WWOOFING: Spiritual Bypassing & Love’s Liberation
Seeking Eden & Pura Vida
Listen to the story read by Jo. or read below. This post discusses incest abuse. If you’re a survivor or supporter seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.
I bought a one way ticket to Costa Rica with no intention to stay or leave. The plan had been to meet my friend, Monica, for two weeks, then end up on a farm ready to work. WWOOFing, as it has come to be called, stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. This one I found through the recommendation of someone else who had already been.
I had prepared for this experience before by speaking to the owner of the farm over the phone. A woman whose name means Lily. A flower that symbolizes rebirth, but is also gifted at funerals to commemorate death. She, though, only spoke of life. How everything she does she loves. An expat from the United States who felt called to Costa Rica for a life’s devotion to Pura Vida.
A phrase I heard on repeat in the last two weeks from the lips of Ticas. It translates to, “The Pure life.” But is less of a phrase and more of a lifestyle. A way of being that prioritizes peace, environmental sustainability, and community. This farmer and her former partner built the farm and invited volunteers to come in return for a small nightly fee. There they would learn how to seed, and plant, and care for the land and the animals. To swim in the river running alongside the property. To listen to the bamboo stalks, standing higher than trees, singing and speaking through the breeze.
The pictures on the website made the land look like Eden. The paradise so named by my spiritual ancestors then lost due to sin — separation, disobedience to their god. These stories, written so long ago, then translated by men, then canonized in a book, then read from the pulpit, were forced on me as a child. The one suffering from seizures and surgeries and sexual violence. These myths locked this search for salvation into my imagination. As if Eden were real and it was the purpose of my existence to discover it.
I’m not the only writer who has been lured by the promise of paradise. John Steinbeck, the author of East of Eden, wrote his editor this phrase that has felt so true to me. As if it were written on my bones, telling the story of my soul:
“Although East of Eden is not Eden, it is not insuperably far away.”
Eden was close and maybe this time I had the opportunity to find it. I told the farmer about my history of incest and illness, as well as my present diagnosis of Complex-PTSD, to ensure she understood the gravity of my need for safety. She reassured me:
“Incest is so common.” She was aware. “We’ve never had an incident of sexual violence on the farm.” She was aware. “That’s not to say it couldn’t happen, but it hasn’t yet.” She was aware.
She felt safe enough, so I went. I didn’t know if I would enjoy the experience, nor how long I’d stay. But the farmer invited me to come for a day, or a week, or a month, or a year, or a life. She simply encouraged me not to decide until I came and felt the farm for myself.
I arrived. The beauty of the land took my breath away. Banana trees to my right, a plot of rows growing seasonal foods to my front, horses to my left, the steep and winding road that I gently drove down behind me now. I said farewell to Monica, while the farmer welcomed me with a younger man by her side. A volunteer who decided one day to stay permanently. They both greeted me with big hugs. Then showed me to my home.
“I have two suggestions here.” The farmer began. “One: walk barefoot. Two: do whatever you want.”
Both sounded like a dream come true. I quickly removed my shoes and began to grow used to feeling my feet. Suddenly the house stood in front of me. The structure had two side walls and one back wall, the entire front open to the elements. No doors, no windows. Just space. A number of twin beds sat in a row with a loft overhead that had a steep ladder attached. I had asked in advance to sleep in this space to ease PTSD management. Separation helped me to feel safe so my brain could rest. But I wasn’t aware that there were no walls. No glass on the windows. No boundaries.
I pulled my backpack up the ladder to the top of the loft and unpacked. Lifted the mosquito net and tucked my body under it. Then pulled the sheets over the bed, placed the covers on the pillows, and laid my head to rest.
The bugs were loud and big and this urban and suburban human who wasn’t used to them squirmed with nerves as they buzzed on the other side of the net near my head. The sun fell early and everyone rested. Except for them. The insects escalated. I laid there wide eyed and terrified. My brain spinning with stories and my body expanding with tension as I listened to all these little potential perpetrators surrounding me.
I cannot divorce myself from my history. No matter how hard I try to rationalize that they’re just bugs and can only bite. The part of me that had been visited in the night far too many times couldn’t compartmentalize those perpetrators from these ones. So for hours I laid awake until the sun rose the next day.
