I just spent 2 weeks at the beach in Grand Cayman. A few years ago we invested in a little condo unit there, and the weeks we spend there each year as a family have become a ritual of life that is sacred to me.
Preserving slivers of life for these sacred moments is a renewal from the chaos of the other moments.
Those modern moments of running a family.
Where I lean on my phone too much.
Where instant access allows me to add length but not depth to my to-do list.
Where my kids and I are shuttling and commuting to get to all the places we “NEED” to be.
Then I get to the beach. Seduced by the ocean, I put down the tech. I live out of one suitcase. I drive on the wrong side of the road in a white, non-descript rental van. Our family of five snuggles tight in 2 slightly dated bedrooms like a throwback from a beach vacation movie of the 90s. I heal in the salt and get space to laugh and cry without agenda.
It is prime preserved beach front on 7 mile beach. Yet undeveloped by large developers, though the trend is starting.
That discussion to develop started in our little condo this year in fact, and I found myself in a condo owner’s board meeting wanting to hold my hands up and shout “wait, please wait.”
I was in a small majority that voted NO to developing. I wanted to say yes to the sacredness of all the things that are perfectly not right about it that make us remember a time when the quirks were golden.
But that is a hard sell in this day and age.
In the rest of my life I restore houses. I like to buy older properties and give them a second life. To let in the light and work with talented local designers and trades people to do the best I can on the budget. I like to make our homes work a little better for modern life, but still keep the energy of what is special and makes a space home.
Spaces hold energy. They hold the energy of laughter and love spent there. They hold the hours where we frame our sunsets and our sunrises. They hold space to breathe.
I’m an optimist. I hold out some hope for keeping this strip of beach sacred and smaller for a bit longer. It is a tough decision to put aside the big and lucrative and new and keep the small and sacred and old.
It’s not always sensible. Sometimes the numbers don’t add up, especially when forward momentum to scale seems inevitable. In business and in life.
But somehow, I find preserving those spaces that feel just right in your gut, usually pays off in ways you don’t even imagine possible. For me, finding those sacred spaces in modern life are the things to hold on to.
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