Three Peacocks and a Message- Costa Rica
Three Peacocks
and a Message
Deep in the Costa Rican jungle, I set down what I had been holding. Then I opened my eyes from meditation, and they were there.
I usually never share where I am in real time. But on this one day, for no reason I can explain, I break that pattern. That small choice changes everything that follows.
How It Began
I usually never share where I am in real time. I post my travels a day later, or once I'm home. But on this particular day, while I'm at Seascape Resort in Aptos, California with my family, near Santa Cruz and Monterey, I break that pattern. For no reason I can explain, I share that I'm there. That small choice changes everything that follows.
My friend May sees it. She replies right away. She and her husband are on their way here too, to the same resort. Let's have coffee tomorrow, is her next text. The next day, she joins me on my morning run, and we catch up over coffee afterward. And that's where all of it begins.
May and I have been close friends for over a decade. We danced hula and Tahitian together for years. We're both on a break from it now, and we both miss it more than we say. Over coffee, with spring break coming up, she asks whether I have any trips planned. I tell her I'd been looking at Costa Rica, though I ended up booking Cancun with the family instead.
May shares that she's actually planning to go to The Retreat in Costa Rica with her husband, to take some time away. Then, gently, she tells me why she needs it. With her blessing, I share it here. She's been trying to become a mother for a long while, through IVF, and the road has held more heartbreak than anyone should have to carry. Her most recent loss happened just the day before, which is why she and her husband came here for the weekend. She's tender, and grieving, and still she shows up.
The Invitation
A few days later, I'm on my run when my phone buzzes. It's May. Would you like to go to Costa Rica with me. Her husband can no longer go.
I check the message and see the time. 11:11. To me, that alone is a sign. I say yes without hesitation, guided by something deeper than logic, even though our family spring break trip is less than a day apart from this one. Something in me knows this is where I need to be.
I book my flights to match hers. A week later, it's just the two of us at SFO, on our way to Costa Rica. I go in with no expectations at all. Just a break from my trauma work, and a chance to relax so I can come back recharged. I don't expect the days ahead to give either of us so much more.
Holding Space at Thirty Thousand Feet
On the plane, and in our room, and over every meal we shared across the five days, May and I talk. I give her room to share whatever she needs to. I ask questions. I listen, as a friend.
And while I try, I find it hard to fully take off the trauma therapist hat, because it isn't a hat at all. It's part of who I am. Even when I know I'm here simply to be her friend, the way I listen, the way I hold space, comes from somewhere ingrained. I let it be both. A friend, and someone who understands how pain moves through a body and a life.
We arrive in Costa Rica carrying different things. May, her grief. Me, the weight of my work and a tiredness I haven't fully admitted to myself. Both of us, ready to set something down.
The Retreat
The Retreat sits deep in the jungle, built atop a fifty acre crystal quartz mountain. I arrive carrying more than I realize. Tension I've held for so long it feels like part of me. Over the five days that follow, one experience at a time, I set it down.
Sound Healing
On our first full day, the thing that moves me is sound. I lie still and let it wash over me, and within moments I'm no longer in the room. The sound carries me somewhere else entirely, to a place I didn't know I needed to visit. My body stays on the mat. The rest of me travels.
Reiki
On the second day, the reiki begins in my head. At first it feels heady, strange, as if nothing is really happening. And then, without warning, my body shifts. I feel myself begin to float, lifted by something I can't see and don't need to explain. I simply let it hold me.
The Cleansing
On the third day comes water. I'm placed under a warm shower that falls like rain, steady and endless on my bare skin. It's deeply relaxing. The water keeps falling until the line between the water and my body disappears, until it feels as though I've become water myself. Nothing to hold. Nothing to brace against. Just flow.
The Sloth and the Slow Way Down
The morning of the fourth day, May and I have time to explore the jungle, and it gives us a gift we don't expect. A wild sloth, making her way down the tallest tree in the forest. We have all the time and all the patience in the world, so we stand there and watch her go, slow and steady, at her own pace. Nowhere to be. Nothing to rush. Just her, and us, and the slow way down.
I think about how rarely I move like this in my ordinary life. Always holding, always doing, always a step ahead of myself. And here we are, matched to the pace of a sloth, and finding it peaceful rather than unbearable. Something in me has already begun to change.
The Ayurvedic Massage
Later that same day, I walk into a dim room set apart from all the others. I've just finished my run, and my heart is still racing. The scent of eucalyptus and sandalwood meets me, and my breathing slows.
