Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams: Surviving challenges, Staying connected to beauty, Finding safety

Moving to another country and starting your whole entire life over in your 50s is… well, it’s daunting. Even when you already know the language, even when you’ve lived in that same country before, even when you already have your accommodations set up. It’s a lot. 

But I came here with a mission, and that mission was to create a retreat center for artists, writers, and revolutionaries. I admit, we changed that last word to “justice seekers” to be more understandable, since revolutionaries can bring with it connotations that we don’t intend, but listen, I will always be partial to revolutionaries. 

We had a specific kind of space we wanted to create. Not a retreat center that’s like a spa, all fancy and proper and with green juice and no coffee. Absolutely not. An approachable space, comfortable and inviting. A space that is safe for everyone: to explore, to truly rest, to be reconnected with beauty. 

And plenty of really good coffee.

Big goals, big dreams, and big red tape. It has not been an easy first year. So like in every other season of my life, I’ve depended on my creative journal to stay a little more sane, to stay connected to beauty, to have a place to spill out all my thoughts, get them outside the body and somewhere else to live. So much so that I filled journal #100 this year.

I’ve been sharing this practice of creative journaling with others, in one form or another, for decades. I’ve taught children, I’ve taught adults, and for three years before moving back to Spain, I was integrating creative journaling into an art course I was teaching at a local university. Of course, the vast majority of my students weren’t art students. They weren’t even people who considered themselves creative. They were nursing students, business majors… anything that wasn’t the humanities. Those were my students. They were there to fulfill a core requirement outside their major. But guess what: they thrived, absolutely thrived, at the practice of filling a journal. Every one of them (except one person, in three years) filled an entire notebook with writing, scraps of paper, bits of doodles, photos, you name it. Anything that was flat enough to be pasted to a piece of paper was going into those journals.

I wanted to be sure to continue helping people practice beauty in this approachable, simple way when I moved to Spain. And in our Rest | Restore | Explore retreat this spring, I not only was privileged to help our participants start their first creative journaling practice, but I got to achieve a lifelong goal: an outdoor creative journaling workshop. We walked out to my friend Julio’s field for a journaling workshop outside, blankets spread out under us, paper and markers and glue sticks all around us. We had our journals in our laps and a glass of Spanish wine in our hands. There was even a sunset. I think I cried. The beauty of being able to give to others exactly what I had been envisioning for decades was all in that moment, and that moment will forever be engrained in my memory.

That moment is why I am willing to restart life here in Spain, despite its difficulties. Because what we are building here, that safe space where I get to invite people to reconnect to beauty, to find a practice that doesn’t require any special skills or materials, is needed now more than ever. What a gift: I get to create that moment for others. That moment when people stop worrying about whether or not they are creative and just… create. When they realize they have permission to create not for anyone else, but just for themselves. Their journal is for their soul alone, and once they realize that nothing is required of them and they don’t have to perform for anyone, then they relax and actually enjoy it. Sink into it. Spill it all out into that notebook. Sometimes, like our retreat attendees again this fall, they get that moment in a field with an almond grove behind us and a sunset in front of us.

Beauty. Connection. Exploring a country and yes, even a little creativity.

Courtney, Dee and I can’t wait to create another core memory with our next group of retreat attendees. I hope you’re one of them.

Holly