After the cold, harsh winter my body was starved of some sunshine and I was beginning to feel down all the time. Both my boyfriend and I were suffering pretty badly from delayed ‘January blues’ and so we booked a last minute holiday to Barbados in the hope to re-ignite our souls and also as a wonderful Valentines treat for our first proper Valentines together.
We could only afford to go for eight nights, but, boy did we need it! As soon as we landed in the Caribbean I felt a tremendous sense of relief – my whole body felt lighter and I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. When I stepped out of the plane and felt that warm Barbados air embracing my body, I knew i'd found a little piece of heaven. As we spent our time exploring the Island and sunbathing on the beautiful beaches, I realised I had found my “happy place”, the place to run away to in my mind whenever I felt I needed it, the place I could escape to if things got too much back home. I don’t know how anybody could be unhappy in such a gorgeous, sunny place and I felt some sort of spiritual connection with it right away.
There are three particular memories from our time in the Caribbean that really stick in my mind; one of which was when we witnessed a baby deer being born. My boyfriend and I were the only people there and I remember thinking how incredibly special it was to have witness a living being enter the world and take its first tentative look around.
Another occurred when we were sat waiting for the Reggae Bus to pick us up in Bridgetown. A local woman turned to us and said “Jesus loves you”, to which me and my atheist boyfriend were a little stunned. She felt so strongly that she wanted to pray for us, that we joined her in an intimate circle, bowed our heads and let her words gently wash over us. Even, though my boyfriend is not at all religious but, he said he found her passion so overwhelming and warming that he couldn’t help but be swept along with it all. It was a beautiful moment and one that we still talk about when we're curled up in bed reminiscing about our holiday.
When I came home from Barbados, I was filled with a truly positive energy that throbbed within my veins and left with the words that a local man told us on our very last day as we sat on Miami beach soaking up the last few hours of sun. He said:
"My friends wanted to train as lawyers or doctors so they could buy big houses with swimming pools and gardens, but I don't need those things. In Barbados, the Caribbean sea i my swimming pool and the beach is my garden. If I have these things, I don't need anything else. You don't need material things"
