Retreats and other stories

What happens when thirteen women (and the writer) collide in the Alentejo countryside to 'do art'. Will it be all Kumbaya and damp gussets?

A few weeks back I was in the company of twelve women I did not know, and one whom I do know and love furiously. She is a new friend, only two summers in the making, yet she and I have melded together in a way that is so easy, it is like we have always been that shape.

I met her here in Nosara, and as she spends a month here every winter, I look forward to her February visits in a way that I never used to look forward to that particular month back in the motherland; February usually so pernicious for depressing weather. Whenever we see each other we talk without pause, bouncing around art and colour and family and creativity and love and friends and shared connections. I learn so much from her, and try and be a nicer person because of the way she looks at the world; so differently to mine. Being in her orbit makes the air a little sweeter, a little brighter. Just how friendship should be.

She is also a beautiful abstract artist. Her use of colour - and specifically my most yearned for colour in the world (Barbie hot slag neon pink thank u) - means I hanker for all her work, and want it on my walls, now. And, it is because of her that I am deep in the Portuguese countryside, with a multitude of strangers for a week of abstract folk art.

Howevs, the last ‘group trip’ I ever went on was Guide Camp. And, I don’t put myself out there when it comes to painting. Not the done thing where I come from to label yourself an ‘artist’ if you didn’t go to art college. Non. Mon dieu. Anyway, at Guide Camp torrential rain washed our tents away and mum wouldn’t come and pick me up early even though I snuck out to the nearest phone box to reverse the charges and beg her. There was kumbaya round a fire - oh my God so much kumbaya - and I wanted to learn to smoke more than I wanted to watch my knickers float away down a field full of cow shit at 3am.

Would the same thing happen here? Would I find myself on the phone to the husband nightly, sobbing into my duvet? Video calling mum to remind her that my pants were being metaphorically washed away and it was still all her fault? Suffice to say the pre-trip fears took shape, as oft they do, based in nothing but fear itself.

Would I be nice to these strangers? Sure. But what if everyone had zero chat? What would I say to them, then? Would I choose violence, or falling asleep at the dinner table? What if they were all supremely irritating? Americans talk a lot, remember.

What if they were, gulp, better than me?

What if I couldn’t do it?

I could go on.

But, you know, a week away with women I do not know. Gulp. It had the air of the retreat about it.

Retreat: A quiet or secluded place in which one can rest and relax. A chance to disconnect from daily life to improve wellbeing.

And do fuck off.

Previous to this, if you’d asked me to go on any kind of retreat, the word would send shivers down my spine, before lodging itself like a grumpy bastard right into the judgey bit of my craw. Say retreat and I automatically think of damp-arsed, overly earnest people probably wearing hemp, sober-dancing to shit EDM. Naturally, they will all be vegan, because as we all know, vegans like to keep their choices to themselves. Surely this was all a grown-up way of saying Guide Camp. One that spoke of setting intentions and healing circles and going round the table saying what we’re thankful for.

However this new me is the one that says yes to things, so I off I jogged.

And I tell you what, it was amazing.

Amazing.

No other word to describe it.

I meet someone whose teacher told her she could never been an artist and she believed her and went into teaching instead. She is possibly the most artist-y artist-in-waiting I have ever met. Makes all her own clothes. Makes them all look like La DoubleJ. I can barely hold a pair of scissors - and that’s not even because I’m left-handed. (Shhh, we’re the best.)

The artist leading us is nothing short of brilliant. She is so bad-ass I love her in an embarrassing way for a 52-year old to admit to. She and my artist friend bond over shared experiences, shared geography, and my heart swells in ways I didn’t know possible. Not because there isn’t a damp arse in sight and no-one’s wearing hemp that I can see. Not because there’s zero extolling the healing powers of quinoa, or anyone’s guffing on about embodiment; just a lot of women making marks on paper in the sunshine, sharing stories. About survival. About new choices. About colour. About their worlds.

It is infectious this joy, it is catching. I am doing art.

What is happening to me?

Yes, of course I named them.

Yet, amidst all this love, I notice one thing: no one knows how to describe themselves after all of this. We all have previous labels. Figure skater. Sustainable Farming Consultant. Fashion Designer. Pattern Designer. Creator of Spotty Dotty. Real Estate Maven. Quilter. Frag Head. Graphic Designer. Art Director. Data Analyst. We all want to be seen as more though. Something more encompassing. Not just creative, which feels too passive. Not that weird multi-hyphenate catch-all that seems to do anything but.

And do you know why? Because now, in mid-life, so many of us don’t just do one thing and it is a big ‘ole lump of weird to describe what this is without watching the spark fade from someone’s eyes quicker than you can say, So how do you feel about [insert latest atrocity].

You see, I am a copywriter for a living and have been for eons, but now I’ve written a manuscript that I’m putting out on here, and I’m writing another which I’d quite like to sell actually. And I do potting and art, the former I am about to also offer to people for money. But who says all that in a sentence?

Literally no one.

Conversationally, if you were to ask me what I do, it would go something like this:

What do you do?

I’m a writer.

Have I read anything of yours?

Erm. No. Haven’t been published yet. Trying to.

Oh.

I am a copywriter though.

Right.

Or:

What do you do?

I’m a writer. Copywriter, really.

Have I read anything of yours?

No, no, not yet no, I’m working on my second manuscript.

Fantastic. Where can I buy your first one?

Erm.

Which inevitably leads to:

What do you do?

Oh you don’t want to hear about me, tell me about you. What about you?

This says more about me and my ability to speak words into the universe in a way I want to be seen, but also, it comes to that very weird thing about permission. Permission, for women is a particularly tricky subject to navigate. We’re never one thing; having so many roles in our lives, so often caregivers with or without families of our own to raise. And alongside permission there is that lovely bedfellow, imposter syndrome. It’s a well-known fact that men will say they are the thing, when we hesitate until we’re sure we’re really that thing. Having met a gazillion (male) designers who confidently told me they were Design Directors, I can attest. They were so not the thing, yet 100% believed they were. I used to think it was madness, but who was I kidding? What a waste of a brain cell.

Anyone remember the YouGov survey where 50% of men said they could successfully land a passenger plane without any prior flying experience?

That one.

We need to lean into this, minus the air of stupid.

How about, instead of:

‘I’m nearly a writer / I’m sort of a writer / I’m trying to be a writer

I’m Julie. I’m a writer.

That’s more like it, eh?

And then, just before I press the publish button on this, it is like my new friend knows and she sends a note from artist Phyllida Barlow;

“There are plenty of artists who don’t have exhibitions. There’s plenty of art that’s never seen. There is this great, powerful desire to just create something.

The novel that never gets published, should it never have been written? Of course it should be.”

Of course it should be.

So on that note, if you see my words, well that’s just brill isn’t it. And if you don’t, it’s less brill, but no biggie, because this great, powerful desire to just create something is what makes us indelibly, wonderfully human, after all.