You Learned to Protect Yourself. But Can You Trust Life?
HELLO BEAUTIFUL!
Today I'd like to share with you about a personal shift in my spirituality path. Spoiler first: it's the most liberating ever.
Whitewashed spirituality taught me to be me. Black culture and my village life in Kenya taught me to belong.
There's something I've been realizing more and more over the last years that is impossible for me to unsee anymore: Whitewashed spirituality talks a lot about connection. But somehow, it mostly teaches us how to become independent.
When I say whitewashed spirituality, I mean a version of spirituality shaped by Western individualism: one that puts the individual at the centre of everything.
Know yourself. Protect your energy. Set boundaries. Know your colour. Trust your truth. Don't let anyone disturb your peace.
These things can be valuable. I needed to learn them, too. But they as well took something big away from me.
Because looking at the whole concept, they can make spirituality another path towards becoming self-sufficient, emotionally "detached" and independent of the very (not only comfortable) relationships that make us human.
They talk of "tribe" when they mean exclusively "people of my frequency", while the tribe I live with in Kenya includes every villager of the entire region - different religions, different clans, different life goals.
They talk of "community" and the call it "crossing boundaries" when that community demands your sacrifice in a moment you were "just not ready".
They talk of "healing linage" and "cycle breakers" when they don't teach you how to appreciate that you are only where you are THROUGH THAT LINAGE.
We talk a lot about connection, but so much of the work is still about the individual: my healing, my growth, my energy, my peace.
What gets lost is how we live together. How we stay in relationship with people who challenge us, take responsibility for our place in a community, and recognise ourselves as part of something larger than our individual lives. It teaches us to loose the treasure of interdependence.
After years of inner work, I realised how good I'd become at knowing myself — and how little that had taught me about belonging.
My life in Black communities in Kenya has been teaching me something different.
It's teaching me to trust life. Not just myself.
And that sounds like a small difference until you start living it.
"I'm water." But what does water mean without an ecosystem?
For a while, I really liked the idea of knowing my element. I'm water. I need movement. I need freedom. I need to flow. Staying in one place for too long? Definitely not my thing.
And honestly, recognising this about myself helped me understand a lot.
But then I started thinking: what is water without the earth that carries it? The rocks it meets, the roots it nourishes, the other elements it connects?
Water doesn't just flow wherever it wants. It shapes and is shaped by the world around it. It sustains life, it doesn't avoid life.
Maybe I'm water. But I'm not "just water". I
I'm also part of an entire ecosystem. And this comes with a new "response-ability"!
What Black African culture has restored in me?
My village has given me some very practical opportunities to explore this.
I can have a serious conflict with my neighbour today, take him to the village chief, and yet definetely cannot miss to invite him over to my farm tomorrow to learn with others about regenerative farming. The result: watching a community being restored. Whitewashed spirituality would have told me: protect your space from their energy.
I can confront a worker who keeps stealing from our property and still welcome him back to work every day. No, I haven't suddenly become a saint. And I don't recommend stealing as a team-building exercise. But I've learned that holding someone accountable and leaving them a place in the community aren't necessarily opposites.
As one of my best local friends puts it: nobody should fall through the net. It's not our duty to change them. But it's our duty to keep them in the environment that allows change.
That doesn't mean every relationship can or should continue. Sometimes leaving is necessary. Sometimes a boundary protects something precious.
But discomfort isn't always a sign that something needs to end.
And this is where something has shifted for me.
I've spent years learning how to protect my boundaries. Now I'm learning how to unlearn and open them. I'm shifting my focus from "healing myself" to "regenerating the (human) ecosystem that I belong to."
I know myself. I know my yes and my no. I know what matters to me. I don't need to "cut ties" to prove that. I can afford to open up because I no longer need to protect myself from everything that might challenge my comfort.
Knowing myself doesn't separate me from others. It gives me the ground to not just meet but to accomdate them. And my village and my farm community gives me plenty of opportunities to practise.
From healing to regeneration
My team and I teach farmers about regenerative farming. We talk about restoring soil life, rebuilding ecosystems and creating conditions for life to flourish again.
And at some point, I began to see my own healing differently.
In farming, we don't just look at one plant and ask how to make it healthier. We look at the soil, the insects, the water, the other plants — the relationships that allow the whole ecosystem to thrive.
Healing can teach you how to protect yourself. Regeneration asks what you want to restore your capacity to participate in.
Your relationships. Your trust. Your willingness to depend on others. Your place in a world that doesn't revolve around you.
We can use what we've learned about ourselves to build something with others.
Because trusting yourself and trusting life aren't quite the same thing.
You can trust yourself enough to quit your job, buy a van and travel the world. And that can be beautiful. But can you trust life and stay when the people around you disappoint you? When nature doesn't deliver the harvest you were counting on? When you have to depend on someone who isn't quite your kind of person? When someone depends on you without always seeing your boundaries?
Can you still feel part of the whole and in tune with your Yes when the whole doesn't do what you envisioned as "safe"?
I've stopped trying to just be. I've started learning how to belong.
My village hasn't taught me to trust everyone blindly. It's taught me that life is made of relationships, those we love and those we have to choose. And they are rarely as tidy as our personal healing narratives would like them to be.
It has taught me the humikity to remember that I'm not the only one carrying the responsibility for making this world a better place.
I am one part of a much bigger ecosystem.
Can we make space for that?
I can't teach you how to regenerate your relationships in a meditation room. Life will give you the real practice. But we can create space to open up to it.
Space to soften our grip on who we think we are. To listen beyond our familiar patterns. To reconnect with the part of us that wants not only to be safe, but also to interconnect, receive and belong.
This is my offer to you in the next round of the weekly Intuitive Garden.
Not another project to fix yourself. Not another version of you to become.
Just a space to pause, soften and listen. To tend your inner ground, so you can meet life with a little more openness and, little less fear and little more flexible awareness.
Intuitive Garden is opening its doors again.
10 Sundays, starting October 8th, 4pm CET
I can't wait to see you there!
Here's some voices of the last Intuitive Garden series:
"In the intuitive garden, I felt unconditionally welcome. The grand invitation—extended with unconditional love and expansiveness—to explore how I am in any given moment, and to discover the supportive forces that are also present, enriched my summer over the course of ten weeks in such a profound way. I felt, saw, recognized, let go, and time and again experienced the gift of connection—to myself and to life in all its various forms. (...) The intuitive garden was a gift to me, to my wholeness, to life itself, and to all those forces that are always present—forces to which I can open myself and connect. This experience was made possible through the space provided, as well as through meditation and music. From the bottom of my heart, and from within my intuitive garden, thank you for this creation!"
(Jennifer)
Immersing oneself in the intuitive garden with Jana is a grounding, slow-paced way to begin the weekend. With great care and affection, Jana invites you to arrive fully within yourself—to explore the depth and magic of your own inner landscapes, set somewhere between the humming energy of the earth and the shimmering expanse of the cosmos. These sessions—integrative, healing, and intuitively guided—leave me with a tranquil mind, a light body, and an open heart, allowing me to drift along in a state of blissful ease long after the session has ended. Thank you, dear Jana, for creating such a wonderful, intuitive space!
(Verena)
With love,
Jana
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