Here we are again. Another milestone reached with another chapter that I’m proud to publish. This marks the first conversation I’ve shared during the process of writing this book, which begins to take us into the purpose of exploring my story in this way.

I’ve mentioned before that I never wanted this book to be the same as my presentations or my film, so it’s important to commit to a structure and a format that reveal a side of my experience that neither you nor I have encountered yet. I’ll be honest, I find it intimidating to ask people to contribute in this way, especially when they are people I don’t know. Luckily, in this case, Matt Davidson, who you will hear from in the chapter, was more than happy to share his experience and be involved.

He has a wealth of knowledge in the field of cognitive neuroscience, and I thought it would be an interesting conversation to pursue, given how little we know about how humans process death and traumatic events.

I’ve always been fascinated by the similarities between my story and those of other shark attack survivors, with some near-identical details that seem to recur. Beyond that, I’ve learned that these details aren’t always specific to shark attacks, so my curiosity has led me to wonder whether the human brain has some sort of mechanism to deal with these situations.

Like anything requiring an understanding of the human brain, I’ve come to learn that there aren’t always answers that help us rationalise how the human brain works, which often leads to more and more questions, as you’ll find out.

This conversation happened nearly 2 years ago, and it was a driver in how I’ve approached this book with an open mind and a willingness to have my beliefs, views, and opinions challenged.

I hope that, after reading this, you’ll understand the angle this book takes on challenging not only me but also readers and the way we approach people, things and topics we might not agree with.

I hope you enjoy it, and as always, please leave a comment with some feedback that I’d love to use to make this the best it can be.

Hi there!

Another week that I’m proud to be sharing a new chapter with you. I will say, it feels great to be making some more noticeable progress on the book right now, especially when I consider how long I’ve been slowly chipping away at things.

What you’ve read so far and what you will read today are chapters that I have written over the past 18 months so it’s been interesting to take a step back in time like this. A reflection of a reflection if you will.

What you haven’t seen are the new chapters that I’ve been writing as I’ve put a bit of structure around my weeks with the hopes of getting most of this done over the next 6 months. The new stuff I’ve been writing has been a lot of fun but this chapter you’re about to read is maybe my favourite in terms of the how the emotions and almost existential view of the attack are portrayed.

This is something that comes with over a decade of thinking about, and reliving the attack which might sound like it was an emotionally challenging process but it’s exercises like this that I believe have given me a healthy relationship with my trauma.

To me, this is a strong reinforcement of why I’ve taken so long to write this book. I think if I’d rushed it, the clarity in what I want represented from my experience may not be as impactful. The scary thing about writing a book is the knowledge that the words will live on forever (hopefully) in libraries and book stores all across the world. We’ve got a long time before we get to that point so let’s just take it one chapter at a time.

Chapter 3 is all about the moment of impact. The single point in time where everything in my life changed forever. It’s a short chapter but one that holds a lot of weight in setting up the rest of the book.

I hope you enjoy, and as always, if you have any feedback, leave a comment below.

Part I, Chapter 3 – The Attack

Memory Lane

Hello once again! Thanks for coming back to check out the second chapter of my book, ‘Beneath The Surface’.

The response to Chapter 1 has been overwhelmingly positive, which is obviously lovely in a world of self-gratification, but I do think it’s worth reiterating that I am also looking for feedback and constructive criticism, if applicable.

As I write this, I see that only a few journal posts ago I published a piece about a book I didn’t finish because I simply didn’t gel with the writing style and the way the book was structured. The irony of an unpublished author being critical of someone who’s sold millions of copies is not lost on me, so it’s just a gentle reminder that I’m a fraud if I don’t look for and take your feedback seriously.

Now let’s talk about this chapter quickly. This is probably the most fun I’ve had writing a chapter so far purely because it was a delight getting to relive some of my favourite memories growing up. I actually got carried away and had to cut 3-4 stories from this section because it was too long, and after doing that, it’s still probably too long.

So my question for you is whether I should break it into 2 chapters. My overall flow for the book is planned to alternate between my story/experience of the attack and the broader view of how we perceive these experiences. Breaking this into 2 chapters means it won’t be a perfect alternation, so is the pursuit of perfection in this case foolish?

In any case, I hope you enjoy the trip down memory lane as you learn what made me fall in love with surfing and what stage my career was at just before my entire life was turned upside down.