GaiaTree Sanctuary and A Clean Self Compassion

This was my best day on Taveuni - at the GaiaTree Sanctuary - a very inspiring and beautiful  organic spice plantation and 'nectar lab' providing amazing superfoods, drinks, snacks and meals all grown there in the gardens,

high up on a hillside over looking the sea,

 and run by a delightful young Canadian couple Natasha and Matt.

She creates all the gorgeous spaces

and table decorations,

and runs the nectar lab - the kitchen - 

with her team of local women - mostly Indian women.

We were served these fabulous light crisp plantain chips and a fresh coconut dip when we arrived.

The buildings are all domes made from concrete designed to withstand the cyclones which hit the island nearly every year.

I loved the clean simplicity that Natasha has created in the beautiful 

curves of the interiors.

Matt took us on a tour of the gardens densely planted with a  huge array of wild tropical fruit trees, berries and herbs...

green finger bananas....sweet as candy floss...

annatto berries - the natural yellow colouring used in butter and other food stuffs...it stains your fingers orange if you squish a seed ...which I did.....

acai berries...one of the famous 'superfoods'....

these golden thread spiders were everywhere high up in their webs in the sky above us....

granadillas....  these are only a tiny few of all the plants Matt showed us, demonstrating  his huge horticultural knowledge and especially the health benefits of everything they grow.

They also keep rare breed chickens and ducks and feed them on coconut meal...

this looks like a very exotic variety of hibiscus....

inside Natasha's garden shed....chitting potatoes.

We came back from our brilliant tour with 

long sticks of sugar cane that Matt cut for us to make into sugar cane juice. 

But that story and our magnificent lunch I will write about in tomorrow's blog ....

Today

Talking to my lovely kinesiologist therapist this morning....into the safe space of her listening and acceptance....I pushed open the door of the heart of the matter....

The matter is that the way I have been grieving for Robin has got entangled with my own harsh self judgement and criticism....my tendency to beat myself up.... which isn't a new habit....to disappear down the wishing well without a paddle to extricate myself.

So today, on the eve of my would have been 31st wedding anniversary...by some miracle and intention and powerful listening I stopped being so horrible to myself. And with a great breath, let it all be exactly the way it was - for him and for me....the heartbreak and the nose blowing and the loving and 'the raging against the dying of the light'....

So when I re-visit the past.... especially those very last days....and today I've been practising going back there...I can just feel all the pain of missing him and not the anguish and self recrimination that I've added to it.

It feels like a clean compassion for myself....something different to practise.... the paddle to swish me  me out of the wishing well....into the light.