{"id":1477,"date":"2026-06-07T16:19:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T16:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/?p=1477"},"modified":"2026-06-07T16:21:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T16:21:54","slug":"turning-with-the-tide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/?p=1477","title":{"rendered":"Turning with the Tide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some crossings happen long after the journey begins.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently returned to the South Carolina Lowcountry with my husband, eager to share a place that has long stirred something in me I could never quite explain. We wandered through Beaufort’s quiet streets lined with antebellum homes, drove beneath canopies of live oaks draped in Spanish moss, and stood at the edge of marshes that seemed to stretch endlessly toward the horizon. It is a landscape of extraordinary beauty, yet also one layered with history\u2026of triumph and suffering, inheritance and resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lowcountry has a way of reminding you that life moves in cycles. The tides rise and fall. Storms come and go. The land endures, as do the people. A friend reminded me of The Prince of Tides<\/em>, and not long after returning home, I watched the film again. I had first seen it decades earlier, but this time it felt different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pat Conroy’s story follows Tom Wingo as he confronts the painful truths of his family history and the ways those experiences shaped the man he became. Watching it now, after years of my own reflection and writing, I found myself less focused on the tragedy and more drawn to Tom’s journey toward understanding. Not forgiveness or reconciliation, but the freedom that comes from finally seeing things as they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For much of my life, I carried the weight of my past, as though it were my responsibility to fix, explain, or make sense of it. Like Tom, I spent years navigating emotional tides that were never of my making. Family dynamics, disappointments, unmet needs, and old wounds have a way of pulling us back into familiar waters, even when we desperately want to move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What struck me most this time was not Tom’s pain but his liberation. His willingness to finally tell the truth about what happened. To stop protecting the stories that had imprisoned him. To understand that acknowledging the past is not the same as remaining captive to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere between the marshes of the Lowcountry and Tom Wingo\u2019s reckoning with his past, I found myself revisiting my own family history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The details were different, but the currents felt familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Family histories have a way of shaping us long after the events themselves have passed, pulling us back toward questions we spend years trying to answer. That realization felt less like a revelation and more like a recognition; I had been walking toward understanding for years.  Writing my story was never about blame.  It was about freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was about releasing myself from the obligation to carry what was never mine to carry. It was about understanding that some people cannot give what they do not have, and that acceptance can be more liberating than forgiveness. It was about recognizing that clarity is not cruelty, and that distance is not abandonment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standing in Beaufort, surrounded by centuries-old homes and marshlands shaped by the daily pull of the tides, I found myself reflecting on how both land and people continue to navigate what came before them. We cannot change our history, but we can decide what to do with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps that is why The Prince of Tides<\/em> resonated so deeply this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title itself speaks to the forces that shape us\u2026the tides of memory, family, loss, and love. But unlike the tide, we are not destined to repeat the same patterns forever. We can learn from them, navigate them, and, eventually, leave them behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truth-telling is often mistaken for blame; they are not the same.\u00a0 Like Tom Wingo, I eventually realized that acknowledging what happened was not an accusation; it was an act of release.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story was never written to expose others.\u00a0 It was written to free me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, I believed freedom might come from understanding the past, fixing it, or finding a final explanation for it. Instead, freedom arrived the moment I stopped asking it to be different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Tom Wingo, I discovered that freedom was never found in changing the past. It was found in finally telling the truth about it\u2014and then releasing it to the tide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some crossings happen long after the journey begins. I recently returned to the South Carolina Lowcountry with my husband, eager to share a place that has long stirred something in me I could never quite explain. We wandered through Beaufort’s quiet streets lined with antebellum homes, drove beneath canopies of live oaks draped in Spanish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,65,63,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal-contemplation","category-reflective-reviews","category-self-discovery","category-storytelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1480,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions\/1480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}