Mimo Khair Creative

There are places that never leave you, even if you step away. For me, it’s the sea. I was raised near the Mediterranean, and more than half of every year was spent at its edge—with family, in sun and salt, in rhythms shaped by tides. We played from morning until night, sometimes even swimming under the moonlight, our bodies suspended in the water as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I remember starfish—not clinging to rocks, but hidden beneath the sand, almost indistinguishable. I didn’t see them first; I felt them. My toes would graze something still and unexpected, and that’s how I found them, like little secrets the sea was willing to share only if you knew how to look. There were creatures I can still picture, though I’m no longer sure if they were real or imagined. But they remain with me all the same.

The sea holds beauty, but also sorrow. It’s tied to the heaviest losses in my life—tragedies that sit quietly beneath the surface of memory. Being away from it aches, but being with it hurts too. Still, I go. I return. I wade back into its depths because there’s something in it that calls me, something that reminds me of belonging. I surrender to its pull, even knowing the memories it stirs.

Since I was small, I’ve dreamt of waves—huge, crashing, powerful. Not dreams of wonder, but of fear. They overwhelm me, take me under. And yet, those dreams keep returning, just as I do. Because on the other side of that fear, there is something softer: the memory of floating, of being held. This photo, of me in the sea, captures that moment of trust. The sea may be wild. It may remind me of pain. But it also brings me back to life, again and again.