Colos, Portugal

 

Hi there.  ‘Member me?

 

That girl doin’ that thing in that place?  The one who keeps wearing an Italian beef t-shirt to the wrong venues?  The one who signed up to work in a vegan kitchen even though she’s not vegan and, uhhhh, doesn’t know how to cook?

 

 

 

 

 

Hello.  It’s nice to see you again, hello.  Since we last spoke, I’ve had MANY adventures in MANY countries, but before we get to Ireland and Scotland, we need to wrap up Portugal because there’s a LOT of fun stuff to cover.  No time to dawdle; let’s jump right in.

 

For five weeks (the end of June through early August) I was living in a holistic peace research center in Southern Portugal called Tamera Healing Biotope 1.  (No, it wasn’t a hermetically-sealed Bio-Dome and no, Paulie Shore wasn’t there.)  Week one was spent learning the history & evolution of the Tamera community, their sustainable way of life and their overall plan for global peace, in an educational crash course called Introduction Week.  Leaders from the community guided all 27 of us through daily seminars, guest speakers, Q&As, campus tours, and emotional WERK.

 

Then, after seven days of deep thinking, intensive sharing and growing out my armpit hair (just kidding), I joined their vegan kitchen crew for an additional 4 weeks……… thinking that a work study program in a vegan kitchen would be the perfect place for me to learn how to cook.

 

 

Little did I know that that kitchen would change my life forever.

 

 

 

i did not see that coming

 

 

First things first: Introduction Week.

 

What an interesting mix of people!  From Sweden to South Africa, Australia to Iran, we had dentists and farmers and freelance writers, punk rock enthusiasts and members of conductor-less orchestras.  We had a doctor from Greece who dreams of integrating western medicine with Reiki & healing energies, an alternative therapist from Austria who uses sound & smell to heal her patients, and a yoga teacher from France who runs his own yoga studio and draws the LINE at blue cheese with no flavor.  Swiss psychologists specializing in addiction studies, Dutch surfer dudes committed to helping Nepali sex slaves heal through artistic expression, Israeli community leaders with a passion for contact dance, and a Mexican circus performer who ‘doesn’t do time’.

 

 

 

excuse me, what?

 

 

Sure, I gravitated towards certain people (the giggle monsters who made me laugh every meal, tea break, and dishwashing duty) but I felt connected to everyone.  Because when you’re in this magical, safe space where people feel comfortable sharing the depths of their soul…… saying things out loud that they’ve never even admitted to themselves …… then, all of a sudden you realize that these wildly different people from wildly different backgrounds are all on a similar journey, asking similar questions, dealing with some form of rebirth in their lives, be it through trauma, divorce, near death experience, or rejection of the status quo.

 

Things came up and things came out, in an unexpected, week-long, skeleton-closet-deep-clean therapy session.  And we were in it together…… working through layers we didn’t even know we had, shining a light on issues we’d buried for years.

 

Something unlocked inside of me that week, culminating in a Day 5 emotional fireworks display, where I performed my pain inside a circle of 30 people.  Again, WHERE WAS THIS COMING FROM?  And yet, there I was.  Exorcising my demons.  Crying all over myself.  Spewing emotions into the front row like Gallagher with his Sledge-O-Matic.  In fifteen minutes, I had half the room crying and even triggered a physical reaction in one of the community leaders, causing him to be sick the entire next day.  What. The. F*ck.

 

It’s only fitting that my emotional masterpiece theater happened on July 4^th.

 

 

 

#fireworks #holyshit

 

 

Besides the heavy stuff, the daily schedule allowed for maximum reflection time and maximum fun.  You could swim in the lake or read a book or chat with friends or drink more tea or volunteer in the vegetable garden, which ok, doesn’t SOUND like a great time but trust me – it was.  The garden shift started with full-body wiggling and deep breathing (to wake up our bodies)……… flowing into some light, manual labor (maybe planting potatoes and wishing each potato good luck as you planted it), followed by mulch-loaded wheelbarrow races, and a fresh fruit & veg breakfast buffet!

 

If there was time before class, you could throw in some cuddles or kisses with a cute boy (it was a free love society after all) or do a load ‘a laundry with that ‘detergent’ sitting on top of the washing machine.  Was it pickle juice?  I don’t know; it sure looked like pickle juice…… and it was in a pickle juice JAR…… but before I could, wait, hold on, don’t, shit.  Someone poured it right into the machine before I had time to investigate.

 

(Did my clothes reek of pickles for an entire week?  I’m not telling.  But since my Italian pickle shampoo already gave my hair that fresh pickle scent, would anyone even notice if my pants were pickled too?)

