Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board

by Bethany Hamilton

  I have another coach, Ben Aipa, the legendary coach of surfing gods like Sonnny Garcia and Kelly Slater, who has helped me a lot since the attack. I have to do things differently now, and Ben has a solution to every problem. For example, he taught me to kick with my feet while paddling (with only one arm, you don’t have lot of power to propel yourself). Well, I was kicking, but I just didn’t seem to be up to speed. So he said, “Don’t be afraid to grunt and make noise out there!” I felt pretty stupid at first, but I did it, and it worked. Anything he comes up with I listen to.

  My other coaches are my parents. Dad’s my game plan man. Before a heat, we sit and watch the waves coming into shore, and then we discuss my best approach. My mom coaches me more on the mental and spiritual side of my surfing. She kind of helps me get into my zone. We pray for my peace of mind out there.

  surfspeak

  One of the coolest things about surfing is it has a language all its own. Here are just a few of the terms we surfers use in and out of the waves:

  Glassy: When the surface of the water is smooth and without wind

  Set: Waves usually come in sets of two to five

  Angry growler: A huge, gnarly wave

  Haired out: Too scared to take off on a wave

  Power turn: A manner of surfing where each turn is taken with strong, deliberate force

  Scorched: Being dropped in on or burned by another surfer. Sometimes refers to taking a severe wipeout

  Promising swell: A swell predicted by the weather service that is starting to show up

  Stoked: More than excited

  Paddling out: Stroking out to where the waves begin to break

  Jostling for position: A term used in competitive surfing for getting into the place where you can catch the wave first

  Drop in: Sliding into a wave

  Aerials: A maneuver that has a surfer soaring in the air before landing

  Backdoor barrel: Dropping into a wave so late that you have to go through the pitching peak to get to the shoulder of the wave.

  Grommet (Grom): A young surfer

  Thruster: A three-finned board

  Ding: A dent on a board

  Tiki: A wooden god formerly worshipped by Polynesians

  Duck dive: Diving under waves to get to the sets

  Groovemeister: A Kauai term for someone who is smooth when surfing

  Close out: When the wave breaks all at the same time, giving you no place to go

  Rip: The current that draws a swimmer out to sea; also, the art of aggressive surfing

  Off the wall: A surf spot on Oahu that attracts lots of photographers

  Being pitched: To be thrown off the top of the wave

  Airdrop: A very late takeoff when the surfer drops through the air to the bottom of the wave

  Wax up: To put sticky wax on top of the surfboard to keep from slipping

  Boil: A bubbling movement of water around a submerged rock or reef head

  Chop: Small waves on the face of the water or a wave produced by unfavorable winds

  Pummeled: Getting tossed around by a breaking wave

  Aggro: Aggressive surfing or surfer

  Inside the bowl: The bowl refers to a part of some waves that tend to wrap around into a bowl shape

  Ankle slappers: Small waves

  Bottom turn: the turn made at the bottom of a breaking wave

  Cutback: A sharp turn back toward the power center of the wave

  Goofy foot: Right foot forward

  Regular foot: Left foot forward

  Kick out: To thrust out of the wave at the end of the ride

  Bail: To abandon the board and head for the bottom

  Bogus: Fake

  Carve: To surf using lots of turns and cutbacks

  Full on: Committed and intense

  Gnarly: Heavy, powerful, thick

  Gun: Big board used for giant surf

  Impact zone: The place where all the power of a breaking wave focuses

  Line up: The place where waves first start to break and where surfers sit

  Macking: Huge sets like a Mack truck

  Quad: Four fins

  Getting worked: Taking a bad wipeout

  Kook: A novice surfer who gets in the way

  Dirty lickings: To take a severe wipeout

  Rag dolled: To be held under and swept around by the power of the wave

  Skeg: The fin of a surfboard

  Soul Surfer: A surfer who merely surfs for the love of the sport

  Spongers: Surfers who ride body boards

  Soup: The white water made by a breaking wave

  Stringer: The wooden strip running down the center of a surfboard

  Flat: No surf

  Off shore: The preferable wind direction blowing from land to sea

  Zoo: A place packed with surfers

  Burned: When another surfer takes off on the same wave that you are riding

  Stuffed: When a surfer burns you and then by his actions forces the wave to bury you

  Tubed: Riding deep inside the pitching wave

  14

  aftermath

  I think a lot about how my accident has affected the lives of the people around me. When something like this happens, you’re not the only one who feels pain and suffering. You’re not the only one who is left with a scar.

