A Week on Cortes Island with Women + Working on Climate by Shayda Edwards Naficy
We were somewhere between Vancouver Island and Cortes when the ocean swelled beneath us. The ferry pitched and dipped like a wild stallion, charging forward through the waves. Ocean spray burst through the open windows, and laughter filled the air. “Ride ‘em, cowboy!” someone shouted at the stoic, white-haired captain. It was the perfect beginning to a week we knew would be unlike any other.
Seventy women. All working at the intersections of climate justice and social change. We came carrying questions, expectations, and exhaustion. Some came for strategy, others for community, some simply to rest. As it turned out, this space held all of it – and something more unexpected: a deep permission to feel whatever emerged.
From the moment we arrived, surrounded by birdsong and forest, I made a promise to myself: to treat this place and this time as sacred; a rare moment for introspection between the doing and striving of normal life. As the days unfolded, I found myself weeping often – from grief that emerged unexpectedly, but also from the beauty of being seen, heard, and held by others.
We sat in circles, shared stories, and made space for both joy and grief: personal grief, ancestral grief, grief for a world in crisis. These weren’t burdens to solve, but truths to hold together. And something changed in that holding. Even as we closed our circle, I was moved to tears by the feeling that I could no more heal all the divisions and wounds among us, than I could heal the wounds of the world. But I found a kind of integrity in sitting with that pain, and a healing from lavishing the love of attention on it. And as I sat with the grief, I felt a clearing in my mind and heart – from being present and letting go of the desire to change it.
On the last day, I returned to the flower portal we had built together. Crawling into it like a womb, I lay down amidst blossoms and branches, tears streaming down my face. That’s when the hummingbird came. She hovered above me, emerald chest glinting in the light, drinking from the ruby red flowers we had woven in days before. Then she landed right above my head and watched me. She appeared calm, curious, and wise. “Alive to the edge of her skin,” as Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams urged us to be. I watched her, my teacher, open to whatever message she had for me, and felt calm and awe and gratitude grow in my heart.
Flower portal sits outside the entrance of Olatunji Hall, July 2025
In that moment, I felt a profound sensation of what it means to be part of the living world; to be in relationship with it. To give and to receive, and to listen to its teachings. At Hollyhock, I was surrounded by, and full of life. I slept on the roots of a great cedar tree. I fell asleep listening to the wind blowing through its boughs, and woke at night to a panorama of brilliant stars peeking through the black sky. I woke to the sound of birds, and the rush of the ocean. Even my footsteps were cushioned by damp soil, teeming with life, both plant and animal.
Returning to the city was jarring. Trees and stars, replaced by concrete and noise. In the city, nearly everything around me -– apart from the humans – felt lifeless. Sitting in an otherwise lovely cafe, surrounded by plastic chairs and tables, it dawned on me: we have killed our teachers – the trees, the birds, the forest itself – and replaced them with human bombast and noise. In their absence, we have grown bloated with humanity and forgotten how to be in relationship with something larger than ourselves.
And yet, this stark reckoning left me with a sense of hope, because it rooted something in me that will not fade. It reminded me that there are still teachers, both human and non-human, to learn from, if we dare to listen. There are people and places and communities that live a different way of being, rooted in ancestral teachings, or re-rooting themselves, against all odds. And it lit within me the desire to give, in return, these two offerings.
The first is my commitment to rediscover these teachings and live into the practice of this way of being, everyday. And the second, is gratitude.
Thank you to all who invited, who organized, who held us, who joined us, who challenged us, who taught us, who listened to us, who were us. I am grateful for each one of you and the role you played in our collective. And grateful for the opportunity to practice living this way with you all, if only for a few days. This experience will stay in my mind and heart and body, always.
This week on Cortes Island was not just a retreat. It is a memory made flesh – a way of being I now carry in my body. A teacher. A seed.
