I wanted to share a piece of my history that’s stayed with me.

In the early 1970’s, I moved to Virginia to live on a farm with a community dedicated to providing free health care to anyone in need.

I milked goats before sunrise, taught yoga and ballet, and baked bread every day. Some days, I’d escape in my van, the Sky Bus, into the Shenandoah mountains, longing for quiet, the wide sky, and room to breathe.

But the farm had its own kind of spaciousness. My daughter was born in a yurt with a large skylight on a starry summer night, welcomed into a world that already loved her.

Patch, Harvel, Candice, Linda, Gail, Mekial

Most evenings, we gathered in the big room where someone always had a story to share. There were plenty of visitors with stories of their own.

We laughed, lingered, and listened. People were truly themselves.

I lived there for ten years.

What I remember most about living with Patch, who envisioned the community, is his natural curiosity, and how it opened into wonder.

One afternoon, walking from the yurt to the farmhouse, we came upon an ant carrying its load across the strip of grass between two sections of sidewalk. Patch crouched down, completely absorbed, watching it cross the blades of grass as if they were a mountain range.

“Look at that,” he said. “Look how he’s working.”

The two of us stood there, watching the ant make its way from one sidewalk to the other as though nothing else in the world mattered.

And for a moment, nothing else did.

But when you were with him, he was just as curious about you. He wanted to know who you were, what mattered to you, and what had brought you to our door.

He never waited for moments of wonder. He somehow knew it was everywhere. Being around him, you couldn’t help but start to see it too.

Something in our bodies responds to wonder. It gives us a little more room inside — room we didn’t know we needed until we felt it.

It has a way of finding us.

Somewhere today, something small is asking to be noticed.

With love,
Candice

Contact: candice@regenerativesomatics.com
Website: regenerativesomatics.com