  Alana is normally a kind of quiet girl and I know she tends to keep a lot inside. I know that she’s had a hard time with this—there were nights she was so haunted by what happened that she was too scared to sleep alone in her room. Instead, she would crawl into her parents’ bed. She’d also cry—for no reason in particular. And I do think that it’s also had an impact on her surfing. She doesn’t like to surf some of the fine breaks that are far from shore, and she has never been able to bring herself to return to Tunnels.

  We talk about it off and on and both feel the same way, even though I am the one who was actually attacked. Alana never even saw the shark, but being so close to a terrible accident can have the same affect as being the victim. She knows that it could have just as easily been her.

  We have been friends since “hanabata days” (Hawaiian term used for the days of childhood but it really means from the days we had snotty noses), and we are more like sisters than friends. And to have something bad happen to your sister really hits you deeply.

  I don’t really push her to talk about it. With our friendship, there’s this kind of unspoken language between us. I can almost read her mind and she can read mine, so we don’t have to spend a lot of time with words. We get it. We understand what the other is feeling without asking, “What’s up?”

  Alana’s dad, Holt, also has a lot to deal with. He’s constantly asking himself, “What if the ambulance hadn’t come in time? What if I had made the decision earlier that morning that the waves were too small to bother with and we all had gone home? What if the bite had been more severe?” Alana, her family, and I have all had counseling to help us deal with the stress. That counseling seemed to help a lot. Today, I can honestly say it’s not something I constantly think about—which is a major step toward healing. Of course, every once in a while I see myself in the mirror and it hits me: “Whoa, you only have one arm, girl!” And every so often I see pictures of myself with both arms and I feel a twinge of sadness. But I’m working—we all are—to get over it. To deal with the new challenges. Past is past. On to bigger and better!

  the new me

  The changes I’ve undergone have been both physical and emotional. First of all, I don’t wear shoes much anymore (you try tying your laces with one hand!). I either go barefoot or wear my rubber slippers. I have a prosthetic arm, but honestly, I never wear it. It just hangs by the window in my room. I tried it, but it was too unnatural and restricting with all the straps and the clothing that must go over it, especially for someone like me who spends 90 percent of her day in a bathing suit. So I just kind of run around with my one arm—I call what’s left of the other “stumpy.”

  I have an agent,
Roy, in Beverly Hills trying to find deals for me. He wants to help get my story out all over the place, to use it to inspire people. He also wants me not to have to worry about the future. But it’s a funny kind of relationship because I want to do all the interviews and other things he lines up, but at the same time I’m always trying to get out of them. Things like interviews keep me from doing what I love: surfing.

  I worried that Rip Curl wouldn’t want to sponsor me after the attack, but they were incredibly supportive. They just want me to be myself. Of course if I enter and win contests, that makes them really happy, and naturally they want me to wear Rip Curl clothing (which I like to do because I think it’s cute). They think it’s funny that I knot up one sleeve of their shirt when I am doing a TV interview. Right from the start, while I was still in the hospital, they let me know that they were sticking with me. And that is a very cool thing for a company to do. Now, besides winning contests, they see me as an ambassador of goodwill and the surfing culture. If I ever stop entering contests I am sure that I will still be sponsored to surf and that I will be in ads featuring their clothing.

  And here is the coolest thing: if I never win another contest, or if I decided to leave the contest scene altogether, people would still know me and recognize me as “that surfer girl who got her arm bitten off by a shark.” I think I’ll forever be tied to the sport because of what happened, which is very cool. I’d like people to associate me with surfing, even when I’m ninety years old! I have a feeling I’ll be on a board even then.

  What’s in my bag when I travel:

  • Bible

  • lip balm with sunscreen

  • Rip Curl clothes

  • no cell phone. . . . not healthy!

  • no shoes!

  • my fave CDs for the flight or drive

  • surf magazines (I read the ones I’m in, but I think I sound like a goof a lot of the time)

  • a camera to shoot pics to show my friends and family back home

  • a cool journal to keep track of what I am doing and feeling

  • surfboard

  me in the movies?

  Roy promised me there would be some really big things coming up for me. But a movie of my life? I can’t really imagine it (who will play me?) but I am looking forward to the surfing scenes, which I will do, and I have faith that it will be a true movie and convey my faith. I guess I’ve even had a little taste of the Hollywood scene already: I’ve been on the red carpet at the ESPY and Teen Choice Awards. Who would ever have thought I’d be meeting Britney Spears and rubbing elbows with celebs? It was wild—and I had my friends Chantilly and Tiffany from Beverly Hills to escort me to these events and style me. Thank God—without them, I would have probably been walking down the red carpet barefoot!

