Dear Matt, In less than a day, I’ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I’m so excited and scared that I can’ t sleep – even though I have to wake up in five hours! You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They’re here in a box under my bed – all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you. But you don’ t say anything. Remember how you’d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that’s crazy? Matt, please don’ t think badly about Frankie’s contest. It’s just a silly game. It’s so Frankie, you know? No, I guess you wouldn't’ t. You’d kill her if you did! She just misses you. We all do. I’ll look out for her, though. I promise. Please watch over us tomorrow, and for the next few weeks while we’re away. You’ll be in my thoughts the whole time, like always. I’m going to find some Red Sea glass for you. I miss you more than you could ever know. Love, Anna

— Sarah Ockler

Dear Waves, You have been restless all your life? Or maybe uneasy? I don't know quiet. Oscillating between faiths, swinging between shores! Yet when we sit next to you on those sands, do you never feel like sharing what bothers you so much?

— Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?

— Jennifer Elisabeth

Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside the lines and become who they’re destined to be.

— Jennifer Elisabeth

Endless ocean, blue water, dreamy sky, tranquil beach, love in the air, mind fly high.

— Debasish Mridha

Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love.

— Jennifer Elisabeth

For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to.

— Jennifer Elisabeth

Have you ever walked along a beach? You walk towards something in the distance. For the longest while it never seems to get any closer even though you are walking and walking. Then all of a sudden, you are there. You’ve arrived at last. That's what grief is like. Meanwhile, we are running with you in the spray of the surf at the edge of the shore where the sand meets the sea. We are cheering you on.

— Kate McGahan

He could pour himself into my little paper cup heart and my emptiness would finally have a meaning.

— Jennifer Elisabeth

He looked at me, that first day, like he had just found something he’d lost a thousand years ago.

— Jennifer Elisabeth