Whether she’s paddling out in the surf or her feet are firmly on dry ground, life is a balancing act, says Jess Laing.

Sitting outside the Smiths Beach Store, Jess looks every inch the classic surfer. Straight out of the water from a surf lesson, her slicked back blonde hair, tanned skin and clear eyes radiates health and vitality.

She’s just back from a surfing trip in Indonesia and her Girls on Board surf school is winding up into the busy summer season. While it sounds like the ultimate surfing lifestyle, behind the picture-perfect image is a story of injury, chronic illness and self-discovery. It’s only now, after decades in the water, that Jess feels she’s getting the balance right.

It’s a long journey from the 16-year-old who featured in the film First Love with her friends Nikki Van Dijk and India Payne, to the woman sitting here today.

The film set out to follow the girls’ determination to join the pro-surf circuit and take on the waves in Hawaii. The film also captures the injury that took Jess out of the water for seven months, setting her on a new surfing path.

But the shoulder injury that led to surgery and months of rehab, was not her first health battle. “From around 12 to 18, I had chronic fatigue syndrome,” Jess explains. “The shoulder injury was crap, because it was on top of chronic fatigue. I had low energy and was sick all the time. When I did my shoulder, everything came crashing down. I couldn’t even go in the water anymore, which was the one thing that was helping me, my salt-water therapy.”

Jess was out of the water for seven months, the longest time she’d ever been away from the ocean. “It was a long time to be land-bound for someone who was in the water every day. At the time I hated it. But I look back at that time when I was unwell and when I was injured as a positive thing. I learned so much. When you’ve been unwell for so long, once I was feeling better, I wanted to do as much as I possibly could. It gave me an appreciation of what it was like to feel good.”

When she did return to the waves, she stopped competing. “I realised I wanted to do it for fun and I didn’t want the serious side anymore. I’d lost the desire to compete. It meant so much more to me to be able to get out there and enjoy it.”

Leaving the world of competitive surfing behind was a major shift for a girl whose dad put her on a board at the age of four. “I grew up with competitions. From the age of eight I was very competitive. It was all I could see. I know when I was doing it, I loved it.”

But the enforced time out brought a new perspective. “I realised I was not loving it so much. I started taking it too seriously and I was putting too much pressure on myself. I enjoyed competitions until I didn’t.

“There’s much more than just getting out there and trying to win. Surfing was always something that pulled me through. It was so much more beneficial to me and my mental health and my lifestyle.”

She wanted to recapture the joy and fun of surfing, and to share that with others. In those years after the movie premiered, when she was feeling well, Jess travelled a lot. She soon realised there were girls everywhere interested in surfing, but there were very few female surf coaches.

She did a surf coaching course and helped to coach a female surfing program with Surfing Victoria and then in 2012, she started Girls on Board, focusing on teaching women and girls to surf.

She didn’t have a big vision in mind, other than to share her love of the ocean and the benefits that surfing can bring to your life. “I know how powerful the ocean is in healing. Being in the ocean is an opportunity to change your life and use surfing as a form of therapy. It’s a place to help you live your best life.

“When I’m in the ocean I feel pure happiness and as though I’m exactly where I’m meant to be,” she explains. “It can be comforting, frightening, calm, wild and truly beautiful all at once. The ocean brings me back to myself, and no matter where I am in the world I feel like I am home.”

She poured that passion she once had for competition into her business, but focused on keeping lessons fun, for students and herself. “I always leave work feeling better than when I got there. There’s a real art to teaching different people. That’s why I like teaching both (adults and children). You need to keep it simple so everyone can understand. There’s so much going on when you’re learning to surf. It doesn’t need to be information overload. It’s important not to push someone past their comfort zone too early.”

But she also loves giving women the confidence and the skills to tackle the waves and be part of what has been a male-dominated sport. “I see women I have taught down at the beach and they’ll say thank you so much for introducing us to this. That’s why I do it. I love seeing them out there.”

She said the lessons are about empowering the women and girls to get out on the waves. “They feel confident going out with a group of other women, because even putting on a wetsuit is daunting. It can be intimidating but they’re just as welcome out there as everyone else. They should be out there. I want them to have a sense of community, to feel like they’re part of something.”

Girls on Board was thriving, but Jess was paying a price. Illness struck again in 2020, just as Victoria went into lockdown.

“It was all the same sort of symptoms as chronic fatigue, but they never worked out what was wrong with me. I was really sick – hospitalised and bed bound. But it was different this time. I was older and understood myself a little bit more. I was able to figure out what I needed and understand it.

“But one of the hardest parts with any illness that people can’t see, they often don’t believe that it’s there. It can take one little comment to take you back to that 12-year-old kid where people would say, ‘oh why can you go surfing but you can’t come to school?’. That was triggering for me again as an adult. I could barely even go to work. I’d go to work and go home and sleep between lessons. Getting back up the stairs after lessons was a struggle. Everything was so hard. I said I can’t live like this.”

With her business unable to operate, Jess used the time to focus on her own health. “Straight away, I knew I had to do something about it, I had to find answers. I never had an answer as to what is wrong with me. Western medicine in the past hadn’t worked at all and I decided to go down the natural path.

“I said to myself, I am going to get better. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of appointments and testing and dietary changes and lifestyle changes … emotional work as well. But I just knew I was going to get better.”

When she was able to open the business again, Jess made some changes, bringing on other instructors.

“In the past I was trying to do as much as I could on my own. The illness was overwhelming me. I couldn’t think properly. I had the worst brain fog and I was so fatigued that thinking was hard enough, let alone trying to run a business and get to work. It forced me to let go of the business a bit and allow others in, which has helped it grow. It was a blessing in disguise.

“I had run the business pretty much on my own for eight or nine years and had massive separation issues – that if I wasn’t there, things would fall apart. But in reality, everything was fine. I was able to bring on some other amazing female coaches and it’s allowed more people to come through the surf school and get the benefits of the ocean.”

While she’s still working on managing her health, Jess is focused on balancing her life. “At the start of the year, I said I would say yes, and do things. I’m feeling positive and excited. I’ve been on a few trips, to Indonesia and Queensland. I want to keep the business running and allow myself travel and balance. I don’t want to ever lose that. I’m promoting a lifestyle and I need to be living that.”

A recent trip to Indonesia has seen her return to Phillip Island, recharged and refocused. First she travelled with a girlfriend then met up with island photographer Tommy Williams and started exploring, before her partner Dyl was able to come over and join her.

A highlight was a chance encounter on a beach which saw her teaching English to some young Indonesia kids. “We met a local guy who lives on the beach and he told us he was teaching English there the next day. Tommy asked if he could take photos, so we rock up and get handed the English book. Tommy and I ended up teaching English for half a day to the kids from the local village.

“To be honest, I think we got more out of it than them. Tommy had taught me a couple of Indonesian words and there was a moment where I was playing with the kids in the water and one of the girls spoke to me in Indonesian and I understood what she said.

“It was just so heart-warming connecting with these kids who were so bright, bubbly and vibrant. They probably have very little material things but showed me they can live such rich lives without those things.”

Back on Phillip Island, she’s determined to hold onto that joy and to embrace whatever is coming her way.

“Life is so much about balance. Sometimes we get caught up living a certain way when maybe it’s not the healthiest for us. I don’t want that to happen.”