It is 4h30 am. I am awake and cannot go back to sleep.  I am being called. Called to do what I love. To write. To let words and thoughts flow from me. To let the joy that is in my heart find its way from my heart through my fingers to the beautiful new keyboard I have gifted myself with just for my writing.

I have not written my blog for a while now. My wonderful trip and stay in Prince Albert came and went and I came back to work.  I live and work at a truly beautiful place called Bodhi Khaya (very roughly translated meaning “home of awakening or enlightenment”). It is situated just outside Gansbaai on an old historic farm called Baviaansfonteyn which is covered in fynbos and ancient forests of milk wood and other indigenous trees and plants.

On the wall outside my flat at Bodhi Khaya. Picture taken by Siobhan.

I live with a group of people who have become my family over the year that I have worked here.  They have helped me heal and grow and become more whole, more me, just be accepting me the way I am. And miraculously just be being who they are. Has it been easy? Plain sailing? No, it certainly hasn’t always been a walk in the park and yet it has.  I have lived more and learnt more and without a doubt laughed more than I have ever before in my entire life.

Arriving back from leave, I honestly felt divided. As if my spirit were split. Part of me was still in Prince Albert, that beautiful Karoo town that stole my heart with its wind pumps and cement dams, lime green mountains, creativity and sense of community. Another part of me was with the man I love overseas. And another part still, and my body, that until so recently underestimated part of me, was here, in this exquisite place I call home and work.

As I set about picking up the threads of my work life, I gradually called my spirit back. It helped that I still had contact with my temporary home in the Karoo . I was asked to write about the PArt Festival for the local newspaper, the “Prince Albert Friend”.  It helped that I had photographs and memories and also loving colleagues who welcomed, watched and reminded me to “Take it easy. Ease back into it!” This from Siobhan, who is visiting us from Ireland. So these admonishments have a delightful Irish twang when they ring in my ears and guide me and urge me to curb my usual inclination to want to get on with it , to have things done and dusted. IMMEDIATELY!!

So it is that I think I am beginning get an inkling of what our beloved retreat manager, David, means when he says: “We are our own home”.

Guess where my two sister/colleagues, Chantel and Siobhan, are spending a few days? That’s right….Prince Albert in the Karoo.