Social. Butterflies.
Today was my first day here on my own at Blue Osa Retreat. Prior to leaving, a friend had asked me what I was most excited for; uprooting and going to do a work exchange in a very remote part of the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. I told her, slightly embarrassed, to enjoy lots of alone time and disconnect for awhile. Being an innate caretaker and nurturing soul who is constantly surrounded by superfluous love, support, and friends, is something I cherish about myself. After having to adapt my personal life and needs so many ways for the past few years; while enduring the loss of both of my parents and other life challenges, I have struggled to find the right balance of creating time with myself.
My hope for being here is to rekindle the beauty of solitude and time with my thoughts. Alone time, that despite my social butterfly tendencies, I feel so lost without. I guess I wasn’t totally sure how what I wanted would look, but I did know how I wanted it to feel and so far everything I have desired is coming to fruition. I have my own little box room in a repurposed shipping container, a quiet beach to walk, a lovely lap pool I swam in last night, property animals to love, incredible fresh and unique food, and responsibility to re-establish the green house on the farm with the ultimate goal of sourcing more of the kitchen food from the property. Best part of it all, is I get to be alone and quiet and not think about taking care of anything but me, myself, and the plants.
Now that I’ve gotten the ‘boring’ logistics update out of the way for all of my friends and family who are wondering what the hell I’ve gotten into, I will transition into how this blog will likely go and give more of a reflective and spiritual update.
Firstly, I’d like to give a big shout out to the universe for constantly giving me signs of reassurance that I’m where I’m supposed to be when taking chances. Waking up my first morning I went to find the other gardener, Leah, and help her pull some weeds around the lap pool. After chatting about how and why we ended up here, I learned that she also has many siblings, with the youngest being her brother who has cerebral palsy, just like my brother Edson. We quickly connected on our shared similarities and exchanged reflections on things that go along with such a situation. Of course, I also told her she must read everything ever published by or about Oliver Sacks and his ever-lasting wisdom and compassion towards neurodivergence of all kinds.
I had such a beautiful experience this morning. Yesterday I got a tour and general idea of what needed to be done. I drafted a new layout for the greenhouse and some plans for order of operations for side projects. Unsure of my bearings still, I had walked over to the farm to assess some of the areas I’ll be working on and got a bit nervous with some of the crazy birds and animal sounds I was hearing. Suddenly I saw some butterflies and then quickly a swarm of butterflies. I found myself surrounded by nearly 100 winged friends flying around me and had this overwhelming sense of calm, protection, and peace. Quick shift from slight uncertainty if I should be worried about the creepy, yet cute and crow-like black birds that had been guarding my perimeter moments before. It was really magical. I stood there looking around at them for a few minutes and just felt so lucky. So here I am, going from overly social and constantly surrounded by groups of people, to being anti-social except for groups of butterflies. Here. We. Go.