“I Need to Become Moss…”

How the Ireland Nectar Rest Retreat was born, by Sara Ballard

photos below by Ashley Frye

My personal story as to how this retreat came about…. and why rest is so critical for me personally as well I am eager to share what I’ve learned with you, by way of shared experiences…

Last September, after my kids got settled back into the routine of school, after a busy Summer break, I felt tired. Not just tired from being a busy mom, but SOUL tired. Like I could curl up in bed and not come out for a year, tired. I told my husband one afternoon,
“I need to become moss.” With a puzzled look and a head tilt he responded with, “I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I think I understand.” A week later I felt in my bones that I needed to cross the ocean, to be received by the Emerald Isle. If anywhere can help me become moss, it’s Ireland.
I can’t find another way to describe my feelings besides, my bones felt ‘dry’. I felt depleted on a soul and cellular level. The Pandemic didn’t just stress me out, but rather added on enormously to the weight and exhaustion I had been feeling prior.

A move from Texas to South Carolina, starting a new business, navigating personal and business friendship grief, raising my children in a new place with new community, and eventually the pandemic. It all contributed to this feeling of being whelmed by life itself. So much to hold, so many people to tend to, and unraveling a lifetime of being a people pleaser took its toll on my body and spirit.

Moss….. Quiet, nourished by the drips of rain, growing, albeit at less than a snails pace, beautiful, soft, and slowly assists to decompose the fallen tree or stump it grows on. That’s what I needed to feel reflected in my body. I wanted to know what it felt like to be swallowed up, laid bare on the earth, to let go completely.

I booked a flight, and brought a dear friend to photograph this journey. I knew that I wanted to bring a group back to Ireland to feel the awe and inherent rest offered within her borders. I had planned to bring people in 2020 before life as we knew it came to a whiplash level halt. I knew that I wanted to explore the area that we would be together to find the magic and experience it firsthand, so I could share with you.

Between deciding to go and finalizing airbnb stays and rental cars I was diagnosed with an early stage non invasive breast cancer. I had just gotten my very first mammogram, at the age of 43. I wouldn’t be able to meet with the surgeon until I returned from Irelan, that was weeks away. Prepared with little knowledge of the scope of my diagnosis or what the treatment plan was going to be, I knew I would be in Ireland in this new discombobulating space of the unknown. I was so ready for Ireland to help me feel grounded and nourished.

I NEEDED to go to become moss. I was sure I could find that experience. I did, a thousand times over.

Once returning home, filled with moments, memories and a renewed sense of peace and feeling grounded, I was able to navigate surgery and now radiation therapy (coming up). What I have learned from this experience is what it means for me to rest, and consequently, it has shown me that this is the next phase of my life, helping myself and others learn how to rest, to let go of expectations of self and get quiet enough to hear your inner voice.

Rest is not always about doing nothing, but rather the ability to tune into oneself, to clear the internal pathways of the expectations, the sensation of being weighted down by thoughts and feelings, and the capacity to tune out the ‘noise’ from the world at large that pulls us away from   living our truth. There’s a balance though, rest is not just the opposite of doing, it is an invitation to slow down enough to hear the messages from within and the courage to follow those messages. It is about be-ing, in your fullest form.

Some people rest with lots of movement. Some with mediation or sleep. Some folks rest when they walk through nature without expectation and simply allow themselves to soak it all up like a sponge. Some rest by writing letters of forgiveness and apology that never get sent. Rest doesn’t have to look or feel like just one thing. Ritual can be rest. Joy can be rest. A cleansing cry can be rest. Rest is when we replace the expectations of ‘have to’ with allowing or be-ing.

So much of our life is filled up with the responsibilities of daily life, the ‘have to’s’. We have to work, to pay bills, to buy food and keep the lights on. Parents have an extra helping of ‘have to’s’ as they care for their kids every day. Sometimes the amount of responsibilities depletes us from accessing the rest we so often go without by way of a literal lack of time, or simply because we’re always watching our calendars and preparing for the next responsibility, deadline , or even the next vacation. We leap frog from one task to another, barely slowing down to see what is right in front of us.

Rest is letting go of holding your tongue, it is choosing your own personal boundaries over pleasing others. Rest is saying no. It is saying yes when your body leans in. Rest is a soul invitation to shake off the unnecessary, the overwhelm, the excess, to expose the truth and glow of your truest self.

A Nectar Rest Retreat is not simply a week in a beautiful serene location where you separate yourself from your life, but rather an invitation to get to know yourself more through rest. You will be encouraged to slow down, to linger, to get curious, to be mindful and present, and to see your physical and soul reflection in the captivating natural world of Ireland and it’s stunning Wild Atlantic Way..

When we have moments of clarity, of presence, of ‘becoming moss’ or whatever your body is calling for specifically, we can cultivate a relationship with those moments, to use in our daily life. When you return home from a week of tiny moments of bliss, you have a somatic library of feelings and sensations to draw from in moments where you may have forgotten what rest feels like. For it is not really the land or the sea that whispers these moments of clarity, but your very own body, heart, and soul that speak up when you feel safe enough to listen. That voice goes back home with you, since it has been with you all along. Ireland isn’t necessarily magic, But it certainly does make your own magic that much more accessible.

I am looking forward to sharing in all the magic Ireland has to offer for us all.
Sara