Beira (Apr-Jun ’22)

– The water tank kissed with spring blooms. –

The story of my shoulder injury comes into play here. I haven’t talked about it yet, so I’m going to tell it here, where most of the healing took place. I’ll start by telling you about the accident, then the healing process that happened here, and finally show you what we were doing while the healing was taking place… We even went to Prague for part of it! It was all a very beautiful and painful journey as you can imagine! Enjoy as you like.

– The main house, where we used the kitchen, is just behind the trees. At sunset, a large flock of barn swallows would swirl out of the ruin on the right side, and delight us with their areil twists and turns. –

We returned to Juliette’s for a second time to restart our Portugal adventures. It felt fitting after so many challenges to start again where we left off. We all knew what we were getting into and that we’d get along and enjoy being there. We took a trip to Prague together about a week into our stay, and then Benoit went to coach in England and South Africa while I was there. I ended up staying 7 weeks, working mostly one armed, both enjoying and sweltering in the intense heat of inland Portuguese summer.

– Living hair. Our favorite restaurant in Beira. And Benoit suffering through yet another photo of him eating his dinner. –

The main reason that I stayed so long was that by then my shoulder injury was debilitatingly painful. Back in October, 7 months before, when we were moving, there was a kettle bell stuck under the seat in the van that I had done my best to remove – the wrong way out. After wiggling it around and getting it partially out, I decided that, 1. clearly it could be removed and 2. I just needed to pull harder… so I pulled as harder. A lot harder. In fact I pulled as hard as I could. Instead of the solid metal cage giving way, my shoulder gave. I think that the ball joint pulled out of the socket and then slammed back in. Ouch. Interestingly, it didn’t really hurt. I think I was in a bit of shock. And though I tore or at least badly strained some tissues, the immediate result was that my shoulder muscles locked up, limiting movement to protect the damaged tissues. Amazingly, considering what was to come, it wasn’t painful. At the time.

– Mar Vão –

I’ve never had an injury as serious as this, so I carried on as usual, treating it as I’ve treated all of my previous injuries – being careful with it and only using it in ways that kept it pain free. What I didn’t realize was that the locked up muscles were protecting something fairly serious, and that using the muscles in this imbalanced state was exacerbating the imbalance… they were learning to function in this shortened, locked state, and that would make healing and re-education an even slower process. Oh, dear. Live and learn!

– Mar Vão –

Regaining full range of motion (ROM) is still in process as I write, a full year after the injury (October ’22), but this part is a piece of cake compared to the pain I was dealing with by the time I got to Juliette’s.

– Mar Vão –

When the injured tissue healed (about a month and a half later), and the compensating muscles started to relax around it, full blood flow and nerve impulses returned, and I started to be able to feel the damaged area. Holy cow. I have never been in that much pain in my entire life.
I spent 4 months in intense chronic pain. If I moved in any number of normal ways, used the arm, brushed against anything, etc. pain knifed through my shoulder. As you can imagine, simple things like getting dressed and undressed took a lot more time. And I learned to do a bunch of things with my left arm…

– Walking to the osteopath’s. –

Sleep was the biggest challenge. In the beginning I could only sleep on my back with my arm propped up on a pillow in just a certain way. When I moved in any direction I was immediately in pain. I woke up at least once a night, (often twice and sometimes thrice), body arching in pain, flooded with adrenalin, gasping for air. It was horrible. And of course, with that much adrenalin surging through my system, I would be wide awake and it would take at least an hour to get back to sleep. Multiply that by two or three and you can understand why sleep deprivation was my constant companion. Near the end of the 4 months of this, I was exhausted. On two different memorable occasions, lying there in bed in pain, I cried in hopelessness. All I wanted was to sleep.

– Road Guardians –

I developed a lot of empathy for people who suffer chronic pain. One saving grace was that I knew that mine would end. Someday, this would be over. I didn’t know when, but I knew it would not last. And I began to understood why people who know their’s won’t decide to end their lives and their suffering. It’s very difficult to face that every moment of every day.

For my injury, thank goodness, the body, in all of it’s wisdom, knew how to heal itself. What a blessing. With the help of wintergreen oil, comfrey balm, topical Magnesium, CBD, four osteopaths, and a lot of meditation, we diagnosed the problems, facilitated the healing, eased the pain and gave me hope that normalcy would return.

