One Beach: From One Block to the World
- Jul 18
- 8 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
San Francisco, January 2025
I wanted to get outside for a walk.
Just around the block.
In December 2024, I'd been traveling in Antarctica.
In my case, going to Antartica naturally also involved exploring Chile in depth—Valparaíso, Chiloé, Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and the Lake District—adding Easter Island because Santiago is the easiest place in the world to get there from, and including the Falklands because I was already in the neighborhood.
"Nearby" is a flexible concept in my world.
My knees, however, had finally decided they'd had enough.
In 2023, I'd spent six months traveling through Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Corfu, Crete, Cyprus, Ceuta, Morocco, and Madeira, where I reached my TCC milestone of 100 countries and territories. My knees had been complaining for quite a while. I had even started using a cane.
Then that whole South America/Antarctica trip finished them off. My left knee, which had always been the strong one, went on strike. It was done doing double duty.
By the time I got home to San Francisco, the pain had become excruciating. Sometimes it felt like a knife stabbing into my knees. Sometimes my knees just collapsed.
Negotiating the single flight of stairs to my apartment took ten painful minutes.
That January morning, I wanted to walk around the block.
Not a mile.
Just one block.
But I knew exactly what that one block was going to cost me.
And that frightened me for a much bigger reason.
In a few months, I was supposed to leave on another six-month trip around the world. Parts of it were already booked. I planned to begin in the Baltics, continue through the Caucasus, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and eventually work my way home across the South Pacific.
But if I couldn't even walk around my own block...
how was I supposed to travel around the world?
I feel most alive when I'm on my way to someplace I've never been before. Because I work with my coaching clients by phone, I can keep doing the work I love while traveling. And as much as I love living in San Francisco, I'm always curious about new cultures and new corners of the world.
What frightened me about my knees wasn't just the pain.
It was that my world had become so small.
For years, my neighbor Hazel and I had a standing Sunday night hangout date.
She'd come over, we'd talk, we'd laugh, and we'd watch cozy murder mysteries.
Our favorite was Death in Paradise.
The grumpy yet endearing Inspector Richard Poole had been shipped from London to solve murders on a fictional Caribbean island. They lodged him in a little bungalow on a beautiful beach, which he dismissively called "the shack." He wore wool suits, complained constantly about the heat, and insisted there was nowhere to walk.
Hazel and I had each seen every episode so many times separately that it didn't matter which one we watched together.
For Hazel, the show reminded her of growing up in Trinidad.
For me, it was that beach.
And every evening during the week after I finished working with my coaching clients on the phone, I'd escape from the pain in my knees into that Caribbean world again.
Richard put ice on his head and dreamed about getting back to London.
I put ice on my knees and dreamed about walking on that beach he didn't appreciate.
San Francisco, February 2025
My orthopedist, Dr. Atkin, believed in conservative treatment.
So did I.
Over the years, we'd already tried everything.
Physical therapy.
Hyaluronic acid and cortisone injections.
Expensive PRP treatments that insurance didn't cover.
Every inner tool I'd spent forty years sharing with my coaching clients.
Anything that might save me from needing knee replacement surgery.
Something in me was terrified of having my knees cut open and artificial parts put inside them.
Or that there would be some complication.
So I kept hoping there would be another solution.
But my life was shrinking so rapidly that I barely recognized it.
I was losing what made me feel most alive — traveling and partner dancing.
San Francisco, March 2025
One afternoon, Dr. Atkin's assistant, Jim, was giving me yet another injection when he casually mentioned,
"A car owner might keep patching old tires but at some point it's better just to get new ones."
Something clicked.
I walked into Dr. Atkin's office and said, "I'm ready. I want knee surgery as soon as possible.”
For months, he'd been telling me that maybe I didn't really need it yet.
This time he simply said, "Okay."
My physical therapist, Tracy, was relieved.
"Finally," she said. "You've needed knee replacement since we first started working together."
"But Tracy," I said, "remember? Something in me has been really scared."
She understood.
"Some people do have a terrible experience," she said. "But for others, it's a breeze."
Something in me was still scared.
I didn't ignore that part. It was afraid and needed to be treated kindly from my larger self.
But as a Transformation Coach, I knew that my larger self could also hold a vision that's bigger than the part of me that's scared.
So I decided right then that my surgery was going to be a breeze.
San Francisco, April 2025
When I woke up after my first knee replacement surgery, something surprised me.
It hurt.
But it wasn't that pain.
The old pain had been shrinking my life.
This was different.
This was healing pain.
It was expanding my life.
San Francisco, May 2025
A month later, I went to see my surgeon, Dr. Cox, for my first follow-up.
He looked at the X-rays and said my new knee was doing great.
So I immediately scheduled my second knee replacement for the earliest date he'd allow.
For the first time in months, I wasn't thinking about what I'd lost.
I was thinking about what might be possible again.
That evening, after I finished with my coaching clients, I settled into my usual routine.
Ice on my knee.
Death in Paradise.
But this time, instead of simply escaping in my mind to the detective's beach...