 

Intro Week ended with a bang-a-rang dance party celebration in THE BAR (famous for 1-euro beers, 2-euro wines and Chinese ping pong tournaments).  The entire community came out (some dressed as cabaret dancers from the ‘70s, alt punk rebel-rousers from the ‘80s, or Robin Hood with no shirt) and the dance floor went from zero to smokin’ hot in two seconds flat, kicked off by the crowd-pleaser It’s Raining Men by The Weather Girls.

 

Are you kidding me?  Are you KIDDING me?  Excuse me ladies, this is my jam.

 

 

 

did i crush a sync-lip battle with this song two summers ago?  yes, i did.  #darcys30th

 

 

After reliving my Weather Girls lip-sync heyday and sweating off 2-3 glasses ‘a red on the dance floor, Intro Week ended, and my kitchen block began.

 

Now, if you’ll remember back to the beginning of this blog, I mentioned that I only ever cook scrambled eggs.  That wasn’t a joke and sadly, won’t even help me here (in a regional, seasonal, all VEGAN kitchen).  Day one, I fessed up that I’ve touched a butcher knife like 15 times in my life and I’m the equivalent of Chef Boyardee’s sad, estranged brother who can’t even boil water.  (One should be upfront with all new ventures.)

 

 

 

they SAID no previous cooking experience necessary

 

 

I wanted to get the most I could out of this experience and I wanted to learn how to cook for the first time in my adult life…… I just didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

 

The days started at 9a.  After a hearty breakfast, all 15 of us in the kitchen group would gather for a morning meeting.  Now, these weren’t your typical, workplace meetings with half the room not knowing why they were there and the other half wishing they weren’t (and poor Shawn on the line, from Denver, who couldn’t hear a thing)…… these were more, ‘let’s go around the circle and express what we’re feeling’ or ‘let’s do a silly theater game or partner yoga to wake up our bodies’ or ‘let’s have a 2-minute silent meditation to send our light and love somewhere that needs it’.

 

Then, besides an afternoon meeting at 230p, where we might discuss themes like truth or consciousness…… listen to crickets chirp in slow motion…… line up by eye color without speaking…… or break off in small groups for more intimate sharing a cuddle sesh), you could choose between lunch shift (10-1p) or dinner shift (4-7p).

 

Serving 60-150 people, you’d think the kitchen would be all business and no play.  Far from it.  The main focus of the kitchen crew seemed to be: pouring love into the food we were cooking by enjoying each other’s company and enjoying the work itself.  WHAT.  We would sing and dance and chop and peel and chat and laugh until our mid-shift patio break for fresh-squeezed OJ, homemade kombucha and a health check to see how everyone thought the shift was going.

 

Then, it was back to stirring and scooping and feeding each other little bits & bites if our hands were busy…… Ina spraying us with a garden hose from outside the window…… Jorien strumming her guitar or teaching us Swahili songs or offering up shoulder massages with the leftover sunflower oil…… until we’d end up right back where we started: holding hands in a circle of gratitude, deep breathing while Claudia undoubtedly said something like, ‘This wasn’t work; it was just spending time together.’

 

 

 

melt my heart

 

 

To finish out the shift, we’d ring three bells (inviting the larger community to eat) and hold hands in an even bigger circle while one of the kitchen mommas welcomed the community, reconnected with the rains and the waters and the sun and the soil, and thanked Pachamama (Mother Earth) for nourishing us every day.

 

At this point, I can only imagine you might be thinking, ‘Cool!  That’s odd!  Sounds neat!’ but you need to know a few underlying things before we proceed.

 

 

1.  I DON’T KNOW HOW TO COOK BECAUSE I’M FROZEN WITH FEAR OF MAKING MISTAKES IN THE KITCHEN.
   • Yep.  Realized that little diddy day one in the Tamera kitchen, where I almost cried twice in 4 hours.  Because it was hard work?  No.  Because in that first brunch shift, the paralyzing fear (that I didn’t know I had) had been taken out of my body.  Just sucked right out, leaving me feeling light and loved.
   • This place.  These people.  They coached me and coddled me and encouraged me to get messy and make mistakes and ‘GO FA ZIS!  YAS!  GO FA EAT!’.  (The two main kitchen mommas are very German.)  Each person so patient and helpful and kind, pumping me up with confidence and explaining things so clearly and gently because…
2.  I FEEL DEEPLY EMBARRASSED FOR NOT KNOWING HOW TO COOK AT THIS STAGE IN MY LIFE.
   • Yep.  My first brunch shift hit me with that whopper, too.  This community has a way of making you see things more clearly.  I could finally admit to myself how inadequate I’m used to feeling ‘cuz I’m 30 odd years ago and don’t even know the basics of cooking.
   • Which probably sounds increeeeeedibly silly to you, as you’ve no doubt been cooking since the 2^nd grade, but not me.  Not ever.  We all have something, and this is (one of) mine.
   • I haven’t ever wanted to cook because…
3.  I ASSOCIATE COOKING WITH STRESS AND ANXIETY.
   • Exact measurements and perfect timing and detailed recipes you need to follow so meticulously that all the joy is completely stripped out of cooking.
   • Again, not groundbreaking for most of you, but Tamera taught me to approach food in a loving way.  To prepare the food with love; to cook the food with love; and to serve the food with love.  To transform cooking from a chore, or hassle, to an opportunity for love.
   • For four weeks, I loved getting into that kitchen.  Every day, pouring positive energy into that food, learning new tricks (i.e. cooking), and practicing ‘the basics’ over and over and over again (one perk of cooking for so many people per meal).
   • I cried every three days or so, during the shift or while eating the meal.  I’d look down at the beautiful food on my plate and think about the pride I felt for having made it and the love I felt for who made it with me.  THAT is what the Tamera kitchen means to me and why this was one of the best experiences of my life.  Which brings us to…

