Journey to a New Life

In my previous blog, Day 83: Playfulness | Gifts from Animals - Dogs, I shared how the dogs’ expression of playfulness assisted me getting through tough times.

If there’s something Cesar knows all about, it’s exactly that = tough times. Being a baby and growing into a toddler is a lot of work for the physical body. The rate at which the body grows and changes is exceptional, and so is the pain and discomfort that comes with it.

On one of the days that he was going through a particularly rough patch, I looked at him and could see myself in his distraught eyes. It reminded me of when I would go through physical discomfort and would then emphasise the physical discomfort by adding an emotional experience to it, basically ‘feeling bad about feeling bad’. I also realised that, even though I was feeling bad – I could make the decision to acknowledge it, but not allow it to ‘take over’ to the point where it disabled me to do something with myself and my day. So looking into Cesar’s eyes, I realised that if I wanted him to get out of this experience, it was going to be up to me to create a new moment. I got up and moved myself to come up with something random for us to do, something he is not used to in terms of his routine that would get him to be engaged and curious about what we are doing, rather than being focused on what he is experiencing. In this particular instance, I playfully pointed out the chillies which were growing on our pepper plants in front of the parrot aviary, how they can be plucked and then given to the parrots who happily eat them.

He was very attentive and could see on his face that he moved out of the experience into what we were physically engaged with. This made him ‘snap out’ of his mood where even after our little activity was over, he was more present and not so overwhelmed with what his body was going through.

So, through simply in a moment moving yourself to embody a particular expression such as playfulness, you can stand as support for another to move themselves into the same expression. This isn’t always easy, because within being a mother, I go through my own share of physical discomfort and can get emotional about this – where I have to stand as the support for myself first to push through and move myself out of my own emotional experience, to only then be able to stand as an example for Cesar to show that you can determine your own experience in a moment and change it, even if the circumstances aren’t in your favour.

I am grateful to the dogs for having been my bridge of support, to show me that I can change when I wasn’t yet able to move myself to change in a moment – and for me to now transfer the same gift to Cesar.

When I first arrived on the Desteni Farm, I was pretty much a ball of anxiety.

I always dreaded group settings and preferred to be on my own. Now I was stuck in a place with lots of people where there was virtually no moment alone (this was mostly due to space constriction and lots of visitors sharing a single room; since then many more rooms have been built). I was very far away from home and my comfort zone. While I wanted to be on the farm and push through my barriers of resistance, my actual state of mind did not reflect this intention as I was still dealing with a lot of emotional issues that I had been carrying around most of my life.

I remember being very nervous meeting everyone and worrying what people will think of me. One of the first things that happened as we got to the farm was being introduced to the dogs. Lucy and Grace were a lot younger back then and had a lot more ‘puppy-crazy’ in them than they do now; so when they first saw me they both jumped on me, where I fell on the floor and they went berserk on my face with licking. I couldn’t help but laugh and giggle!

Their timing couldn’t have been better because in that moment I had been so tensed up and rigid, worrying about all kinds of things – them jumping and love-pouring on my face snapped me right out of my mind and into my body.

During my first two-month visit, the dogs kept representing that point of support for me – to just be here, play, have fun and relax. No matter what I was going through or how bad things seemed in my mind, there was always a dog nearby looking for someone to play and entertain them. They didn’t care that I thought all doom was upon me, or that I believed I was never going to get through a particular point – they’d just look at you with their big brown eyes and wiggle their tail and you’d have no choice but to level with them and play. And they were right in not caring or paying attention to what I was going through, because from a physical perspective it didn’t matter. From a physical perspective I was on a farm, where everything was pretty relaxed, people just going about their days, animals going about their day – physically, nothing threatening was going on. Everything I was experiencing and going through, was in my head only. And that moment they look at you with that invite to play; you realise the physical aspect of what’s here – how the birds are just chirping along, how you’re in a big wide space in nature, how all there is, is just this moment. And so you join in to that physical moment, pick up a ball and make use of the physical environment that’s here and have some fun.

In my next blog I will share how this point of playfulness has assisted me in my relationship and walking with Cesar.

In my previous blog, Day 80: Mysophobia & The Inconvenience of Life – Part 1 | From Farm Life to City Life; I shared some of my experiences and observations which happened around ‘sand’ whilst staying in Belgium.
I ended off with ‘Sand was no longer a medium of expression, something to be explored and played with – but a dreaded ‘dirt’ that would have to be dealt with. Did we not bring sand into the house and get it a little bit dirty? Sure – but it took only a few minutes to clean up as if it was never really there. It wasn’t so much the sand that was dreaded as the inconvenience of taking the time to clean it up. Parents would much rather forgo a child’s funtime and opportunity to play with the sand than having to sacrifice a few moments of their time to clean up after them.’

