“With maturity, comes the appreciation for how rare & special it is when feeling souls connect.”

~ Peta Sitcheff

The faint echo of hysterical of laughter was giving me serious FOMO.

I didn’t want to miss one moment with these newly discovered treasures.

A gaggle of likeminded humans who ironically, had come together to rediscover their sense of self through the power of connection. With each other, & the rusty, red earth beneath them.

It was our first night of six on a well-being retreat in the Australian desert outback. The energy radiating from the bonding of strangers’ souls, palpable.

Annoyingly, amidst the bustle of chatting around the roaring campfire, I had a pressing problem & an important job to do. One no-one could do on my behalf. A quick job I’d been doing on autopilot many times a day for my entire life. For some reason tonight, it required more effort than usual.

While my mind was busy rendering its place amongst my new surrounds, it was distracting my perfect state of “flow”. Quite literally.

God blimey I needed to pee.

I had two options, man’s synthetic port-a-loo, or mother nature’s bush pee. Aka the “facili-tree”.

My mind decided upon arrival that zipping myself into a confined space with smell of excrement wafting up my nostrils was for the most desperate of circumstances only. After all, I could only hold my breath for so long.

For number ones, the humble bush pee would do.

That evening, my turn to christen the land arrived. Annoyed by the inconvenience, my biological alarm was poking at my swollen bladder. I could hold on no more.

Leaving the smoky scented comfort of the campfire circle, I excused myself & set off up the dusty red dirt road, to find my camouflage tree.

The brightness of the desert night sky was dizzying. Mother nature’s spectacular evening show had commenced. Amongst thousands of twinkling stars, the luminous full moon began to rise in the east. A giant, white glowing sphere tinged with yellow, lighting up the red earth like a brilliant stage light.

Out of sight from my fellow campers & within yelling distance, I found my shrub.

With trousers around my knees, I strategically positioned myself to avoid back splash without losing my footing. Goodness knows, I wanted to avoid falling back into the threatening pile of spinifex needles positioned dangerously close to my hovering rear. I’d be a human pin cushion if I did.

I was ready.

Turns out I had bigger problems than back splash.

My plumbing was in shock. The “dam of discomfort” courtesy of my new primitive world, firmly in place. I couldn’t go.

Nope. She wasn’t releasing a drop while my mind was distracted by nature’s wonder. Paranoid about what these newly introduced strangers would think if they’d caught me mid-stream.

“Peta, this isn’t the time to care about what other people think. Get over yourself,” I thought out loud.

Eventually, the pee came. A forced, anxious stop-start squirt, rather than a relaxed steady stream. And not a moment too soon as my squatting quadriceps started to burn under the strain.

“What next? What sort of wipe is appropriate out here? What about hygiene?” I thought to myself, “Do I swipe with the moist toilette in my pocket, & discretely take the rubbish back to dispose of at camp?”

Nope. That seemed way out of context. As a soul sister said, “a good shake of the lettuce,” or a eucalyptus leaf would have to do.

And back toward the laughter I walked. Bladder relieved.

For the next week, I’d be living life differently. Primitive, yet comfortable. Full of physical & unbeknownst to me, emotional mountains to climb.

It would be a week like no other.

Granted my lead up had not been smooth. Life had thrown obstacle after obstacle, like missiles to my mind. Months of uncontrollable emotional warfare, leaving nothing but a few strands of cerebral threads to knit together to function.

By the time the trip rolled around, I was a fragile soul on shaky ground.

Barely glancing at the itinerary prior to departure, I had zero expectations. All I knew was I needed to escape the suburban neighbourhood that in recent months, no longer felt like home.

I desperately needed mother nature to cast her powerful spell & gently remind me, she had my back.

Mostly, I needed to find my relaxed smile.

As it turns out, I wasn’t alone.

Descending into Alice Springs, a graveyard of abandoned jetliners, rejects to their commercial families in the air, was an unexpected & haunting sight. I couldn’t help but think we were being given a subtle reminder, strangers entering this sacred land must adapt to survive.

And strangers we were. Strangers with way too much luggage for the likes of our local host. Strangers too distracted swapping life’s surface realities to pay attention to any instruction.

The knitting of invisible heart bonds had begun as we left Alice behind, & set off to our camp. Somewhere in the bush.

It didn’t take long, before “her” presence was felt.

Umbilical cords connecting us with our responsible, familiar lives were cut. Emerging rolling, red panorama swallowed our WIFI. Engrained daily parenting habits dissolved. Memories of modern comforts, random pleasures life had taught us to crave, suddenly no longer at our fingertips.

I don’t think any of us cared. We were too preoccupied by nature’s wonder infiltrating our minds. Our old lives, melting away.

We all had our reason for being there.

Chapters of unfinished personal stories, desperately searching for rewritten endings enabling lives to progress & souls to experience calm.

Reasons buried beneath the chatter, tugging at our heart strings, desperate to be heard. Festering reasons that felt the mystical magnetism of Mother Earth long before our minds committed to the experience. Discretely, they were being drawn to our surface.

We were on notice. Mother Earth’s spirituality far greater than any of us. We were merely a speck in her vast universe. Immersing our tense city bodies amongst her soothing warmth. Our minds quickly mesmerised by her powerful spell.

If we were to rewrite our stories, we had to move with her.

Our first tribal challenge was agreeing to step forward into the week, united as one. We were in it together.

Seventeen mature, intelligent women & one bold husband. All with no expectations. Fully immersed in the tummy churning feeling of prickly discomfort. Each of us looking for serendipitous common ground offering a soft landing for conversation. One that would start knitting together our souls.

