Reflections from the Retreat August 2026

This month I am back in the UK, and I am grateful to my house sitters who are looking after Luna and Cosmos so that I can be here. It has been so good to see family and friends again in person rather than via zoom or Whats App. I am very thankful for the technology which enables us to have video calls across the world and at little or no cost and yet they cannot replace physically being in the same room as someone. It is also so good to do activities together. As a family we have often walked together and sometimes the most meaningful conversations have happened while climbing hills, walking along rivers or sitting in parks.

Who we spend time with, who we talk to and who we respect all shape who we are. Our identity and values, our opinions and actions are influenced by those around us. This can also include who we read, who we follow on social media and who we have as role models. You are probably familiar with the African term, Ubuntu meaning ‘I am because we are.’ Bishop Desmond Tutu described it as, “a person is a person through other persons, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably with yours.”

Despite having suddenly lost both my Dad and husband with no warning, I am still at risk of taking my relationships for granted. Yet we never know how long we have with someone we love. Living on the other side of the world to my family and to many close friends certainly makes me more thankful of our precious times together and it is true that both ‘love makes the world go round’ and ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ I particularly value time with my children, in the photo above.

Coming back to the UK after living in Grenada for a few years, I am more aware of some differences. Perhaps it’s because I live in a village and the island is a lot smaller in Grenada, but there is a greater sense of community and of ‘ubuntu’ in Grenada. It is also influenced by the outside living in Grenada, where people are often sitting on balconies looking out onto the roadside or hanging out in outdoor bars or restaurants. So, it’s easier to see each other and say hello, rather than being tucked away in houses, as we are in the UK. Perhaps as well people are less self sufficient in a culture where there is a greater recognition that today you may help someone knowing that in the future it maybe you who needs their support. There is a stronger sense of network on a small island where families tend to live in the same area, sharing family land. If you talk long enough with someone, you usually find that you have a shared connection of mutual friends or even discover you are distantly related. In Grenada they not only talk of family trees but of ‘all being on the same pumpkin vine’ and if you keep following the vine there will be a connection somewhere.

Trees and pumpkin vines are good descriptions of relationships because we are not isolated beings. We all have those connections whether by choice or by birth, and hopefully what connects us is love. Sometimes relationships can be life giving and inspiring and others can be draining and hard work. Both the most rewarding and the most painful moments of our lives are usually about relationships – painful arguments, misunderstandings, the grief of separation, the joy of new birth, energising conversations and the delicious emotions that come with falling in love. Relationships are the trellis on which we build our lives. They give our life meaning and they largely determine our life choices and direction.

Just before I left Grenada to visit the UK, I attended an online retreat, and it gave me an opportunity to give myself a retreat in our newly developed retreat house. It is a little ironic that I hadn’t realised how much I needed a retreat myself until I slowed down and gave myself permission to just be. I used the Soul Space room for the first time – entering it to be still and pray instead of going in to check that the room looked OK or if anything needed fixing.

The theme for the retreat was thresholds, and I became aware that I was at a threshold point. I had prepared the retreat house ready for guests, but I also needed to prepare myself. I was moving into a new phase of sharing this space, my home, with others- both those coming to help and those coming as guests. I enjoy being with others, but I also greatly value my solitude and the question that arose for me at the beginning of the retreat was ‘how am I to be in this space with others?’  

Over the course of the retreat, I wrote myself a ‘statement of being’ to act as a guide and a reminder to live in this way. Some of the statements I wrote included ‘to accept the ‘unacceptable’ parts of myself and to know that the whole of myself is unconditionally loved and cherished and from this place of deep knowing, to love others authentically and genuinely, as well as being kind to myself’ and ‘to hold lightly and share generously so that together we create a communal space that invites others to pass through, as they follow their own path of being.’

I guess having lived in community before and being a psychologist along with general life experience, I am aware that healthy relationships don’t always come naturally. With some people it will feel that we have a freedom to be ourselves and to feel we are on the same page and with others we may need to choose our words carefully. Sometimes we need to be intentional in how we are towards each other, whilst also being authentic.  

Systems theory can be helpful when we think about our network of relationships, particularly when it feels like there are challenges within our relationships. Systemic therapy suggests that problems don’t lie within people but in the relationships between us and so that gives us more hope for the possibility of change. Particularly in families, where people can assume how someone else is going to behave and we can get stuck in set patterns of how we relate to each other. As a mother of young adults, I am sometimes challenged in this, and I need to recognise how my children have matured and to keep up with how they are now viewing the world and the choices they are making.

Relationships can act as mirrors – helping us to understand ourselves better and, as it says in Proverbs, ‘as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.’ Are there people doing things or being a certain way that you wish you could be? Sometimes that’s a clue that the aspect we value in others is possibly something that is latent in ourselves. Also, the things which annoy us about others can sometimes be aspects of ourselves which we disown and project on to others.

When you think of ‘survival of the fittest’ what comes to mind for you? If you’re like me, I thought it meant that the strongest survives such as the animal or plant that gets the food, the habitat or whatever it needs for the species to continue. However, it actually means ‘survival of the one who can fit.’ I know some of you will have known that, but for all of us, it’s a good reminder that sometimes its better to be adaptable than strong. It is the species that can adapt to new challenges that goes on to survive. This is an important lesson for us all, particularly in the area of relationships. There are times when we need to be flexible, to let go of our own preconceived ideas or, as I often need to remind myself, to not always be in control. Sometimes it is not about always wanting to be right but about being more loving.

A helpful exercise that I often use in therapy is asking someone to draw their social network, like the one below. As a therapist, it’s also a useful way of getting to know the people that can be contributing to difficulties and those that can potentially offer solutions and support. To do this, you first put your name in the centre of the page, and then you can add the names of those closest to you emotionally by writing them closest to your name and then write the names of those furthest away, that are more distant relationships. You can colour code them or use solid, dotted or jagged lines between your name and theirs to convey the different types of relationships. It can be interesting to see your network in this visual way and then reflect on it. Is there anyone on the edge of your paper with whom you would want to be closer? Is there a name you have forgotten and what might that say about that relationship? Is there anything you need to say to anyone or anyone you need to forgive? What do you do to maintain or deepen these relationships – are there changes that could help to strengthen these relationships?

In reflecting on our relationships, we may recognise that there are sadly some relationships that are not helpful for either party and are damaging to our wellbeing. We have to be discerning with this and recognise when a relationship needs to be given limits or a lowering of expectations, so that they can be maintained in a way that is the least painful for both parties or even ended.

I am so grateful for the relationships in my life that have been a source of love, encouragement and inspiration, and so much more. Where would we be without those we love? I hope you have at least one or two people that love you for who you are now and that encourage you to become all that you are capable of being. To have good friends we need to be a good friend and I will end with a beautiful quote on friendship by Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot,

“Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”