocolate. Half milk, half white — my personal heaven. It sounds funny now, but there’s a loneliness to illness that no one warns you about. It consumes you from the inside out.
My hair began to fall out. My eyes grew large and unrecognisable. My hands shook. I looked like a stranger in my own skin. And people, bless them, often stared with quiet judgment. They thought I was unwell in another way — the kind that invites whispers rather than compassion. But illness humbles you. It stretches your empathy. It makes you see that those who are harsh are often carrying unseen pain of their own.
After months of this, medication started helping. My strength began to return, little by little. And one morning, I asked my husband if we could go to the beach. Now, he is not a beach person. The man hates sand in his shorts more than he hates early mornings, but he would have done anything to see me smile again. That’s love, isn’t it? Not the grand gestures, but the quiet willingness to go where the other person feels most alive.
So off we went…. our three children chattering in the back seat, the car filled with towels, laughter, and the faint scent of sunscreen and hope. The day was glorious. The ocean was postcard-perfect — or, in modern terms, Instagram-worthy. The water shimmered, the sky opened up, and for the first time in months, I felt like myself again.
We wandered to a more secluded part of the beach. I took off my shoes and sank my feet into the cool sand. The sensation nearly broke me open. After so much sickness and stillness, the simple act of feeling the earth beneath me felt like winning the lottery. My youngest ran through the shallows, her laughter carried by the wind, and it sounded like music — like the world was trying to tell me, you made it back.
I closed my eyes and thanked God for breath, for beauty, for the ability to feel joy again. When I opened them, tears had found their way down my cheeks. That was divinity speaking — not in thunder, but in sunlight and saltwater. Not in words, but in love.
For a few precious minutes, everything felt exactly as it should. Then I looked around. The spell broke a little. The beach was dotted with young, beautiful people — all of them holding their phones. Perfectly styled, perfectly posed, perfectly detached from the miracle surrounding them. No one was looking at the ocean. No one was laughing, playing, splashing, or surrendering. They were capturing what they could not feel.
My heart sank.
I wanted to take them by the shoulders and say, Don’t miss this. Don’t miss your own life while trying to record it. Don’t forget what it feels like to be alive. You are healthy. You are free. You are standing in paradise — and it is asking nothing of you except to notice it.
But it wasn’t my place to interfere. So I turned back to my family. I let the moment pass. My husband was tackling my son in the shallows, both of them laughing until they couldn’t breathe. My daughters were spinning in the waves like wildflowers. So I joined them.
I laughed. I splashed. I lived.
“Presence is the prayer.”
“Gratitude turns survival into awe.”
“When we look up, the Soul looks back.”
That day was more than a visit to the beach. It was a remembering. A quiet homecoming. The kind of moment that reminds you that life is fragile and breathtaking and worthy of your full attention.
If we spend every moment holding a phone, we lose touch with the sacredness of what’s right in front of us — the texture, the temperature, the truth of it all. The world is meant to be lived in, not scrolled through.
Life isn’t meant to be curated. It’s meant to be devoured.
So look up.
Breathe deeply.
Be here.
If the mullet can make a comeback, there’s hope for presence too.
With salt, love, and gratitude,
Kylie
@mindfulheal on X