I got out of bed sleepless and immediately felt the need to meet the river. To greet the water with a good morning. So I walked there with bare feet. The flowing fluid met me openly with a soft current. I pulled my clothes off until I was naked and vulnerable and stepped in with my right foot then my left. The liquid quickly becoming me. No longer recognizing the difference in feeling between my skin and that subtle substance I now stood in. My body adjusted to the temperature so I walked deeper. Into my knees. Into my hips. Into my belly. Into my breasts. Into my neck. Into my face. Now I was wet, drenched, dripping.
Underwater, I screamed for a moment as I often do. My body finally able to release trapped energy in a place no one could hear me as the fluid absorbed the sound. I slicked my hair back and let my body be found by the river. Water entering all parts of me. Every crevice, every wrinkle, every pore. Then finally I rested on the surface. Breasts and eyes pointed to the sky. Receiving the sun. Floating.
Float therapy is a real thing and I’ve been practicing it for quite some time. Learning to trust that it will hold me up. Letting my body surrender to its embrace and just be. The presence of the water reminding me that I’m supported in ways I can’t always see. That I always have been. That I always will be. I stood up and stepped out and started the day.
“If only I could begin every day like this.”
I wished. I said thank you to the river then walked away. Barefoot again. I let my skin feel the earth. I slowed down. The rocks pricked at my feet, while the grass swept my toes, while the dirt transformed the color of them as my walk created its own wind. I found the farmer sitting at the breakfast table.
“How’d you sleep?” She asked me. “Not well, unfortunately. I had a difficult time managing my PTSD. I’m not accustomed to sleeping without closed doors and screened windows.”
“We have another room!” She moved me to a private house with four walls. No door, but a curtain, and screens that stretched between the open spaces. “This should work!” I said hopefully. The bathroom to this house was a few yards away, so the farmer brought me a pee pot, so I could just squat in the night and release.
I spent the day laying in a hammock and balancing on the slack line tied between the trees. Cooking and eating with this farm family fresh food organically grown from the ground. Playing guitar and singing out loud. Reading my favorite book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. If I could sleep, this could be a good life for me, even if just temporarily.
Then I went to bed. With the screens on the windows, I felt safer from the bugs, but the curtain instead of a door still shook me. Just as I began to drift off to sleep, I heard a screech, a howl, a hiss. The steps of an animal in the living area just outside the thin curtain that separated that room from mine.
“What is it?!” My PTSD flared immediately. “A panther?!” I had never heard any sound like it. Back to being terrified and wide eyed the rest of the night. The young man met me the next morning to tell me that the cat was in heat and came to my house to express herself. “Really, cat?!” I asked angrily why this nightly chaos wouldn’t leave me be. I went back to the water to shake myself awake then to the breakfast table for my first work day.
The farmer led and I followed as we both walked barefoot on the land and began to get to know each other. The jests were instant. The teasing bonding. We shared a wicked sense of humor both able to give and take a few good jabs. She felt like the grandmother I wish I would’ve had. The one I thought I needed now.
We were going to pick the fruits off of the jabuticaba tree, a Brazilian Grape Tree, that grew little purple sweets right from its very own trunk. Hundreds of them. We would pick them off, then wash them off, then squish them, then drink the juice or bag them to sell.
We found the grape trees and I saw for the first time the abundance naturally gifted from the branches: hundreds of round, dark purple globes ready to be found while the skin was still tight and the juice sweet. She pulled one off of the tree and handed it to me.
“Eat it!” She encouraged. “Just don’t swallow the skin or pit.”
I hesitated, not accustomed to consuming directly from the source. Then popped it into my mouth. The skin surrendered and the juice poured out. The pit hard and the skin tough and bitter to the bite, they both stayed with me. I had no idea what to do with them, not wanting to be rude and spit them out in front of the farmer. As I pondered a polite solution, she shot her grape remains to the ground feet away from the mound we stood on. Then gave me a big, purple toothed smile. So I did the same.
Our conversation widened. Quickly shifting to spirituality. The intimacy between us deepening as we pulled grapes, and ate grapes, and spat grapes all over the ground.
“You know,” she began. “I believe god wanted you to be raped so that you could help other children.”
Immediately, my body tightened, filled with pressure. Protecting it from the torture that suddenly became this moment. Like it always did when I knew I was listening to bullshit. The lies that allowed for the violence to happen. The ones that took me back. That made my brain react in the same way it did when the abuse first started. Now my body was split in two between the 36 year old anti-incest activist and the two year old victim enduring the abuse.
