A reason, a season, or a lifetime

On Costa Rica, being surrounded by love, and feeling seen

I’m enveloped by heat. It feels like I’m wrapped in a hot, damp towel; like being hugged by someone you love who just did a hard workout and is covered in sweat. It’s not an unpleasant sensation, but it’s overwhelming; all my senses are tuned in on it. Rivulets of sweat are running down my back, between my breasts, and my face, mingling with the hot tears that are dripping down my face. I’m crying, because I’m surrounded by love, and I’m so damn happy.

We are in Kula, one of the yoga spaces or shalas (Sanskrit for “home”) at the stunning Bodhi Tree Yoga Resort. I don’t know it yet, but kula is a Sanskrit word that can be translated into “community” or “tribe”. All I know is that I feel safe in that space. Open on two sides to the jungle, we hear birds, cicadas, and the hum of the jungle. I feel equally wildly alive and as safe as in a womb, protected by something I can’t find words for. Community? Acceptance? The teachings of yoga?

We are having our first yoga practice of the retreat. There is a power outage so we don’t have music, but I don’t mind. Used to the much quieter woods of BC, I’m enthralled by the sounds of the jungle. It’s so alive. There are howler monkeys swinging through the trees, making their astonishingly loud, low grunting noises, incongruent with their small size. Rust-coloured coatis are strolling nonchalantley between the trees, their long snouts to the ground, looking for food. An iguana is eating a mango, glancing balefully at anyone who dares to come too close, looking as prehistoric and impressive as a miniature dinosaur.

I’m surrounded by eleven women, all of whom I’ve met for the first time the previous night. Most of them arrived with the tropical rainstorm, a truly spectacular experience where shower-warm water gushes down the sky, drenching you in seconds if you don’t find shelter right away. We gathered in Kula for a meet-and-greet, introducing ourselves and stating what we were hoping to get out of this week. “Resting”, “getting a break”, “writing”, “moving my body” were some of the replies. “Exploring and deepening my relationship with women” was mine, and then I added, without meaning to, “I have trouble connecting with women. I was taught not to trust women, that they will betray you and stab you in the back. I’m always expecting that to happen, so I usually don’t let them get too close to avoid getting hurt. But I don’t want to live like that anymore. I’m missing out on sisterhood, and I want that in my life.” I had started tearing up. The woman next to me reached out a hand and squeezed my leg. They all looked at me, nodding encouragingly and smiling warmly. I felt seen and safe.

If you self-medicate with a substance, you are out of touch with your inner self. That’s the whole point, really: to not be you for a while. I did it so regularly for a number of years that I stopped growing as a human. I lived in denial, telling myself a story and sticking to it. The story was that I was HAPPY, that I was having FUN, and that I’d moved on from any and all pain and trauma in my life. The story wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it was a half-truth. Anything that didn’t fit the narrative - my ongoing depression, the complicated relationship with my mother, my desperate desire to be liked, always looking for external validation, my growing drinking problem - was pushed down, out of sight, to hopefully be out of mind. But the out-of-mind never worked, since I’m an overthinker and also human. We can’t ignore our emotions, just postpone them for a while, to hit us at a later point with twice the force.

In the past 2.5 years of sobriety I’ve been playing catch-up with my emotions. Once you stop numbing yourself, everything comes rushing back: you become aware of what’s lacking, what you want and what you miss, your fears and problems you’ve been trying to avoid, and your dreams and aspirations. I’ve been doing a lot of healing and growing in that time, and during this retreat another big part of my soul has started to heal: my relationship with women.

I had purposefully kept my expectations for the trip low, because I didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment, but I needn’t have worried. Should you ever get the opportunity to spend a week in a beautiful location with 11 strangers, I urge you to go for it. We did a lot of fun stuff: sunrise bike rides at the beach, sunset swims in the warm ocean, yoga in the mornings and at night, eating delicious food, writing, kayaking in the mangroves, spending an entire day on ATVs, having lunch at a farm that grows anything from avocados, bananas, guanabanas (soursop), mangoes, to coffee, ginger, sugar cane, and turmeric.

But what I liked best was getting to know the other women. We had intimate, deep, vulnerable conversations, skipping entirely over the usual small talk and casual niceties and going straight for the messy, raw, beautiful centre of what makes us us. We talked about relationships, childhoods, jobs, dreams, goals, pain, fear, therapy, yoga, and anything and everything in between. There were a lot of tears, but even more laughter.

I don’t know what made us connect so quickly and so deeply. Was it the magic of Costa Rica, the beauty of the resort, the fact that we had no responsibilities except to enjoy ourselves? Was it all the yoga, the healthy food, the warm embrace of the jungle? Was it thanks to the wonderful, nurturing guidance of our organizers? I’ll never know. All I know is that there was magic in the air last week. We all felt it. Little Miriam who had come to believe that women were not to be trusted learnt that this is not true. She healed that piece of her that had hurt so much for so long, and I’m taking this reassuring knowlegde with me into the rest of my life.

It’s said that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I think I’ve encountered all three last week, and I’m so grateful for getting to know all of them. We travel to expand our minds and horizons, to learn about different cultures, relax, have adventures, appreciate our beautiful planet, to take a break from work and the daily grind.
And sometimes, if we’re lucky, we meet our wounded inner child, take her in our arms, and tell her that everything will be okay.

Thank you Anne, Calleigh, Fionna, Jane, Julia, Justine, Karen, Katie, Natalya, Samantha, and Terri, for helping me heal, for being the best travel companions, and for showing me that connection can be found whenever people are willing to be open.
I had the time of my life with you all, and I will never forget this trip.

❤️ Miriam