 

 

 

THE KITCHEN MOMMAS

 

My mommas away from home.  My mothers from another……… mother?  How does that work?  My very genuine, very generous, very German kitchen mommas – Ina and Claudia.

 

Ina is the all-around kitchen mega-momma who leads the team and leads most discussions.  Having completed Vision Quest FOUR times in the New Mexican desert, she’s wise, wonderful, quick to laugh, and open to helping you see things in a different way.  (And open to cutting your hair that split so many times you started to call it James Brown.)

 

 

ina. in the kitchen. with the garden hose.

 

 

CLAUDIA and I, on the other hand, bonded directly in the kitchen……… but we go way back.  Back to Thailand, in fact.  I met Claudia (briefly) this January at that yoga meditation enlightenment place but didn’t know then that she’d become so very important to me.  Flash forward six months, cooking alongside her six days a week, Claudia filled me up and lit me up with love.  My last day, she reached into her bra and pulled out a heart-shaped rock to give to me.  ‘From my heart to yours’, she said with tears in her eyes.  To which I replied, ‘I did NOT know where that was headed’.

 

 

i love you.  so freaking much.  and i will see you again.

 

 

Eating vegan for five weeks (as a ferocious meat-eater and owner of a bacon bookmark for God sake) was surprisingly easy.  I didn’t miss a darn thing and even gained weight.  WTF.  Gaining weight at a hippie, vegan camp is like Sharknado turning into a six-movie franchise.  It shouldn’t be possible, but here we are.

 

We ate like kings (hello stuffed peppers and veggie pizzas and spicy dal and potatoes au gratin and chickpea focaccia with this amazing soy milk cheese sauce and don’t even get me STARTED on the green bean & zucchini salads) but when we weren’t eating or cooking, options were endless on how to fill our days.

 

On any given day, I could:

 

• Listen to Edo, a former opera singer from Israel, as he serenaded us with Sanskrit songs about Mother Earth (with or without guitar & flute accompaniment)
• Grab some friends, head down to the lake, and rotate between swimming, napping, cuddling, and sharing
• Take a long walk with my friend Davide who told me every day that he loved me and wanted to marry me (but he also told me I reminded him of Huckleberry Finn so I’m not quite sure where his head was at)
• Coordinate an American-style boot camp to counteract my bag-o-jelly vegan belly or join the boys in a super competitive round of indoor volleyball
• Meet with my ‘triplet’ (pre-assigned small group) to talk about relationships or childhoods or deepest fears or the fact that I snuck into the Tamera dorm after only four nights in my solo tent. (In my defense, the sleeping bag I borrowed didn’t zip, and there was a softball-sized hole in the tent PER-fect for daddy long legs to slip in and wish me goodnight.  I could only take four restless nights curled up like an open-faced taco before submitting defeat.)
• Contact dance
• Ecstatic dance
• 5Rhythms, or Wave, dance where the music takes you through a 1-2-hour meditative dance therapy riiiiiiiide, man
• Play qwirkle
• Visit ‘dog valley’ on the other side of campus to learn how human reactions are responsible for the emotional state of animals
• Walk one hour to the local village for mushroom cream sauce, homemade ice cream, and real whipped cream.  Cream.
• Help out with the ‘hay harvest’ which sounded romantic but ended up being us running around a field, heaving big stacks ‘a hay onto a tractor and then offloading them into a barn
• Try to follow conversations as people questioned freedom and time and love and what is sacred and what is real contact and what is right and what is wrong and what is your truth and what are we eating?  Is there LENTIL in there?  Is it lentil and bean?  Wow.  I knew it.  (Also…… should we create our own scavenger hunt & find all the free love spaces, tunnels and tents hidden around campus?  Yes?  Yes.)
• Meditate in the stone circle amongst 96 different stones (representing 96 different archetypes) – all carrying some type of information or wisdom or healing energy
• Meditate in the mystical forest next to this weird, old, pizza oven-looking thing (that was apparently called ‘the source’ but I didn’t know that until after) and have a legit breakthrough regarding my future.

