Jan´s accident Part I: Prologue

I write this article in November 2022, exactly 2 years after this happened. It seems like all this time of processing was necessary for us to be able to make a beautiful story out of it that we can show now in our museum of memories. I chose to display the stories on our blog in the order of the events, not in the order of the time of writing the article, so it is easier for the reader to follow our journey. And I just let things out as they come to me.

As you can see and imagine, it was an intense year. On so many levels. For me, Dorothee, leaving my home of 33 years, ending my 14 years long relationship and marriage and starting with Jan, which started a domino effect of events, like shitstorms and breakup of contact with half of my family and friends from my former life. I used to be the „reliable“ „nice“ one, how could I dare to make drama and reveal some very unhealthy dynamics where I tried to play harmony for almost one and a half decade? Even deeper, it revealed some not so beautiful things buried deeply in my family history, where I had tried to adapt my whole life, but which always had taken a toll on my health.

Also, I had been really making a big jump in building up my online-business and working like crazy, overwhelmed by a very sudden flood of clients.

And so romantic emigration into a subtropical country can sound and we had imagined it, so had it also its heavy sides: An immense load of bureaucratic things and paperwork, with much chaos here on this little island where things have been starting to be reformed very quickly in the recent years (when I came here the first time not even all cars had license plates and now trying to catch up with the rest of the EU), and in many ways even more fastidious then Germany, but on the same hand much worse organized. Often I couldn´t go to the main town for a whole week, because I had to recover from the stress, headache, fatigue and freezeresponse from these, for our brains, super unnatural, flowless, cold and disconnected procedures. Jan was doing his best to try to cheer me up.

And the new relationship with this amazing man who was the mirror for my own soul and being for me, and so strong and full of energy. The bliss, enthusiasm and just real open(ing) love can wake up some deeply slumbering old shadows and also start to throw out old stuff and detox on the level of the psyche and soul. These things will come out, when the time has come, and they will just make space for it if they don´t get any other chance, and, honestly, something deeply deeply inside of us is so longing for it and so tired of carrying all this burden around for years and decades.

Crisis, like the worldwide craziness we suddenly were in since the beginning of 2022, is such a big chance as my story hopefully reveals. When crisis happens it is a sign that we missed the chance to pause and look deeper, that we were running too fast. In the ideal case it is a deep clean-up and shift in consciousness, not just a quick fix. We have compressed the waves of reality too much and they want to spring back into a natural pace… The circumstances, God, the Universe, just the laws of nature will give as signs and speak to us, and the voice gets louder and louder. In the end, nothing other can come than a big crash, explosion, collapse, disease, accident, breakup…

And sometimes it is just time. Sometimes things or cycles just have a natural end, relationships a natural expiration date. Crisis will blow away the structures and mindsets that were built on sand. Disease and breakdown is a chance for real healing. A new start. Personally. Collectively.

When Jan and I started together, we were flying high on love hormones and enthusiasm of some spiritual ideas to build up something really beautiful and utopian here. Two very strong characters, tired of the outside world, retreated and united on this 4000 souls island in the middle of the Atlantic. Our love story and our dancing and flying together started, when the world outside completely shut down and people retreated in fear and mistrust. We didn´t want to hear about it since the beginning, we felt the spirit behind these things and we just were not scared, well and I don´t want to start here as a biologist and health expert specialized on the immune system and the human nervous system. We decided to happily stay in our tiny bubble and do our thing. We could sit things out. Humanity couldn´t be SO crazy could it? Well, but in the end, it got us…

The Covid-Story has triggered the biggest hidden fears in EVERYBODY of us. Mine was the loss of a loved one, losing home and abandonment. And wasn´t there always this little nagging voice in the back of my head that this was too good to be true, that I didn´t deserve such goodness and real happiness…

So, it was November 2020. Jan and I really went into Oneness at the supermoon in spring. Now, exactly half a year later, we got a fullmoon in scorpio season, where the moon was the farthest away this year from planet earth. The energy was reversed… We were tired after this intense year, but we couldn´t really admit it and it´s hard to gear down from an extremely revved up nervous system. We still kept going.

