When do we start sensing something bigger than ourselves? When did I start asking myself questions, trusting?
Mariarosa
My thoughts have always been too loud, even as a little girl entranced watching adults being adults in a way too complicated for a few year’s heart to understand. Later, faced with a flood of prayers; surrounded by priests and awe-inspiring professors, sitting on alchol-desinfected smelling pews, watching blossoming trees outside the window, listening to unbearably happy laughter in the distance.
When at eighteen I breathed ocean air and hope in Devon, where I hid among foreign faces on walks and simply breathed. Or when in Barcelona, starting my Erasmus, I didn’t understand the language, I didn’t understand anything of the thousands of instructions to begin with but I let myself be guided by the flow of events; I opened my arms, closed my eyes and boh! I started smiling, I started dancing, I noticed a movement back to a forgotten place and I was fine, so hollowly fine. This was the time I discovered I was breathing, I began to feel, it made me feel the moment and the place. It taught me to savour whatever I was experiencing, without exclusion. It brought me into the world.
I never thought I would organise a Retreat, it was a long journey for me to get here; as I often say, it took me many lifetimes and many mountains to climb. I have also studied books on branding and design, listened to many speeches, worked heavy hours on / off line in different languages and expressions, worked on fashion, luxury… Let’s face it, I’ve been workaholic, hopelessly in love with my profession.
I have read books in search of answers but what really remains is that touch, that invitation, to garden your life, to cultivate.
Le Langhe
‘What to say? You have to be hungry and thirsty and at some point the spring and the fruit tree spring up’, like those gardens cultivated by my grandfather or still today at home in Piedmont by my parents.
By the ‘The energy of error’ V. Sklovskij writes ‘One must tear oneself away from one’s home, from the sure calculation about tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, and take flight for oneself, out of an inner need, but not like a bird, because birds follow the old ways; fly away as only a working man flies, one who knows the rhythm of possibilities’.
The deepest darkness came and then came the light. The nagging need to understand is tantamount to an attitude of capture and reduction that is already known. But understanding can instead be listening, waiting. ‘Peter Bichsel in When We Knew How to Wait’ writes “It is only possible to listen well when you tolerate not understanding”.
The sacred breath that connects us to the whole world, when we lose ourselves, connects us to a hesitant, wandering intensity of being that makes home, makes base camp. It is precisely in these moments of life, of my life, that meditation, like yoga, like sincere talk are a memory.
Memory of being. And it is precisely in this way that I met Angela, skilled Yoga Teacher and Yoga Therapist at her Studio in Zurich and had precious ‘virtual chats’ during Covid times with an incredibly skilled personal coach, Jasmine. And decided some time ago to ask them to join me on this journey in being the right professionals of this first retreat at Villa Rosa and to offer this ‘safe base camp’ from where to start again, to feel, simply to be.
Undertaking a new journey for me, in the name of the purest love until the ego gets tired and so we change, we open up to the unknown. I am doing this. Hence the desire to create a place, in this first retreat, a physical place, where to meet, where to be reborn.
We suffer when the beauty within us remains unexpressed. I know that listening, waiting hosting in the body are delicate tools for unearthing and allowing the roots of beauty to resurface, a beauty that does not discriminate, that does not belong to an idea of beauty separated from the ugly, a gaze that gives back.
I experienced it in a welcoming and patient way as never before in my life during motherhood. Full acceptance of whatever happens. It still applies today. This welcoming prepares one for action and not to act while waiting for the action to come.
After the suffering of suffering, of ignoring pain and its causes, the suffering of not stopping to hold on and respond to what happens to us, as children do who inhabit joy as if it were their nature, existing in suffering with grace and resignation, I decided to give life to ‘The Joy Project’.
As well, during this path, inspired by David Brooks in his book ‘The Second Mountain - The quest for a moral life’. As he describes the first mountain to climb, as ‘is about ego-building and self-definition, the second mountain is about ego-abandonment and self-loss. If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution. If the first mountain is elitist - rising to the top - the second mountain is egalitarian - planting oneself among those in need and walking arm in arm with them. The people of the second mountain are not averse to worldly pleasures. They enjoy a good glass of wine or a nice beach. But they have overcome these pleasures to pursue moral joy, the feeling of having directed their lives towards an ultimate good. If they have to choose, they choose joy’.
And here I am, to invite you to join this first retreat, to turn it into a new starting point, a physical place with the right persons accompanying you on this path that I have struggled to find on my own journey.
For a new confidence and a sense of responsibility that is the ability to respond to the challenges that each time presents to us human beings, knowing that we are made to cope.
And for my daughter, so that this new departure can be a sense of home for many in the future and when she will grow up and will need it, she knows where she can return to.
sometimes me, sometimes us
When I landed in Switzerland, starting my path in Zurich, I crossed ways with Maree which has been my first desk-mate at work. Looking back she was my first rock in the waves and what started as a day by day professional connection blossomed into a friendship that resonates echoes of laughter and mutual understanding during the years.
As a fantastic producer, great photographer as I managed to know her professionally and caring, altruistic, polite and curious human by nature as I know her personally; during one of our lunches to catch up on life and trying to see how our ‘master plans’ were evolving; I understood that she was on the search of climbing her second mountain so I invited her to join me on the orchestration of this first retreat. As I know that joy, for her as it is for me, is not just an emotion but a way of life. In this retreat our expertise can converge.
Fluent in multiple languages, we navigate the intricate landscape of international relations, drawing upon our diverse backgrounds. My branding, design expertise, cultivated through international exposure in the creative areas of luxury and fashion industry, seamlessly intertwines with Maree’s seniority in project management and personal experience, interest, in transformational holistic retreats.
As together, for this unique retreat, our diverse talents create a unique blend that aims to create a meticulously curated transformational experience within an exclusive, private and intimate space where inspiration can emerge, stories be exchanged and new possibilities unfold.
Mariarosa
Maria Grazia