By Marian Nummert

Rain and sunshine structured our 4 days of design retreat of the Nordic Permaculture Academy in Cathrine’s Permaculture Queendom in a gorgeous Oro island, Denmark. This space was so supportive that I found courage to toss aside a design I had struggled with for a long time. Instead I jumped into writing together another design that I had already implemented and I got it done and also accepted on the 3rd day of the retreat! What a relief to get into a momentum! I started with a second design already and got many interesting ideas from the other participants as well. It is special to focus together with other people and enjoy the meals that somebody else has made and take some breaks in the garden and do dishes only sometimes! Big shift from the usual home-life with 4 kids for me at least.

The best thing was that we created the structure of the days together, based on the needs of the participants. We had some ideas about what our mentor, Cathrine, could teach us together, but we ended up asking personal questions when they arose and sometimes it happened that the theme discussed was actually helpful for everybody else too. So yes, all the time there was flowing in a productive way. We had time to see the sea, learn new plants, observe Cathrine’s food forest and let go some of our own inhibiting patterns on the Diploma pathway.

Danish spring-summer really supported our time – raining when we needed to dig in and giving sunshine to invite us out during the breaks. I would do that again, to get things done with the help of a mentor and other apprentices – supportive space, intentional focus and shared wisdom is really taking us further than we could travel alone.