The activist spoke calmly while the child screamed silently, “If god exists, then I believe god is the greatest source of love I could ever imagine. I envision love wept with me when the men in my family chose to rape me. Then, when I finally had the means, that same grieving love demanded that I run like hell from home and never return.”
She processed this new way of believing for a moment and seemed to receive it, while my two year old cried so tired of hearing this side of the story. The same one that told me for years to accept the violence against my body. Passed down through the generations in my family. That obedience to god my father would earn me salvation, my invitation back to Eden. To be raped repeatedly then silenced for the sake of someone else’s satiation. The only sin in this situation — my resistance.
“Your father was your greatest teacher,” the farmer continued, glorifying patriarchal violence as didactic instead of devastating. “My father taught me little. Love helped me to learn from the experiences, liberate myself, then listened as I’ve tried to make meaning of a life beyond it.”
Violence doesn’t begin in how people act, but in how people think. And so many have been conditioned to glorify violence by the mess of Christ on the cross and the distortion that god intended it, or misinterpretations from the passivity of appropriated Western Buddhism, or the spiritual bypassing of white, woo woo New Age practices.
Spiritual bypassing has allowed people to turn the story of love into one that justifies hate and complicity throughout history. Then demands in the name of god or enlightenment or esoteric self-aggrandizement, to just walk away. To do nothing. To be complacent. Because:
“God intended it.”
“God would never give you more than you can carry.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“Everything has its season.”
“Not everyone is called to care.”
“Not everyone is invited to be just.”
“Just carry your cross like Jesus.”
“Just pray until it goes away.”
“Relax. Take a bath.”
“Meditate.”
But this was not who my little one knew love to be. People who have seizures often experience hyperspirituality. Visions. Deep intimacy with the divine. She felt that. Raised Catholic, a great community existed in her wild imagination. She watched her angels come to be with her during the seizures and the surgeries and the sexual violations. She witnessed Jesus weep as he held her hand to provide the support she needed to survive the severity of her life before five. Whether these visions were real or just a figment of her spiritual imagination, I no longer question. Faith saved her life, then mine.
This is who we knew love to be: accompaniment, presence, intimacy, safety. No matter how hard it got, love was always there to help us endure. Just until we didn’t have to anymore. Then love encouraged us to have the courage to run away and stay away. Then the power and persistence to do something about it as soon as there was space.
My voice began to tremble as I pulled those damn grapes off that tree and quickly realized this was not safety. Not the Eden I was so desperately seeking. A picture of paradise on the outside, but just a little deeper a place that bypassed patriarchal principles allowing it to reign like so much of the rest of the world.
As it turns out, there was an older man on the property too. He had been a problem in the past — his behavior making female volunteers uncomfortable. No direct abuse, but sexism certainly. This information hadn’t been shared before I arrived.
“You can’t be angry,” the farmer continued to justify her own passivity. Once again I became the teacher I did not want to be while my two year old kept shaking me. “Anger is energy.” I responded. “It fueled me throughout my liberation journey. It remains my greatest source of motivation in my writing.”
“Anger is toxic,” her voice turned to a tone I no longer felt safe engaging with and quickly changed the subject. I placed the silver bowl now full of grapes down and spat the last seed from my mouth out. I couldn’t swallow her teachings anymore than I could the bitter and hard remains of those round bulbs.
I asked for a break and walked to the water. Letting the ground receive my rage with every step as I made my way to that beautiful river on the outskirts of the property. I stripped myself of my clothes and dove in once again naked. And immediately screamed as loud as I could. The water the only place I have ever found to receive the horror of the sound and not absolutely freak people out. I let my body shake and shake and shake out the memory of centuries of spiritual glorification of male violence against bodies, years of it against my body. And so many doing nothing.
It hurt enough to accept that my own father raped me serially, my mother and my brothers chose to stay by his side, and my community remained silent and left me to heal alone. But it hurt an unbearable amount for the source of love that accompanied me through all that, to be twisted into another being complicit in these conventions.
All I wanted was Eden. Not perfection, but peace. Safety and satiation. The fulfillment of pura vida. I hoped to taste it on this farm and thought I had for a moment between the playful spitting of extra pits after enjoying the sweetness of grape juice to the expectorating of spiritual bullshit. But patriarchal ideology had made its way here too. By turning the greatest source of love into a pimp. A father god who trafficked some kids to save others. It didn’t make sense.
