Tahlija Redgard Lives The Life We Pretend We Want

There’s a reason some of us watch people like Rasta or Torren Martyn more closely than we follow the CT rankings.

Or maybe more than one. There’s the surfing, obviously, but there’s also the belief that we could be drawing comparable lines, or adopting similar lifestyles. We wouldn’t need to go through the qualification circuit, or even enter a local contest. We could sip our morning tea from an enamel mug, wool beanie on, blades of grass between our toes, a four-legged companion at our feet, and decide which EAST-driven purchase we’d throw in the back of the car. None of that foam-roller, resistance-band, taurine start to the day. 

That’s one way to flatter our delusional, childlike minds. But relatable doesn’t mean easily achievable.

Tahlija Redgard’s new film, Gifts from the Blue ~ Blessings from Our Mother, is an ode to the life she chose and the people she chose to share it with. Redgard lives in a Troopy, fishes for what she eats, keeps her dog close, and spends an intimidating amount of time in and around the ocean. The comfort most of us mistake for a baseline is something she parted ways with long ago. Her perceived freedom is a series of small daily surrenders, made for an audience of no one.

Some of the film’s stops include a rendezvous with Chris Garrett (Phantom Surfboards), whose 15-year-old board Redgard pulled out of his shed and put back to work at Bryce Young‘s home break, where the two surf together so similarly that sometimes you’ll struggle to tell which of them is which.

Redgard has said the title carries a double meaning: her love for her own mother and the life she gifted her, and her immense love for the ocean.

Make yourself a hot cup of herbal before hitting play on this one. But make sure you do.