This is the story of a wipeout.

The monster wave came out of nowhere. It rose on the horizon and surged toward me, looking hungry. Furious. My heart hammered in my chest. Adrenaline shot through my veins like electricity.

“Paddle! Paddle as fast as you f*****g can.”

I dropped to my stomach, paddling frantically to get past the crest of the wave. A solid wall of blue towered in front of me, rising higher and higher.

My arms sliced through the water with desperation. My shoulders and triceps burned as I tried to outpace a force so much bigger and stronger than I was. I was no match for the power of this wave.

The top of the wave began to curl, frothing with white foam.

“Just one more stroke, and you’ll be over the crest. Push, Jane. Push!” My right arm exploded forward as I threw everything I had into a final stroke.

But it wasn’t enough. With a great thundering crash, the wave detonated, slamming into me with brutal force.

I somersaulted backward and plunged violently underwater, hurtling toward the sharp rocks. The sea churned, spinning me, flinging my arms and legs like strands of kelp.

Everything went dark. I lost all sense of left and right, up and down.

“This is the end. This is it.”

Time slowed to a crawl, every second stretching out into an eternity. For a moment, I stopped struggling, and my body went limp. It would have been so easy to give up, to give in.

But I gave one last push until finally, my head broke the surface. I gasped for air, coughing as I spat out seawater, my throat and nose burning.

The horizon was spinning, the earth tilting and seesawing. I felt nauseous as I climbed back on my board and paddled toward what I thought was the shore.

When I reached the sand, I collapsed.

“You’re okay,” I whispered to myself, trying to soothe my trembling body. “It’s over. You’re fine now.” But that was a lie.

I wasn’t fine – not here, not anywhere.

At its core, a wave is pure energy moving through water. A wave breaks when that energy collides with something – a sandbar, the shore, the reef.

A wave breaking is energy reaching its end.
Just as I had reached my end.

Mistakes Were Not Permissible

When I was a kid, I would climb into bed to snuggle with my dad on weekend mornings. My feet were always cold, so he’d tuck them under his, warming my icy toes.

As the warmth flooded back into my feet, he’d drill me on my times tables, barking out numbers rapid-fire:

“Seven times seven!”
“Three times nine!”
“Two times ten!”

With each right answer, his eyes lit up. Thanks to those drills, I won all the math competitions in second grade.

When I reported my wins, Dad would smile proudly.

“Goody-goody!” he’d say, and I could feel the golden beam of his approval shining down upon me.

The flipside was that when I fell short of his demands, he made sure I knew it – with a belt, his hands, a nearby stick. I quickly learned that mistakes were not permissible.

What I achieved was more important than who I was.
And who I was depended on what I achieved.

I didn’t realize how deeply these beliefs shaped me – until everything fell apart.

In graduate school, I was part of a team that invented a ground-breaking infant incubator for the world’s most vulnerable communities.

We launched a company that helped save hundreds of thousands of premature babies.

There were some incredible highs along the way.

I presented our technology to President Obama at the White House. Beyoncé personally handed me a check to support our work.

My job was more than a job. It was my purpose. My identity. The sole focus of my life.

For a decade, I had sacrificed everything in my life to keep the company afloat – my time, my relationships, my sanity.

But ultimately, it had failed. I had failed.

So yes, this is the story of a wipeout. Not just the one that left me shaking on the shore that day, but the collapse of the dream I’d poured my soul into.

When it all came crashing down, I didn’t just lose a dream. I lost myself.

Fixing Myself

My wipeout was the beginning of a multiyear quest, in which I traded my dedication to my career for a different obsession: piecing myself back together.

I became that woman. The one who saw signs in her morning tea leaves and planned her life based on vision boards and manifestations.

I chased answers in the world’s most iconic waves.

I sat in days of silent meditation in the Indonesian jungle, went on psychedelic journeys, and searched for my inner child in all the wrong places.

I burned holes in my legs for an Amazonian frog-poison ceremony to cleanse my soul.

I went to every self-help seminar I could find. I even talked one of the world’s foremost trauma researchers into becoming my therapist.

If every journey begins with a call, mine came from within.

“Fix me,” it cried.
“Save me,” it pleaded.

Words by Jane Chen | Entrepreneur, Author, and Surfer

Excerpt from the book “Like a Wave We Break: A Memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself” (Jane Chen, October 2025, Harmony Books/Penguin Random House)