Birthing Spirit Camp
The Crazy Leap that Changed Everything:
What I learned about Relationships, Emotions & Authenticity in the first two years of stewarding land
[12-minute read]
Oooff! BOY have the last couple years been ROUGH and rewarding.
I'm so excited to finally share Spirit Camp with you and the wild ride that got us here! Definitely got my @ss handed to me, not gonna lie!
Found a moment to finally put my thoughts on paper. Gonna keep it 100 with you.
Time to spill the tea…
For the last 2 years, my partner Nathaniel and I have been working hard to transform an old christian camp into a magical retreat space nestled in the coastal redwoods of Mendocino, CA (unceded Pomo land). This included renovating a large redwood lodge, chapel turned rainbow sanctuary, caretaker's home, and 4 cabins including a one-of-a-kind water tower.
We also spent a year gradually hardscaping and planting a large gathering garden for outdoor dining with hundreds of floral species for the local hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, bats, and other pollinators.
We could not have pulled this all off without the energy and skills of our families and friends Ashur, Todd, Truman, Trevor, Samuel, Bob, Pancho, Otilio, Jesus, Juana, and so so many more. Thank you for rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty with us!
Renovations have reached a point where we can now invite you to our retreats (starting this summer!) and you can rent the space for your own retreats (book starting today)! You can also come stay in a cabin (or campsite) for a personal retreat or remote workweek (we got wifi in the woods). There are many ways to visit this magical land and dive into breathwork, meditation, and sound healing with us.
Honestly, it feels really incredible to be able to say this after 2 years of nonstop labor. I truly didn’t know if the day would come. This enormous creative endeavor wouldn't have been possible without MAJOR inner work and growing pains too.
Nathaniel and I (city boys) had the audacity to jump into this country queer life after knowing each other only a few months. I know. We’re out-of-our-minds. I had met my unicorn-of-a-partner at an outdoor ecstatic dance in the middle of a global pandemic, and now anything in the world felt possible.
Though our worlds colliding was kismet, we anticipated a BIG learning curve ahead. So we prepared ourselves with support from mentors, therapists, and a coach. I'm forever grateful for their guidance and the resources to receive such wise council. In retrospect, taking on the responsibility of 12 buildings on 27 acres with a sizable mortgage and little budget, all while still getting to know each other was an obvious high-stakes risk (some might say recipe for disaster). Our rosy-eyed naïveté really came in handy when taking the leap. Neither of us probably would’ve jumped in if we really knew what laid ahead.
After living our best gay lives in San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Maputo and LA for 15 years, we were now alone in the woods. Nathaniel started a new job working remote with grueling hours to keep us afloat while I figured out how to tackle the massive reno to-do list. We butted heads on everything from project priorities to design decisions. We were in total opposition most of the time—a ram-horned standoff. Struggling to meet each other's expectations, we both started to worry that we were completely incompatible. Not to mention our remote work schedules were out of sync and daily cooking needs mismatched in a half finished home with a broken dishwasher and rodent commune having a heyday in our walls (thank goddess we adopted a cat to crash that party).
Was this nightmare really the unfolding of our greatest dreams? Or did we just make the worst decision of our lives?
Months in, I felt so ungrounded amongst such grounding redwoods. It wasn’t long before our childhood wounding patterns were on full display. Through a series of happenings, I was confronted with one big emotion after another: rejection, deep-seated shame, worthlessness, rage, fear of loss, humiliation, and betrayal. My ego got turned upside down and inside out. I was taken into the depths of my psyche, forever altering my worldview, while impacting my friends, family, and work in the process. My faith was tested immensely as everything came into question from my authenticity and expression to my values and beliefs. I even changed my name (and might change it again).
It was an ugly, messy, long, confusing process of clashing, door slamming, tears, and shutting down, followed by therapy, coaching, journaling, healing, study, and eventually forgiveness and reconnection. This necessary inner upheaval began teaching me to embrace humility, own my weaknesses, and love my imperfections.
Through it all, meditation acted as a salve of temporary relief by strengthening my connection with spirit. At the same time, I realized I had gotten too good at ‘transcending’ and could use meditation as an escape from the pain. This bypassing of emotional pain actually delayed the relational healing work I was meant to face. So for a period of time I let go of my practice to uncover alternate pathways of healing.
A new practice that has become foundational in my relational healing work is Non-Violent Communication (NVC). This framework taught me the value of curiosity in the face of heavy emotions and how to communicate my observations, feelings, needs, and requests in a non-judgmental way.
For example, when I notice myself feeling resentful or defensive, I take deep breaths and remind myself to get curious about the emotions. With curiosity I’m able to acknowledge and accept the emotions more easily rather than repress them. From acceptance I’m able to more clearly identify my needs. Then I practice sharing my feelings and needs (without judgment—that's the hard part) with Nathaniel and make a request (not a demand) to address the need.
This simple act quickly turns on his empathy. Nathaniel practices the same in reverse, and my empathy turns on too. Doing this over and over again has helped me finally see how safe vulnerability can be. NVC helps us diffuse emotional tension and return to equanimity by allowing our feelings to be seen and loved rather than hidden in shame.
With this intentional practice, I finally saw how the moments of *hell* were actually opportunities to *heal.*
Once breakthroughs in our relationship started happening, I gained perspective of the emotionally turbulent dynamics that were at play between us.
*2 big realizations* helped me reframe what was happening:
1. The wounded and hidden fragments of my psyche were acting out in our relationship because I finally felt safe enough to face them; I finally feel safe in relationship with Nathaniel, in our new little world, to fully embrace my shadow (unknown parts of my psyche) and heal what I’ve deeply repressed for so long out of a need to feel safe. What a GIFT of a lifetime.
