In fact, I’m here now, basking in the glory of mountain views and island breeze; waking up to smiling faces and the rhythm of the swaying trees.

Summer school hasn’t started yet and so far it feels a lot like a retreat or rehabilitation from the outside world. I’ve been eating 3 meals a day with freshly squeezed juice in a community setting with people from the US, UK, Europe and of course, my beautiful island. I don’t think I have ever really spent time in a community living situation before, apart from the short time I went to visit my partner in California last year; but if I were to imagine it, this is exactly what I envision.

Have you ever gone somewhere and just felt immediately at home? At peace? Not just comfortable and welcomed, but truly like you are, and have always been, a part of it? That is what I am feeling. I have been to the Source twice before, and each time the lull of the trees has always spoken to me—I just wasn’t ever here long enough to sit with them and hear their message. Being here now for four days has made me recognise that I am the Source, and the Source is me. The Source is all of us who are here; all the children who have been touched by Maria and Keisha over the years, who greet them with pure glee in the streets as we walk through the town. The Source is the beautiful children who run around these mountain tops like they’ve never been anything else but an extension of the land. The Source is all the people who find their way here from all walks of life, and who keep coming back time and again so they always remember.

If love at first sight applies also to places, then I knew I found it here 1.5 years ago. Although, more accurately, this would be love at first feel. On an instinctual level, and without overthought, we sentient beings know love when we feel it. I am so grateful that the love of this land brought me back here for the summer to be part of and connect with these beautiful people. I am glad that I choose to crawl out of my shell when I am called to grow, and that it allows me to have experiences like these. I had contemplated coming here pretty much up until I arrived, because I have some newfound obligations to tend to for the next step of my journey. (That’s for another blog in the near future.) I felt I wasn’t prioritising right and that I shouldn’t even be in Jamaica right now, let alone for the whole summer. But of course something kept pulling me. I couldn’t fully convince myself not to come, even though it seemed like the more practical option. I wasn’t really sure what I was being called to do, but, of course, I knew that whatever it was, I would find myself doing it. And so, here I am.

I was asked yesterday by a kindred soul where I’d prefer to live: on the beach, or in the mountains. This is a question I have been asking myself ever since I can remember. As most of you know, I am 100% a water baby. The ocean has always beckoned to me, drawing me in with her sparkling light, her infinite mysteries, and receding tide. There has always been something magical to me about gliding gracefully through infinite pulsating hydrogen and oxygen molecules; but it was mostly the silence that got me. There’s no escaping yourself when you submerge into that kind of stillness. All that matters then is you, your breath, and mama. I suppose this is why I’ve always been attracted to silence; and so of course I have tended to lean more toward living by the ocean. But I am finding that there is a stillness up here in the mountains too. It’s just that it’s a stillness that matches your own. Unlike in the ocean where silence is the only option, up here you get the illusion of choice. Either you slow down and let it fill you, or you stay long enough until you have no choice but to become it.

So after years of being on the fence, and with the help of this beautiful space, I have finally decided that the quietness of the mountains is where I’d make my home; where I would allow myself to be.

I am the leaves on the trees as they make their sounds in the wind. I am the wildflowers that grow through the gravel and the insects that don’t stay outside. I am the moonlight that guides us home at night, and the peenie wallies that watch from the bushes as we walk by. I am the crickets that sing us to sleep. I am the morning rain that wakes up the Earth. I am the mountains that actually chose me, long before I ever manifested in the flesh.

There is nowhere else I’d rather be right now.