Another incident which illustrated this point nicely, was when we were at the playground and a child came running very happy and excitedly to have arrived at the playground – where he for a moment was so caught up in his excitement that he fell but was able to stop the fall by putting his hands to the ground. I thought it was rather quick thinking on the child’s part – but the mother who was walking a bit behind let out a big, massive sigh and then loudly scolded the child, complaining that they would now ‘have to go and wash his hands AGAIN’.

From all the variables which took place in that single moment, the one that had caught her attention was that ‘now his hands are dirty again’.

This just blew my mind, to see and realise how far removed we can get ourselves from reality. How we place such specific filters in our mind which define everything we see and experience in our world. In terms of filters active towards children, the biggest ones were money and relationships (/status). I mean, in any given situation, there’s a myriad of ways we can decide to respond to a given situation. But when we have filters in place, such as the things we value and give importance to, this limits our scope of how we see we can responds to a situation; to the point that we believe that there is only ‘one way’ which is the way we end up responding.

This is something I have seen so many times over within myself when working through memories within the DIP Pro course – and it was quite interesting and entertaining (in a scientific kind of way lol) to see it play out in front of my eyes.

There are so many ways to explore and experience childhood, yet within stubbornly holding on to values which set the parameters of how we see things and so respond to our environment, we force children to only live and experience life within very limited dimensions.

I am going to be opening up a new series, on – as you may have guessed from the title – how animals taught me to be a better parent. I will still be writing about my Euro-trip experience so the two topics will be posted on and off.

I was actually first looking at the various gifts as insights into my life that I have received over the years with the various animals I’ve walked with on the farm.

Each relationship with the animals carries a story, a story of my personal process. When I was looking more into each specific ‘gift’ I had learnt and received from the animals; I noticed how each on of those gifts had come into play when working and walking with Cesar. Some I applied naturally and didn’t even notice where it came from, others I specifically implemented to see if they would assist with my relationship with Cesar as well as with my relationship with myself. So when this point opened up within myself of looking at what I have learnt from the animals, it really hit me to what extent my participation with them influenced me and assisted me to become who I am today, and still assist me in my personal development.

We often take animals and our relationship to animals for granted, so with these blogs I would like to highlight the ‘special’ part they can play in one’s life and how one can utilise animals in one’s environment to assist yourself in overcoming your own limitations and get more out of life.

So stay tuned to read all about the experiences and lessons I have learnt from walking with dogs, birds, parrots and horses – and how I have been able to apply these lessons walking with my toddler.

Continuing from my previous blog: Day 79: From Farm Life to City Life | Don’t Touch the Walls

Within my previous blog we already established that the inside of the house was not a very pleasant environment to be; not so much because of the physical features but the mental limitations that were imposed within and unto the space.

So – whenever we could; we would go outside to one of the parks so Cesar could walk and play on the playground.

The one would we would go to the most was the bigger one which was furthest away. It had a nice playground which was also covered in sand that kids could play in.

Cesar loved sitting in the sand and picking up sand and placing bits of sand on random places and spots on all the various playground stations. He liked stirring sand with sticks, digging holes, finding little pebbles or rocks or just sitting and watching, observing other children play.

For us, this was natural. On the farm, we sit on the ground outside, we play in the sandpit, he plays with dirt, he plays with dogs – being outside, interacting with ‘the elements’ = you get dirty.

Being at the playground almost everyday, we noticed that the way we were playing and behaving at the playground wasn’t the norm.

The first thing we noticed, was that even though the playground was covered with sand – it was not something children were playing with. The second thing we noticed, was that adults/parents stayed away from the actual playground stations and left the children to play on their own. This isn’t that noteworthy for older children, but did get our attention for toddlers.

In terms of the sand, what became clear was that there was a general agreement that sand is very undesirable and should be avoided at all cost. Do not play with the sand, try not to touch it and dare not to sit in it. Other parents’ eyes actually became big as they saw us and Cesar sit with our bums in the sand, as if we were committing some type of sacrilege (didn’t we know we were gonna get sand all over our bums and maybe even in-between our clothes!!!!) as well as the realisation of fear that our (bad) example may tempt their children into disobedience.