And glory hallelujah, on May 15, I got my first full night of uninterrupted sleep! You can imagine how wonderful that morning felt! I knew I had survived the worst of it when days later that continued to be the norm. Mentally, emotionally and physically everything started getting better. What a blessing.

I continue to learn a lot from that experience. Compassion was a big one. My brother, who’s been in chronic pain since his 30’s told me once that I didn’t understand what it was like. And now I can say from direct experience that he was right. I remember lying awake one of those two hopeless nights, thinking that at least I knew mine would end. He doesn’t have that luxury. As I said, I can fully understand why people in chronic pain commit suicide. Hopelessness is horrible.

And this kind of challenge requires us to dig deep, deeper than we probably ever have, and find new, uncharted reasons to be hopeful. And we have to do it while we’re emotionally strung out and mentally delirious with sleep deprivation, hormone over use and depletion, and pain. Lots and lots of pain.

Self-compassion, compassion for others. It really helped me get in touch with how fragile and immensely strong we all are, and that when we’re suffering, it’s not that we need to be stronger, it’s that we need to cry and feel and have our hands held. We can get through it. We just need to take a lot of deep breaths and receive solace – from nature, from each other, from ourselves.

As a young child, I taught myself that sickness was weakness. That any kind of dis-ease was weakness. Now I realize that it takes a lot of strength to fully face illness… to be in intense pain and be willing to survive it with grace. And now I know better how to help myself and others in that space. It’s just about being there – for myself. For them.


Judging myself or another as weak is a bit silly. If we’re still breathing, that means we’re strong enough to breathe. We’re strong enough to keep going. Strong enough to face whatever it is that’s beating the door down, demanding our attention. Sickness is a learning process. Not an easy one. Not a pleasant one. One that must be faced. I realized that what had brought me to that point were things that I had been trying to learn in other ways… and hadn’t. I needed to learn compassion, empathy, deep resilience and a host of other things, and I’d failed thus far… so it had gotten to this. This was an extreme way to learn them. Apparently it took this much pain to learn self-compassion.
Well, ok.
I learned.

Another beautiful moment arrived when I realized that I don’t want to learn to heal using pain anymore. That I’m done using pain to learn things. That was a relief. Unsurprisingly, that was a turning point for the pain… days later the pain got noticeably better.
Ahhhhhhhhhh…..
Such a relief.

I’ll talk a bit more about this as we continue…

And as promised, here’s what we did in and around that healing journey. It was a big weave, as you can imagine. First, we spent about a week at Juliette’s, and then went to visit Prague! Prague in spring anyone? It was lovely!

– Prague –
– We did a lot of fitness under these blooming trees. –
– A lively concert in the same park, singing and dancing. –
– A beautiful cemetery near our Airbnb. I found it while looking for parks to run in… full of enormous old trees… and angels, of course. –
– We walked a lot, and went to check out their tennis facilities as usual… and Benoit manifested the Prague Open! Fun. –

After Prague, we returned to Juliette’s, where it was also in the full bloom of spring!

– On the way back, a traffic jam on the way to Beira. I love living in the country. –
– The path to Juliette’s front door, adorned with roses. –
– The sun drenched view from our van. –
– Caso, our bedroom at this farm, and another of the many, many beautiful sunsets. –
– DIY Desk next to the van. This farm inspired a lot of raw creativity. –
– You can see the beginnings of the wood pile on the left. –

While Benoit was here, he worked with two machines. He loved it! Chain sawing big branches to fit in the wood stove (for heating in winter) and chipping the little stuff to use as mulch around their fruit trees. All very loud and requiring constant vigilance to keep all appendages in place. He was amazing, as usual. I helped chip (with big noise cutting head phones on!) and I piled the bigger cut branches. I’ll show you this pile a few more times as it slowly grows.

– When branches got stuck in the chipper, it made horrible noises and smoke poured out… Benoit was brave enough to get them out. –
– Sometimes branches got more stuck than others! –
– Et voila! –
– It was pretty warm already, so cool places to rest were a boon. This is where we ate lunch on work days, under the trees next to the blooming water tank. –
– One afternoon, Manuel, Juliette, Philipe and I discussed how best to protect young fruit trees from the sheep and goat. I love how serious we all look. –
– That evening, we all decided to eat at our lunch spot. –
– Another traffic jam. –
– Many, many days of chipping occurred… We got pretty good at knowing what would go in and what would gum up the works. Sometimes branches got stuck anyway… Go, Benoit! –
– Shearing time! –