I found myself thinking,
Maybe I could actually go there.
So I looked it up.
The beach was on Guadeloupe, in the southeastern Caribbean.
A few months earlier, I'd canceled my six-month trip around the world.
Now, for the first time, travel didn't feel impossible anymore.
This time I decided to do something sensible.
I would just go to that one beach on Guadeloupe.
Then I started studying the map of the Lesser Antilles and got curious about the neighboring islands.
Guadeloupe was near Dominica.
Dominica was near Martinique.
Martinique was near Saint Lucia.
They were always talking about those islands on Death in Paradise.
If I was flying all the way to Guadeloupe, it seemed almost rude not to visit the neighbors.
San Francisco, June 2025
I wasn't really trying to plan a trip.
Not yet.
I was just starting to consider what I might do after my second knee surgery.
Dr. Cox had told me that, for the sake of my new knees, I should always fly business class on long-haul flights.
Since Saint Lucia was the furthest island south, I thought I'd just see what flights cost.
There happened to be a great deal in business class.
I found myself booking it.
Apparently I was going to the Caribbean in December.
The more I researched those islands—studying maps, figuring out ferries, looking for little hotels—the more alive I felt.
San Francisco, July 2025
A friend told me about a Thai guy named Ben who taught classes about how to get business class flights using Points & Miles.
Meanwhile, thanks to physical therapy my first new knee was getting stronger every week.
I'd already canceled my six-month trip around the world.
Now I found myself wondering if maybe I could salvage a few pieces of it using what I was learning about Points & Miles.
That seemed perfectly reasonable.
New Zealand had always been high on my bucket list.
April is autumn there—a beautiful time to go.
And if I was flying all that way...
I might as well stop in Tahiti.
After all, it was a logical stop halfway to New Zealand.
And once I was already down in Oceania...
Vanuatu and Fiji were practically neighbors.
That all seemed perfectly reasonable.
In the meantime, my friend Hazel moved to Amsterdam.
Not just to Amsterdam.
To the very neighborhood where I'd lived in my twenties.
Well...
I certainly needed to visit Hazel.
And if I was already flying to Amsterdam...
The Baltics were just a little farther north.
That seemed perfectly reasonable too.
During the Points & Miles classes, Ben kept talking about a trip to Thailand he was organizing for his students in January 2026.
I'd always wanted to go to Thailand.
I told him, "I'll do it next year."
He said, "I'm not doing it next year."
San Francisco, August 2025
Now somehow I needed to squeeze Thailand in between the Caribbean and Oceania.
Since I was flying long-haul from San Francisco to Taiwan on my way to Thailand, it would be good for my sensitive nervous system to spend five nights there recovering from jet lag and resting a little before joining the group in Thailand. I usually prefer traveling alone so that I can follow my own rhythm.
And Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Singapore were all just short flights from each other.
I couldn't travel all that way to Southeast Asia and not visit them too.
That seemed perfectly reasonable as well.
Somehow, before I'd even had my second knee replacement, my 2026 calendar had quietly filled itself up with travel.
San Francisco, September 2025
The second knee surgery went just as well as the first.
While I was recovering, I happily immersed myself in studying maps, finding charming little hotels, and solving the delightful puzzles that came with putting all these trips together.
San Francisco, October 2025
A month later, I went back to see Dr. Cox for the first follow-up on my second knee.
He looked at the X-rays, smiled, and said everything was healing beautifully.
I took that as permission.
Some non-dancing friends were visiting from out of town, and I talked them into spending Saturday evening at the Top of the Mark, San Francisco's iconic rooftop lounge, because they had a live swing band that night.
When we arrived, I immediately abandoned my friends and spent most of the evening on the dance floor.
I told my dance partners,
"I've just had knee surgery, so please don't spin me too much."
When I finally returned to our table, my friends said,
"You're glowing."
For the first time since January, I felt fully alive again
San Francisco, November 2025
At my next follow-up appointment, Dr. Cox beamed at me and said,
"Wow. You're doing better than 95% of my patients."
Then he asked,
"What's your secret?"
"Well," I said, "I've been very faithful about doing my physical therapy."
He nodded.
"And," I added, "I've been holding a vision of myself traveling again. And dancing."
By then, that vision had steadily become reality.
Guadeloupe, December 2025
It had all started with one beach from Death in Paradise.
When I couldn't walk around my own block, I escaped to that beach every evening.
After my first knee replacement, that beach stopped being somewhere I only imagined.
It became somewhere I could actually go.
One beach became four Caribbean islands.
Then Oceania—Tahiti, New Zealand, Vanuatu, and Fiji.
Hazel moving to Amsterdam somehow became Finland and the Baltics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
And somehow, in between the Caribbean and Oceania, Thailand squeezed itself in.
Which somehow became Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Singapore.
Long before my knees had finished healing, I'd already started living toward the life I wanted back.
And it all began with one beach.
This story mentions the inner tools I use with my coaching clients—and with myself. If you’re curious about that work, you'll find Three Tools for Transforming Difficult Emotions and other resources at LucindaHayden.com.
Comments