I remember, two days before the accident happened, that we have been down in our wild bay for swimming, releasing and recharging. It was such a peaceful moment. I started making intuitive Qigong movement standing on the warm lava rocks and felt electricity building up and sparkling over my whole body. It was one of these moments of complete connection, presence and somehow surrender. Jan and I were watching the waves crashing at the shore. They were big, came rolling and rolling. So much raw power, unstoppable. I suddenly looked into Jan´s face with my eyes half shut and got intense and not ending visions of a big big wave, rolling and rolling at us…

We had gotten some warning shots days ahead. To take care, to slow down. Me technical glitches, I was on the finish line of publishing my newest E-Book on Nutritional Psychology. Jan more and more injuries. Once a wave almost took him from a cliff, and once he was stung in the eye by the tip of a pineapple plant leaf and it was all red.

The evening before the accident happened, we decided to spend the night in the clayhouse. We recently had spent more and more time in the Quinta. Here was just so much to do, and we tended to spend time in the clayhouse as our „summerhouse“, when we were really tired and needed a deep recharge. For me it felt like the energy of the clayhouse became too peaceful, the energy in the Quinta, where all the intense work, the houses that needed renovation, the neglected garden, my office were and where we had already after just a few months started a secret Yoga-and Bodyworkgroup was just matching our vibes. It was always a bit hard to wind down into the minimalistic, absolutely calm jungle-tiny-house-atmosphere. This evening, it just felt so good to be here. Yes, we were tired.

Our friend José joined us, brought delicious chestnuts that we roasted on the rocket mass heater, together with a pan of fresh veggies that we had just picked from Jan´s small but prosperous jungle-garden. The men made some music with the guitar and the hangdrum and then we started talking. When I look back, it is like we were already naturally talking about what was gonna happen. We somehow started talking about Terceira, about driving the long Highway (Graciosa is so tiny, we don´t even have a single traffic light), about how we haven´t been out of Graciosa for a long while. We were talking about emergency extractions with helicopters…

Yes, I start to believe more and more that we create (mostly subconsciously) our reality ourselves. On the energetic level, on the story level, with the words we use. Or is time and past and future just an illusion, made up by our biology, our limited brain, and we just don´t know that we know?

Let me tell you the story of what happened on the level of matter. I will do my best to avoid any unnecessary triggers and still convey my experience, but of course I cannot take individual fears and traumas into account so feel free to stop or skip whenever you need to.

Jan was working in the garden with the string trimmer. We are using a biodegradable „nylon“ string for to not spread our land with microplastic. For a few days him and me had started using a metal blade instead of the string to also cut through some heavier vegetation. Nature takes over very fast here in the subtropics and especially the blackberries and lantana can get to monstrous dimensions.

I already had a bad feeling, because we found the rusty blade in the old greenhouse from the former owners and neighbors have told us horror stories and warned us from using it in a garden like ours with lots of rocks between the grass and bushes. But on some level we felt under pressure, especially to free the suffering fruit trees, and during the time of negotiation with my Ex about the Quinta, when it seemed for a while I would lose the Quinta to his hands, the garden had been completely neglected for too long. Jan had saved my beloved home back then, and now he came to rescue again.

I knew today is the day. The last line was written of my Ebook, the upload done, the newsletter sent out. I had already prepared a little raw-chocolate-fruit thing and Cevada in the kitchen to celebrate with Jan. Yes, this was something I had spoken about with my NLP-Coach not too long before: To implement more celebration time. Honoring the process and what I have already achieved, instead of just looking on the mountain of work that is still ahead! Yes, oh this was so needed, I could feel it. From now on everything will go on a slower pace and get a bit easier. Looking on the bright side. A big piece of my years of experience had been written down, would give us some passive income, Jan had already planted some food, we should be okay. My Ex had given way and was mostly leaving me in peace, yes, finding back to, finding for the first time, peace. Finally. Our happy little bubble.

Jan just has to finish the back forest, maybe I should just go and tell him to just finish for today. I could hear the heavy sound of the string trimmer from the distance. He has been working so hard, and I could feel the effect hard working with machines had on his sensitive nervous system. Today he had seemed so absent, like there was some kind of drivenness that had something scary to it, like I had never seen him before. Yes, I should go and take him home, to the warm fireplace. I didn´t like this feeling of distance building up between us.

I was just switching out my computer. In that moment I heard Jan yelling my name. „Call the ambulance!“

Part 2