I’ve got a bucket of corn to convince the sheep that they want to follow us to the neighbor’s house to get sheared. Benoit is holding a rope tying the two wilder ones together. If the wild ones decide to leave, they have to go together, and take Benoit with them. :)

– The neighbor organized a shearer to come and shear Juilette’s sheep. –
– The wooly flock. –
– It’s pretty physical work. The sheep were calm throughout. –
– This guy was gentle, and it probably feels great to get that wool coat off! –
– Wool! –
– Walking back home, much cooler now! –
– Pizza party to raise money for this local alternative school. –
– Setting sun above the farm. We took many walks in the evenings as the land cooled. Such lovely relief from the heat of the day. This was our last walk together before Benoit left to coach. –
– Benoit’s off to coach! This was my oceanside picnic near Porto, after taking him to the airport. Quite a different scene than the hot, dry inland. –
– Beach flora keeping the sand dunes in place. –
– Fantabulous organic shop in Porto. One of the best I’ve been in worldwide. –
– Back home, the wood pile nears completion! –
– And the grasses are turning brown in the dry heat. –
– Caso, our van, gets some TLC. I love how homegrown this garage felt. The mechanic was a nice, friendly guy. –
– Every garage I’ve been in in Portugal has at least one old car sitting around in it. –
– If memory serves, Caso had 74k on him when we bought him. We’ve done a few miles together since then. :) –

Meanwhile, it’s starting to get really hot now (41 C / 105 F). I’ve been carting these branches away from the trees to reduce the fire hazard. Fire prevention is a big deal in Portugal as fires start easily and quickly get out of control burning huge swaths of land, consuming everything in their path.

– You can see how dry everything is. –

I got really creative doing this with one arm. I used my injured arm a little the first day of doing this to carry the branches over to the big piles, and it was so extremely, incredibly painful for the next three that I didn’t do that again. Lesson learned! Instead, I perfected piling them just so in the cart and tying them with a rope to get the maximum amount in one go.

– While moving branches, I found a lot of bird’s nests. Symbols for me at this time, of being safe, home in one’s self. –
– This pile of branches, one of four, was the largest. It’s hard to tell how big it actually is in this photo. It’s quite long and compact. It took over a week to make. I would pull four or five cart loads to it, pile them all up and then jump up and down on them to flatten them out. Guess which part was the most fun?! –
– This was the first pile. It morphed into two piles… and I didn’t think to stamp it down, so it’s actually much smaller (volume wise) than the long one above. –
– Philipe, the friend discussing fruit trees above, is a natural earth builder. He renovated this small house while we were there. I helped put limestone on the interior walls one day. –
– Philipe contemplating how to accommodate a last minute request for a major change in construction of the bathroom. –
– Me stripping windows to go into the little house. –
– Swales, water catchment ditches used on slopes, that we helped make earlier in the spring. While we were gone they’d been planted with fruit trees and vegetables. Nice to see the continuation. –
– I took many a meditative walk along this road the last 3 or 4 weeks. It helped a lot with learning the lessons from the injury. –
– It was a lovely walk, lined with these hand laid stone walls, beautiful plants like these, huge majestic oaks, enormous boulders, and the occasional flock sheep and herd of cows. –
– This beautiful cork oak along the walk has a 5 on it, our favorite number, and as cork is harvested every 10 years, tells us this one was last harvested in 2015. –
– The end of the walk, and the road to Beira. (That’s the road with all of the country traffic jams. :) –
– I had no idea how wonderful sheep are until I hung out and meditated with these guys. –
– And Celeste, the goat. –
– The flock. –
– Romeo (the sheep) and Juliette.–
– Taking a much needed sojourn into the comforts of civilization, in Castelo de Vide … Yummy. And clean and cool! I went to set up the next farm stay. –
– The finished firewood pile! Yippee! –

As my time on this beautiful spot on Gaia ended, I was thankful for all that I had learned here. I was grateful for the wonderful hosts that had been so gracious while I was healing. For the humans, the sheep, the goat, the river, the cows, the cats, the birds, the lizards, the trees, the flowers, the plants, the rocks… for all of the life around me that had offered such unconditional solace when I needed it most. What a blessing.

And so, this visit came to a close. Much healing and growth happened during these 7 weeks. A lot of beauty and love to balance it out. Quite an experience.
Glad I made it thru.
Much appreciated.