But the land was healing and the grapes were sweet and the water was whimsical and I didn’t want to leave. I felt in my body that common pendulation. The internal negotiation of how strong my boundaries must be. Or if my standards for safety simply sat too high and I needed to compromise.
I attended dinner that night in a backless dress because it was comfortable and the heat soaked me. While we were all preparing the meal, the older man walked past me and placed his hand on the bare skin of my back between my shoulder blades. The place of intimacy. The place of comfort. The place of soothing. The place of sexuality. The place of consent. The place where stress neurons leave the spine. The place where strangers don’t touch. I froze.
I knew his history. He knew mine. The touch felt like too much. It felt like what so many do — the beginning of pushing a boundary. Testing what he could and couldn’t get away with. My mind oscillated again wondering if I should say something. Ask him not to touch me. Not there. Not like that. Not on bare skin. But what about retaliation? How would he respond? Would his reaction make it worse? Would the farmer support me or the patriarch living on her property?
I went to bed that night wondering how long I’d stay. One more day, I laid awake with the bugs reminding me of the men who used to visit. Staring at the ceiling endlessly sleepless. I arose with the sun once more. Started the day with the same cold water dip. Screaming and shaking until my body found a place of rest within. Then walked to the breakfast table with my bare feet against the rocks and found the farmer there. The jokes resumed. Then, the deeper conversation.
“I would kill your father if he were ever in my company.” The farmer had clearly spent the evening soaking in my story and undulated from complacency to punitive justice. Today she changed her mind to the only other option in a violent pedagogy, to react with an even worse form of punishment. Murder — you took my body, so I have the right to your life. No attempts at transformation. Violence met with more violence. In that moment, I better understood our conversation from the day before.
I had over a decade to determine the reason for the rapes: the patriarchal, white supremacist family that raised my father in a violent tradition, then when he reflected the same violence a society that failed to teach him safety, then institutions that gave him too much power for being a white man, then a church that claimed he was a reflection of the resurrection, then a partner who enabled him to hurt his children for his own satisfactions, then a community who saw all that and did nothing. Leaving my father free to rape the next generation of children. The responsibility solely on me to ensure he didn’t harm again. Love, or god, or whatever other words are used, had absolutely nothing to do with my father’s abuse.
Empathy now entered me. It did not excuse what she said. It did not erase that she made love into a pimp and me into his pawn to be used for his ends. Her common beliefs that validated purpose theology: that some male god created me for some greater reason and my job was to figure it out and do it obediently. But I understood her better and that helped me, as it always did, to let go. To release my rage. And realize my peace. It was time to leave.
I came to the farm to receive, not to teach. Certainly not to listen to the tiresome belief that complacency and violence are the only forms of accountability. Especially not that love intended all of that to reveal some certain truth or inspire my work.
The land here was beautiful, the water healing. But the land and water would follow me wherever I went. It would always meet me and greet me. So I walked away from that half Eden. Mourning at the funeral of the death of those stories that I would no longer let myself listen to, while I practiced a rebirth into spiritual traditions that celebrated liberation and the purpose of existence to enjoy and protect creation.
The next morning I returned to greet the river. Grieving that we would not spend our lives together. Then went back to breakfast with that farmer where I said goodbye and thanked her for our time. We shared some sweet moments and I would not forget them.
The young man who met me when I first began my journey on the farm, drove me to the bus stop. We chatted on the way. “I’m so sorry for the way the men in your family treated you. You deserved to be raised safe.” Immediately, water poured from my eyes. My body remembering the river. This was all I wanted the farmer to say to me. To validate the horror of my history. To name how I should’ve been treated instead. This is all I ever want anyone to say. “Thank you.”
I began to remember my power. To be reminded of why I left my father for abusing me, and my mother for choosing him, and the church that passed its own priests from parish to parish perpetrating the same sins, and this farmer for proclaiming love as a pimp, and the patriarchy as a professor, and the repression of anger as wisdom. I remembered that I am free now and have agency. I get to choose what I believe love to be, set boundaries around those who don’t agree, and embody love with my entire being. This is my rebirth. A promise to myself.
I will always walk away just like I did back then, when love isn’t reflected as the love I know it is. I will let safety heal my wounds, the water hold my screams, the land absorb my grief, and my body guide my dreams. And I will write my rage and call it holy. I am a commitment to creating my own Eden where I will claim that love is liberation and recreation. That I am proof of it. And that will be my pura vida.
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