You don't need a perfect pop-up, Jen

👋 Hey, I'm Jen

I’m Jennifer Jefferies. I’m about to turn 65. I live on the Gold Coast in Australia. And five mornings a week, before most people have checked their phones, I’m in the ocean at sunrise. That still surprises people, and it surprises me sometimes too.

I didn’t grow up surfing. I didn’t have a lifelong dream of riding waves. I started at 55 because my 30-year-old male personal assistant casually said, “We should learn to surf Jen.”

I said yes. We booked a lesson. And everything changed.

💙 Getting hooked as a midlife beginner

I didn’t stand up that first day. Not even close. But the movement of the water, the feeling of the waves lifting and carrying me, did something deep in my nervous system. I left the ocean knowing one thing with absolute certainty:
I was hooked.

I don't think surfing is kind to beginners. Especially not midlife beginners. Especially not women who are already carrying the weight of decades of responsibility, self-doubt, and the quiet belief that new things belong to the young.

What I didn’t know then, and what I’m almost grateful I didn’t know, is that it would take me close to ten years to reach what’s politely called “early intermediate. If someone had told me that at the start, I probably would’ve walked away. Instead, surfing gave me something far more valuable than quick mastery. It gave me humility. Patience. Presence. And a relationship with fear that no self-help book ever managed to teach me.

😰 Fear, and choosing to paddle out anyway

The hardest part of surfing for me isn’t balance or technique. It’s fear. Fear of being hurt. Fear of waves that are just a little too big. Fear of knowing, even as I paddle out, that today might be beyond my comfort zone. But here’s what I’ve learned: avoiding the water doesn’t make fear go away.

So even on mornings when I know it’s probably too big for me, I still paddle out. Sometimes I sit wide. Sometimes I don’t catch a single wave. Sometimes the bravest thing I do is decide to come back in. My wife calls it the osmosis of surfing, being in the water, letting it teach you, even when you’re not performing. That, in itself, is practice.

🏆 Advice that changed everything

I’ve surfed a few times with Stephanie Gilmore, who happens to surf our local break.

One morning she gave me the best advice I’ve ever received. “Jen,” she said, “if you’re popping up to your knee, that’s fine. Unless you’re planning to compete on the world circuit, you don’t need a perfect pop-up.”

That one sentence liberated me. I stopped trying to surf like someone else. I stopped chasing an imaginary standard. I started surfing my body, my age, my joy.

🏄‍♀️ Adapting the gear, dropping the ego

I have arthritis in my hands from decades of massage work. Carrying heavy boards is no longer an option. So I adapted.

I’ve had two custom longboards made over the years, but these days I gravitate toward something around 7’6 with plenty of volume, no wider than 21 inches so I can manage to carry it to the water (yes I have short arms). I also use a foamie with a handle in busier times. I make practical choices and have released any sense of ego. Surfing smashes that away really fast. I’m not here to carve. I’m here to cruise. I surf to feel free. To glide. To be carried.

🤝 Community in the water

Surfing didn’t just change my mornings. It changed my life. It reshaped my routines. It anchored my mental health. It taught me the value of community in a visceral, embodied way.

When I first joined the Surf Witches pre-Covid, it was a Facebook group of 11 women. Today, that community includes over 3,000 women, with an active Surf Witches boardriders club that is joyful, social, collaborative, and deliberately not competitive.

No nastiness. No ego. Just women showing up for themselves and each other.

🎬 Telling older women’s surf stories

I met my now wife in the surf, both of us in our 60's and in 2022 we were tired of seeing just the young women represented in the surf documentaries and so we dove right in and taught ourselves how to make a documentary.

Taking Off – Tales Of Older Women Who Surf, which I am very proud to say has won 9 awards at international movie festivals.

🔁 Why i keep coming back

Surfing has been the most frustrating thing I’ve ever tried to learn. It’s also been the most fun. It has taught me that progress doesn’t look like domination, it looks like return. Going back into the water after a scare. Showing up again after a wipeout. Letting yourself be a beginner longer than your pride would like.

At nearly 65, I don’t surf to prove anything. I surf for myself as another mindful way to stay healthy and “Not Let The Old Lady In.” And that, for me, has been everything.

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