2. The opposition between us is not incompatibility, but a powerful energy we’re learning to harness and alchemize. When Nathaniel and I took time to reflect on our values, dreams, and missions in life, we recognized that we’re actually super aligned. We realized that our different upbringings informed our opposing approaches to our creative work, and that our quarreling wasn’t a mismatch, but a learning of how to weave together our polarity into a powerful, unified purpose. In other words, how does one bridle a wild unicorn?
This new life we chose became what I now see as an initiation into a new phase of maturity, adulthood, and authenticity. We continue to face our challenges now as an opportunity to fully become the partners and camp stewards we signed up to be.
Reflecting further, these *5 potent learnings* have really stuck with me.
Which one speaks to you? I’d love to hear in the comments.
1. Bringing my attention *out* of my mind and *into* my body is VITAL for being 100, for keeping it real, because emotions live in my body, not my mind. Like many of us, I developed a safety strategy as a kid to habitually dissociate from my body to avoid feeling big emotions. When this happens, I’m no longer connected to my personal truth, and therefore, by default, am unconsciously gaslighting myself and those around me. In other words, social connection remains shallow or inauthentic without emotional awareness. Developing my emotional literacy has also helped deepen this awareness (highly recommend Brené Brown’s Altas of the Heart).
2. Sharing with vulnerability is a GIFT because it's the cornerstone of authentic connection. I've watched and read all the Brené Brown, but needed to be out of my element to really GET that we're not meant to keep our lived experiences in total privacy. Doing so only leads to isolation and depression. Sharing my truth more publicly is very uncomfortable, and cancel culture doesn’t make it any easier. All the more reason to practice though. It’s time to change the culture, so I’ll keep showing up brave, awkward, and kind in the face of it.
3. The core reason vulnerability has been a struggle is because I’ve felt ashamed about feeling deep sadness and rage in a world that has taught me that I must be happy and grateful in order to be loved, accepted, and safe. As a child I developed the unconscious belief that “I do not matter unless I am happy.” It has been operating in my subconscious and informing my thoughts and actions my whole life up until this point.
I no longer blame my parents for this conditioning because I know their intentions were well-meaning. I feel a lot of love for them because I know they did the best they knew how and certainly did a lot better than their parents did. While that’s true, they, too, unconsciously inherited this belief from their parents who worked hard to survive in the world by conforming to the confines of their local cultures. The unspoken yet blatant perfectionism perpetuated by ‘Commonwealth civility,’ ‘Christian values,’ and the ‘American Dream’ extinguishes our authenticity before we even get a chance to discover it. This happens to almost all of us and there’s no shame in it. The important thing is that we show up to heal when we become aware that we’re not being authentic.
To truly heal, we need to love-up on and be loved in ALL the emotions we get to experience as humans (we’re not Vulcan after all). True healing is a holistic approach of accepting and integrating all parts of oneself (“wholing” as Bill Plotkin calls it) rather than using wellness to fix a flaw in order to continue scaling the ladder of societal expectations. Though a lot of great healing can happen alone and in the wilderness, we also need each other to mature into our wholeness and become our true selves. Because we are *hurt* in relationship, we can also “whole” in relationship.
4. Even when it feels impossible, I CAN heal old wounds and repair harm done IF I acknowledge and accept the emotions I feel in my body and initiate vulnerable conversations with curiosity. Though reconciliation isn’t guaranteed, taking risks and messing up is less scary now that I have the skills to make amends. The practice of extending an olive branch is empowering and healing in itself.
5. Pain becomes purpose. When I avoid pain, I rob myself of my purpose. I rob myself of my ability to self-heal and become whole again. I rob others of their purpose, their self-healing, and ability to become whole again when I try to prevent them from feeling their pain too. So instead, I practice acknowledging and accepting my pain and the pain of others, so that I have an opportunity not to remedy pain, but to feel empathy and connection. Feeling connected IS healing. It’s that simple.
While the learning continues, Nathaniel and I have come through the other side of this major growth spurt with more love, trust, and grace for ourselves and each other. We're stronger for it and wouldn't have it any other way. Looking back, I already feel grateful for many of the trials and tribulations that were once so emotionally charged (some of which I'm still growing through). I’m so thankful to have a partner to intentionally grow with even if in very unexpected ways.
Along the journey, Nathaniel and I trained to facilitate practices that have been transformational for us, like *breathwork* thanks to David Elliott! It’s also an honor to offer *sound meditation* thanks to training with Alexandre and David. We've received an amazing response already from friends who've had a chance to work with us, and can't wait to share these practices with you too!
Though it currently feels like I’m emerging from a cocoon, the opportunity for more transformation is always on the horizon. I’ve come to see that the larger journey I’m currently on is one of individuation: learning to cultivate my wholeness and become my true self as a part of the larger earth ecosystem. Though healing work can appear egocentric in its early stages, I believe that the cultivation of our wholeness is ultimately about becoming ECOcentric: being in communion with and contributing to the collective wellbeing of ALL life on earth—the flora, fauna, and fungi included, not solely oneself, the nuclear family, or humanity.
My hope with Spirit Camp is that the self-healing/wholing work and connection we share together through breath, sound, silence, play, movement, dance, singing, music, and writing in the redwood wilderness will contribute to the ecocentric cultural renaissance that I believe is already budding before us. I dream that one day, maybe in my lifetime, we’ll get to dream into existence a life-enriching, vibrantly authentic culture together.
Thank you for taking the time to read my giant share. It truly means a lot.
Hope to see you in the redwoods!
Tree hugs,
Julian Hunter