The one time as we went into a shop and some sand from our playground trip had found itself on the shop’s floor; the owner had a fit of rage at the sight of a little bit of sand as this was simply ‘unacceptable’ and was convinced we were deliberate evil-doers.

Sand was no longer a medium of expression, something to be explored and played with – but a dreaded ‘dirt’ that would have to be dealt with. Did we not bring sand into the house and get it a little bit dirty? Sure – but it took only a few minutes to clean up as if it was never really there. It wasn’t so much the sand that was dreaded as the inconvenience of taking the time to clean it up. Parents would much rather forgo a child’s funtime and opportunity to play with the sand than having to sacrifice a few moments of their time to clean up after them.

The fact that children thoroughly enjoy sand and are able to do so much with it – completely bypasses parents’ minds. The only part which gets registered is how much ‘they suffer’ at the hand of sand-play and how they’re just not bothered to go there.

To be continued

This is a continuation to Day 78: From Farm Life to City Life | Intro


The first big difference we had to adjust to, was the aspect of space.

In our own home, our room is very spacious and set-up specifically to accommodate my son, Cesar.

This means there is lots of space for him to play, walk and even run around, he cannot reach anything which might hurt him and he can’t reach any breakables or things we don’t want him to touch.

In our room, we can spend time together doing things, but we can also have our moments where we each can do our own thing for a while.

In the house itself, our kitchen is baby-proofed, where he cannot open any of the cupboards containing harmful or breakable objects. We left one cupboard ‘unproofed’ where some plastic tubs are stored, so he can open these cabinets and share in the kitchen-experience. My sister and her husband also live in our house and their door is mostly open (for the dogs to go in and out) and their room is also quite baby-proof, which gives him another space to be and play if he wants to get out of the room.

We have a large garden where he can walk around with a sand and water pit. There’s dogs and balls to be thrown. We can go for walks in the fields or visit other gardens on the farm and the dogs and people who live there (I live on a community-style farm).

So in terms of space and safety, he has quite a wide range of freedom and independence, more so in our space than other parts of the farm

When entering my childhood home, I experienced a mix of things. Firstly, my parents had gone through renovations in the house which immediately had caught my eye, where there was a certain experience of ‘awe’ as things looked nice and neat. At the same time, there was another experience, an uncomfortable one which I wasn’t able to place directly, it was a kind of claustrophobic sensation.
Only later during the day did I realise what the experience was about, when one of my parents told Cesar ‘not to touch the walls’. Immediately, I could place my experience from coming in – as this ‘rule’ of ‘do not touch the walls’ was in place when I grew up as well, where no matter how nice things looked inside, there was always a dark experience because we’d have to watch ourselves in every space to not ‘tamper’ with the space such as the walls. This limitation had always bothered me though I never really understood what it was about. Somehow the assumption was made that whenever we would touch the walls, we’d be making them dirty, and that is bad.

I mean, yes sure, there’s a logical connection between touching walls and them ending up being a bit dirty; but at the same time, you’re talking about your living space, the place where you spend most of your time day in and day out. How can you ‘live’ if you’re in constant tension about keeping your space ‘unaltered’. That’s like, contradictory – because you’re going to be doing things, and time is going to pass and in the end, some of that’s going to show on the walls.

In the same way, Cesar was not allowed to play with toys against the walls and had to have his hands cleaned each time he touched something which could possibly leave a trace on the house or other people (even while he is for instance still busy eating, and will be re-dirtying his hands).

So, the first point that really stuck out for me, was not so much like actual physical limitations such as having a smaller living space and small garden – but the mental limitations we impose on reality, which limit us more than physical barriers.

Due to particular circumstances playing out in my life recently, I’ve had to travel back to my home country and town for a period of about two months.

This was quite an interesting experience for myself, as well as for my son Cesar.

I have been living on a farm in South Africa for the past 7 years or so, where life paces itself at a whole different rhythm and dynamic than what I was used to growing up. This was the environment where my son has been growing up from birth – it was the only type of environment he really knew (besides some trips into town which are always very short). So, I’ve had to adjust coming from Belgium, a tiny country where many people live and where life revolves around your status in society – to slowing down and living in an environment which centres on awareness and consideration for life, your own as well as that of others on an equal basis.

Now, I was bringing my son into the environment I grew up in, which was pretty much the reverse of what he was used to; while being faced with my own childhood environment yet living and applying the principles I had made my own from living on a farm environment.

So within the next few blogs I want to walk and share some of the observations I have made during my visit to ‘the homeland’ and the sharp contrast of how people live and how children are treated/brought up versus a lifestyle typical to the that of the Desteni Farm.