The only light comes from a single candle on a small altar at the back. In the center of the room is the massage table, a solid slab of hard wood. Comfort is nowhere near my thoughts. I'm a little skeptical, quietly bracing for pain. But I stay open.
This is no ordinary spa. No soft music, no plush sheets. Ayurveda honors the connection between humans and nature, and the room holds all the elements. Potted plants and fresh flowers. Fire from the candle. Water trickling from a small fountain in the corner. It is grounding and whole.
The massage uses warm herbal oils and a rhythmic motion, gentle and firm at once. It finds the stiffness in my legs, my shoulders, my neck. The knots I've carried without even noticing. By the end, I realize how wrong I was. This is the most healing massage I've ever known. My muscles, frozen and blocked for so long, begin to reawaken. And somewhere in the rhythm of it, I stop bracing. I let myself be worked on, fully. That's when the release comes.
Nothing to hold. Nothing to brace against. Just flow.
Yoga, and Letting Go Completely
On our last day, in my own private yoga session, my body finally understands what my mind has been slower to learn. How to let go completely. I move, I breathe, and at some point I relax so deeply that I fall asleep. My body, so used to holding, finally trusts the moment enough to rest.
The Peacocks
The moment I carry with me most happens quietly, almost by accident.
I'm waiting for May outside the yoga studio. She has her private session now, and I had finished my massage early. So I sit outside and close my eyes to meditate. I'm not expecting anything. Just breath and stillness and the sounds of the jungle. When I open my eyes, three peacocks are perched right in front of me, close, calm, as if they came to be seen.
At The Retreat, I'm told that my third eye is open, and that I need to ground constantly to stay physically grounded. And here, in front of me, are three peacocks. In many traditions, the eyes on the peacock's feathers are a symbol of the third eye, of awakening and spiritual sight. I don't go looking for that meaning. It simply arrives, perched a few feet away, meeting my eyes the moment I open them.
Awareness is a gift, and it asks something of me in return. To stay grounded. To keep my feet on the earth even as I open to everything above it.
The Ones Who Kept Appearing
Something else happens on this mountain that I still wonder about.
I'm a friendly person by nature. I say hello. I introduce myself to the people whose paths I cross. Before one of my massages, I meet a woman in the locker room, and she shares that she's here for a break too. She and her husband have been trying to have a baby, without luck. The same quiet grief May carries, sitting right there in a stranger.
Later, waiting for May by the pool, that same woman comes out. I introduce the two of them. They share their stories, and by the end of it, the three of us are friends. Two women who came to this place carrying the same heartbreak, no longer carrying it alone.
And there's one other synchronicity. On a private guided tour through the jungle, I do what I always do. I ask questions about people's journey, just what they are willing to share. One of our guides mentions, without any way of knowing what May is walking through, that his marriage ended. He thinks it may have been because they weren't able to have children. I don't go deeper. I allowed him the space to share what he felt comfortable with sharing. But I notice it. The same story, appearing a third time, from someone who had no reason to bring it up.
I keep wondering about it. Whether the mountain was quietly arranging for her to feel less alone in the very thing that was breaking her heart. For her to see how much her own marriage has endured the losses, and yet they are still so much more in love. To me the messages were clear. But I don't have an answer. I only know that when we stay open, connection has a way of finding us, and finding the people who need it most.
What I Carried Home
I leave Costa Rica lighter than I arrived. And I don't leave alone.
Over five days, May and I talk over every meal, in our rooms, in the quiet spaces between. She shares. I share. We come to understand each other in a way that only happens when two people feel safe enough to be fully honest. Something healed in both of us on that mountain, because we were seen.
And it reminds me of something I know deeply, and get to witness again here in my own life. This is why therapy works. When someone is there to listen, to really see you in your pain, and to hold you, something shifts. You feel supported. You feel less alone in what you carry. You heal, because you're held.
I went to Costa Rica expecting rest. I came home with something greater. A friendship deepened, a message about grounding, and a reminder that the healing I offer others is the same healing I need too. We open, and then we ground. We rise into awareness, and we come back down into the body, and into each other.
I went to Costa Rica expecting rest. I came home with a friendship deepened, a message about grounding, and proof of something I teach every day.
We do not heal alone. We heal in connection.
Dr. Maria Grace Wolk · mariagracewolk.com