 

 

I’m not sure if it was the forest or the pizza oven, but after 20 minutes of meditating in that spot, I received a message.  Clear as day.  One simple phrase, locked on repeat, drowning out all other thoughts.

 

‘I cannot, in good conscience, go back to the life I had.’

‘I cannot, in good conscience, go back to the life I had.’

‘I cannot, in good conscience, go back to the life I had.’

 

 

That day in the invitation-only forest, I gave myself permission to explore an alternate ending.  To consider, for the first time, that I didn’t have to fold right back into my previous life.  That my life could look different.

 

This year (for me) has always been about traveling and growing and learning and serving SO THAT I could go back to work feeling refreshed.  But now I see that ‘taking a year for myself’ is such a funny (and limiting) phrase.  I’m supposed to take one year for myself and then what?  Go back to something that’s…… not for me?  My whole life should be for me.  It should look however the heck I want it to look.

 

Which doesn’t mean I can’t go back to the corporate world – all my options are open.  I’m just saying that whatever I do, I’ll have to approach it differently so that it works for me.  I refuse to participate in a culture of competing to see who got the least amount of sleep and who worked the most after work and who’s the most miserable.  I want to be somewhere with work life balance built into the system so that love and JOY are part of the workstream.  Is that too much to ask?

 

 

 

i want to infuse THIS kinda love into every future job

(pic taken post 4-hour brunch shift)

 

 

Speaking of wishes (and wrapping up this post), I celebrated my birthday during week 4 in Tamera and my wishes were clear: to be surrounded by shining faces, to wake up on a beach with people I love, and to dance.

 

The day before my birthday, my buddies Regi & Dina (both in my Intro Week, both in the kitchen) drove me out to Furnas Beach (by Vila Nova de Milfontes) for a deluxe picnic spread and Ayurvedic spice tea champagne.  I had no sleeping bag, no tarp, no warm blankets, no provisions necessary to sleep on a beach……… but I DID have a Neapolitan ice cream back tan from a nude beach the weekend before soooooo.

 

 

settling into our spot!

 

regi (from switzerland), dina (from germany) and me

 

Dina convinced me that it was imperative I enter my 34^th year doing a ‘liberation dance’ on the beach.  In the middle of the night.  Under the full moon.  Naked.

 

I was to wake up anytime post 12a, wiggle out from between them, run down the beach *past* the night fishermen, strip, dance, and embrace the new me.  Let something go in order to step closer to a new life and my ultimate truth.

 

After an hour or so of liberation dancing, I slipped back into bed only to be awoken at sunrise…… with Regi next to me smiling ear to ear and Dina dancing around us, singing along to Cat Steven’s Wild World and Can’t Keep It In and laaaaaaaughing (before lying back down and singing a prayer just for me)!

 

2018 goes down in the record books as one of the best birthday wake-ups of all time.  It didn’t hurt that we were on a gorgeous beach in Portugal.  Bonus points for the little alter they’d prepared in the sand with caramels and chocolates and handwritten notes and where’d you get a candle and how’d you light it?!

 

Once we got back to campus, the bday fun continued with a refreshing dip in the lake, birthday cards from family (that I’d been saving for months), messages from friends, pasta salad with pickles, and a killer dance party in the bar.  The longest lunar eclipse of the century was icing on an already delicious vegan chocolate cake with ‘We Love Taylor’ spelled out in peaches.

 

 

one helluva birthday

 

 

At the end of five weeks, I left Tamera feeling like the energy around me had changed.  Like there was nothing left to dredge up……… and everything was out in the open and starting to heal.

 

I no longer have this fear that life will pass me by and a series of seemingly insignificant decisions will guide my life in a direction that I ultimately wouldn’t have chosen for myself.  I now take full responsibility for self-healing and staying woke.

 

Remember kids: changing the world starts with changing you.

 

Also important: there’s nothing sadder than the end of a vegan breakfast buffet.

 

Early bird gets the hummus!

And now, picture slideshow.

 

my intro week crew.

of course the one day we take a group picture, i was too lazy to change out of my school house rock sleep shirt.  awesome.

 

mid-shift dance break

 

aaaaaaand mid-shift cuddles

 

‘say cheese’  ‘no, say soya milk cheeeeese sauceeee!’

 

ziggy in her natural habitat: crushing everyone at qwirkle

 

some cuties and a solar cooker (jason & the comish)

 

my little brother / deep thinker / delicate flower & string bean = fabian

 

regi, davide, and me at my most attractive

 

1/5 of a typical spread. (the table is very long.)

 

after a gratitude circle, of course.  is it obvious i always gravitated towards claudia?  <3

 

cooking was fun

 

and serving was fun

 

really, everything was fun

 

even post-liberation dance birthday hops on the beach

 

thanks for everything, tamera.  i carry you with me. i carry you in my heart.