Quickly, our padded landing appeared, as we chucked our sensible, polished good girl personas out the fly screened tent window & blew off our psychological steam with some good old-fashioned toilet humour.

Our knitting circle had begun. Humour igniting the process. Even the quietest of introverts piped up. Toilet anxiety was rife & didn’t discriminate.

The (many) toilet stops seventeen female bladders necessitated. The state of the national park drop-loo. The stench of the camp port-a-loo. How to avoid touching the port-a-loo, whilst wiping & flushing. The show off camper who pooed day one. The clogged person whose plumbing was backed up until day five. Methods to free “said” back up. The birthing story of the backed-up poo.

“Hallelujah!” cried the poo-ee on her return. Finally, her innards were on the move again!

With every setting sunburnt sun, our minds exhaled a little more. Our city edges softened & our modern life’s discretions became a little less discrete. Each of us becoming more comfortable in our desert environment & our space within it.

Canvas shelters became welcoming, temporary homes.

Icy freshwater temperatures did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm for a post hike dip in a bottomless waterhole. Its depths knocking the breath from our lungs & numbing our toes.

A surprise vibration, signalling Telstra had found a pulse mid-stage ten of the Larapinta Trail was like whip lash to our minds. Unwelcomed, uninvited & shut down in an instant.

Each of us embraced the thin film of red powdery dust coating our new world. We were soaking up mother nature drop by drop & loving every moment.

We also became a little more comfortable with each other.

Upon reflection, I realise despite being strangers, our hearts were linked from the outset. Wise in knowing the mutual choice we’d made to be here.

Our hearts knowing ahead of our minds, we had chosen courage over comfort.

Unanimously, we’d dared to trust & to step out of our ordinary lives. To relinquish control, surrender to the experience & silently, agree to accept consequence.

We knew we’d have to embrace what we didn’t know or understand. Curiosity, compassion & connection our compass back to alignment.

Hiking, meditation, yin yoga & guided breath work, aligned our minds, bodies & spirits with our beating hearts.

We began to live the very definition of integrity as a powerful grounded confidence emerged across our tribe. We were one. An entity of conjoined souls, developing a collective heartbeat of its own. A heartbeat powered by surrendering to the emotional rapids that were sweeping us up & supporting the individual loads mother nature was exposing.

And expose she did. We each had our moment. The moment we couldn’t conceal our hurt any longer.

One by one, our emotional banks burst. Our armours cracked. And our deeply personal stories, intimate stories, childhood stories, failed romantic stories, were released into the safe space we had unwittingly created.

If humour was the ignition to our knitting circle, trust was the thread.

Each of us trusting that the tribe’s heart would have the inner strength to cope with any emotional rawness hatched. It did more than cope, it thrived.

United, we nurtured each other.

It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

Tearful eyes mesmerised by blazing campfire flames, were comforted. A maternal hand, gently placed on the back behind those eyes, acknowledging the moment of a painful deep thought.

The sobs of a soul bared naked by the power of breath work, embraced by unidentified arms determined to share the hurt of the emotional cascade engulfing it.

A journaling hand tentatively moving across a lined page, was granted space to exhale & release the deepest thoughts it could rarely touch on life’s usual bustling highway.

There was no judgment. Only warmth, understanding & compassion for the sadness, hurt & feelings of unworthiness we’d had the vulnerability to share. It became the nourishment for our tribe’s collective strength.

Our city selves had surrendered.

Historical wounds bled tears of hurt. Suppressed emotions gasped for oxygen. And our hearts, stretched with vulnerability, felt safe the group’s cradling arms.

Unsaid words were spoken. Hidden stories were told. As the pain of battered spirits were acknowledged.

We had reached into the depths of our emotions & tapped into a powerful molten source.

Beneath the spectacular burnt hues of the desert’s setting sun, our healing had begun.

And the bush wee? It became the perfect “let-go-o-meter”.

A gauge of our boldness & state of surrender to the inextricable healing forces of mother nature.

Our rituals become less proper & less discrete, as our happiness bloomed, and we shed our emotional weight like a scaly reptile skin. Each of us basking in the freedom of being simply, us. Not Mum, Dad, a job title, or a child. Simply, us.

Like the individual timing of the release of our intimate truths, our “dams of discomfort” chose their own timing to burst their banks.

For some, it was immediate. Bum bare, don’t care.

Others were a little more pensive, deciding to hold on & hope. “Surely a drop loo will pop up at a campsite?” But we never could be sure. After all, a metropolitan 30 minutes wasn’t 30 minutes in the bush.

One by one, we threw our distracted minds out the invisible window & we let go.

Port-a-loos became reserved for poos.

Pees shadowed by night, suddenly became pees under the beaming hot sun.

Pees behind dense, leafy trees, became pees behind skinny ghost gums.

I could only chuckle on the last morning when I found myself dodging wet bush pee splotches on the powdery red road immediately behind our row of tents.

No longer could we be bothered to hide, when “nature called”.

Then came the moment our last bush-pee-er made her debut. “I’m going to do it,” she announced to the group. A steely determination in her eyes. We looked at each other & smiled over our handmade lunches, as her khaki hatted head disappeared behind a dense crimson & green, red gum.

And right there, on a rocky peak of ochre tones, surrounded by the stunning panoramic view our red earth, she finally let go.

Emerging, her face lit up with a smile for miles, throwing her hands in the air. “Victory!”

A chorus of “Hoorays” & laughter from her soul sisters followed.

Not only had she let go, she knew she was enough.

Peta x

Photos by @prueaja.com

Retreat @journeybydesign (note this blog is unsponsored)

Retreat leader @tinabrucesoul @weretreats