  I was just in Portugal, where I made a short film for Volvo. In it, I drive a car down the beach and teach surfing to Grete Consuela, the jockey. It was fun, although I don’t really think I have it in me to be an actress. It took way too long—almost a whole day—to shoot just one little three-minute commercial. Actors must have a lot of patience.

  I’ll be back in New York City in the winter for an event at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. I’ll be receiving an honor from the Women’s Sports Federation. I am very determined to do a lot of cool surfing before that award to prove I deserve it.

  All of this glamorous stuff is great, but my biggest excitement is getting to work with the World Vision Foundation, which is a Christian humanitarian organization that helps poor children in about a hundred countries around the world. I’m excited to work with World Vision because through them I can use my voice to help children living in poverty with disabilities get the care and support they need. Many children around the world have to fend for themselves if they have disabilities or health problems. World Vision has a program called Put Hope in Motion that lets me use my surfing to raise awareness and funds to help these kids.

  15

  part of a plan

  When I was a kid I learned something that Christ said. As a person who lives near the beach, it made a lot of sense to me:

  These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.

  But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.”

  — MATTHEW 7:24-27 (THE MESSAGE)

  My plans to be a professional surfer got hit pretty hard on that Halloween morning. It was my own personal tornado. In the days, weeks, and months that followed I had a lot of cleaning up to do. Often, it was scary or trying. And I won’t lie to you: in some ways it still is.

  But for me, knowing that God loves me and that He has a plan for my life that no shark can take away is like having solid rock underneath me. Look, lots of bad stuff happens to people. That’s life. And here’s my advice: don’t put all your hope and faith into something that could suddenly and easily disappear. And honestly, that’s almost anything. The only thing that will never go away, that will never fail you, is your faith in God.

  I have been very blessed in my life. People ask me, “How can you say that after this horrible thing happened to you?” Because I have to look at the big picture: I have a family that loves me, supports me, and encourages me to go after my dreams. I have a big ohana of Christian friends and friends from the community and the surf world that care about me. I have close personal friends, like Sarah, Holt, Troy and Malia, Alana, Kayla, Noelani, Savana, Kristen, Michelle, Camille, Jackie, Kalie, Kyah and Summer—to name a few. These people like me for who I am: one arm, two arms or no arms, it doesn’t matter.

  But most of all, I have a relationship with Christ that keeps me strong and helps me see how good can come out of a bad situation. I think the reason I haven’t gotten all bummed out about losing an arm is due to God. I think that the reason I have been able to tell my story on TV and in magazines is because God wanted other people to know that He is the rock that you can build your life on.

  So I think this was God’s plan for me all along. I am not saying that God made the shark bite me. I think He knew it would happen, and He made a way for my life to be happy and meaningful in spite of it happening. I know that sometimes people get angry at God when bad things that can’t be explained happen to them. Which I can understand, and I know that I sometimes wonder, “Why me?”

  There was this guy named Job in the Old Testament who was a believer but had really terrible things happen to him. So bad that his friends told him that he must have done something really awful to deserve what was happening, and that he ought to just cuss out God and die. His reply to those guys was “Even if God kills me, yet I will trust Him.”

  He knew that God was good and that he loved him in spite of everything. Well, I can’t explain why, but I have the same kind of attitude. I know in the beginning my family struggled to make sense of my attack, but now they have made peace with it. They trust that God knows what is going on and will make good come from bad. I think that if I can help other people find hope in God, then that is worth losing my arm for.

  My friend Sarah says that I get to be the voice of God. I usually roll my eyes when she says it, because if I were God, I would never have chosen me, of all people, to speak for Him! There are a lot of other people who can say things better than I can. But it is His plan and for reasons I don’t understand, at least for a while, He has chosen me to say what He wants people to know; that He is real, that He loves them, that they can know Him and trust Him. Maybe he picked me because I tell it like it is: I don’t know how to sound smart or sophisticated in interviews. I just say what’s in my heart
and hopefully my mouth cooperates!

  And I am thankful. I could have died. I could have been really mangled. I could have been hurt so bad that I might not have been able to surf again. I have lots and lots of things to be thankful for.

  I don’t really want people looking to me for inspiration. I just want to be a sign along the way that points toward heaven. I think that God probably did talk to Sarah on the way to the hospital. That verse He brought to her mind was not just for my brother, my mom or for me. I think it’s for every person who is feeling down or defeated or a little lost in life, perhaps angry or frustrated by what’s going on: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

  I’m proud to be part of God’s plans, and I hope, in some small way, this surfer girl from Hawaii can make Him proud, too.