Tiffany Barwick Thought Surfing Wasn’t for Someone Like Her. Then She Started at 40.
After losing her mom in 2020, Tiffany Barwick started looking at her life differently.
She was working 70 to 80-hour workweeks, putting most things off for “later,” and constantly chasing the idea that eventually there would be time to enjoy life.
But her mom passed away at 59.
“She didn't get her retirement,” Tiffany says. “I decided that I wasn't waiting for mine to enjoy my life.”
One rainy day, Tiffany took a personal day and drove to the beach just to be near the water. She watched a few surfers sitting in the lineup and realized she was still carrying the same story she had told herself for years.
That surfing was for other people.
“I'd always been drawn to surfing,” she says, “but I'd spent years telling myself it wasn't for someone like me.”
She booked her first lesson the next morning.
The Things That Made Surfing Feel Out of Reach
Tiffany is open about the fact that surfing did not feel accessible to her for a long time.
At her heaviest, she was 5'2" and around 230 pounds. Living in Northern California also meant cold water year-round, and finding a wetsuit that fit was difficult and expensive.
“The rental wetsuits at surf shops simply didn't go there,” she says.
In early 2023, Tiffany underwent gastric sleeve surgery. About 50 pounds came off within six months, and eventually she reached a size that most surf shops actually carried in rental wetsuits.
That was the first time surfing started to feel possible.
What she did not expect was how quickly surfing would change her relationship with movement and exercise.
“Surfing became my entire reason to get more fit.”
Instead of working out because she felt like she had to, she started strength training and doing yoga because she genuinely wanted to get better in the water.
“For the first time in my life,” she says, “I actually wanted to exercise.”
“I Knew I Would Be Doing This for the Rest of My Life”
Tiffany’s first lesson was through NorCal Surf Shop.
Cold Pacific water. A giant foam board. More paddling than riding.
“The standard kooky beginner experience,” she says.
But the part she remembers most had nothing to do with catching waves.
“The second I stepped into that cold water, I was hooked. Not with my first wave. Just my first submersion in the water.”
She describes it as the first time something fully clicked into place.
“There was something about the weight of the ocean and the cold and the aliveness of it that I had never felt before.”
Even now, she laughs, calling it her “Disney Princess moment.”
“I knew in that moment that I wanted this to be part of my life for as long as I possibly could make it happen.”
Learning, Ego, and Starting Over
Outside the water, Tiffany works as a Training Program Manager for a self-driving vehicle company. She has spent more than 15 years building training programs and helping people learn complex skills inside large organizations.
That background shaped the way she approached surfing as a beginner.
“My whole career has been about helping people learn and succeed,” she says. “So when I show up at the beach as a beginner surfer, I have this double perspective.”
She says surfing is especially difficult because the brain is trying to process entirely new sensory input while building movement patterns in constantly changing conditions.
“The ocean is the ultimate adaptive learning environment,” she says. “It never gives you the exact same conditions twice.”
According to Tiffany, one of the biggest struggles for adult beginners is ego.
“We want a clear arc: practice, improve, repeat,” she says. “But skill acquisition plateaus, regresses, and leaps forward.”
Adults also tend to attach meaning to mistakes in a way kids often do not.
“When a child wipes out, they laugh and paddle back out,” she says. “When an adult wipes out, we narrate a whole story about what it means about us and whether we really deserve to be there.”
She admits that it is still something she works through herself.
“Midlife Surfista” Means Starting Anyway
For Tiffany, the name “midlife surfista” was intentional.
“It's a reclamation,” she says.
She says midlife is often seen as the point at which people stop reinventing themselves. Surfing completely changed the way she sees that stage of life.
“This is exactly the right time to become someone new.”
Starting over in her 40s forced her to become comfortable being inexperienced, making mistakes, and looking foolish while learning something she genuinely loved.
“I'm genuinely a different person than I was three years ago,” she says. “More brave, more resilient, more sure of what matters to me. Most people spend midlife trying to protect the identity they've built. I accidentally blew mine up in the best possible way.”
Finding Joy in the Water Again
One of Tiffany’s favorite memories from those early surf sessions happened when she looked at her Apple Watch after being in the water for hours.
Every movement and exercise ring was closed.
“I just stood there kind of stunned,” she says. “‘This was exercise?!’”
For someone who spent years struggling with fitness culture, the moment stuck with her.
“I was just laughing, getting worked, paddling, and loving every second of it.”
That feeling still shapes how she approaches surfing, even on frustrating days.
“Some sessions are just bad,” she says. “That's surfing. That's also life.”
Instead of focusing only on performance, she looks for one thing that went right.
“Because I've waited too long to be in this water to let a bad session take me out of it.”
“Maybe It Actually Is for Someone Like Me”
When people come across Tiffany’s page today, she hopes they see something she rarely saw when she first looked at surf culture.
Someone who does not fit the traditional image of surfing, but paddles out anyway.
“I spent so long looking at surfing content and thinking ‘that's not for me,’” she says. “Wrong age, wrong body, wrong background.”
She is not trying to present a polished version of surfing online.
“I'm not here to be aspirational in the traditional sense,” she says. “I'm here to be real.”
The frustrating sessions. The breakthroughs. The learning curve. The joy of finally trying something she spent years believing was not meant for her.
And for anyone still wondering whether it is too late to begin, Tiffany’s answer is direct.
“The only thing that was ever too late,” she says, “was the time I spent not trying.”
Follow Tiffany’s surfing journey, honest reflections on learning later in life, and life in the lineup on her Instagram, @midlife_surfista.