I'm Writing This From Ecuador

Hello Reader,

I owe you a silence explained.

For the past week I have not been at my desk in the Algarve, not walking the cliffs above Ferragudo, not sitting with Sophie at my feet and Merlin watching from his perch. I have been in Ecuador. On the Pacific coast. Standing on land I built with my own hands over a decade ago, land I thought I had released, land that — it turns out — was not finished with me.

Let me tell you how I got here.

In April I participated in a psilocybin journey. During it, I asked a question of Quinta Oasis, the property on Ecuador's Manabí coast that shaped so much of my memoir The Shaman's Wife. I asked: Why will you not release me and allow me to release you?

The answer came immediately. I was transported to the property, standing on the long drive lined with palms I had planted years ago. And the land said: Because you never said goodbye.

One month later, I was on a plane.

I did not come here for ceremony or closure. I came because my former husband's brother has been systematically working to take the property from me — sabotaging my ownership, interfering with prospective buyers, neglecting the land until it began to die. I discovered that his attempts to claim ownership stretch back years, to 2015, when I still lived here. And that my former husband, the shaman I once built a life beside, was complicit. That was a gut punch I am still absorbing.

When I arrived, what I found was worse than I imagined. Dying trees where there had been gardens heavy with banana, coconut, avocado and maracuyá. Rusted railings that a single coat of paint could have preserved. Creatures nesting in the ceilings of houses whose bamboo we had threaded. No water in the cistern. Everything — everything — in disrepair. Not from time. From intention. From the slow, deliberate violence of neglect.

They also sent people to intimidate me here. I will leave it at that.

But here is the part of the story I want you to hold.

I did not come here to fight. Not in the way they expected. The comuna — the village — watched me closely, waiting to see whether the gringa would arrive swinging or surrender quietly. I did neither. I showed up with an open heart, standing in what I can only describe as the powerful feminine — decisive, listening, grounded in love rather than aggression. The compassionate warrior that Pema Chödrön writes about in The Places That Scare Us.

And something shifted.

I hired a young gardener who inherited the nursery from the man who originally provided our trees. When I told him I believe the earth is a living being to be cared for, not a resource to be exploited, he went quiet. Then he acknowledged his own deeper relationship to the land. I found Pablo, my head of operations on the ground, a man of integrity and an artist's perspective who has become essential to everything happening here. My friend Lori who is taking care of me at her hostel, supporting me with conversation and delicious food by the ocean. The local attorney I've engaged knows everyone in the area. The comuna president saw through the other side's claims and invited them to present their documents — not because he believed them, but because he wanted them to have no grounds to say they were never heard.

The village is watching. And they are quietly, wisely, choosing a side.

One evening I walked the beach asking the ocean for her wisdom. That night a name came to me in a dream for what this place could become. Inspira. From the Latin inspirare — to breathe divine life into the mind and soul. Not the old name. Not the old vision. Something that belongs to this chapter, not the last one.

But I cannot do any of this alone.

I have a GoFundMe that I started before I left Portugal. I set a preliminary goal at $5,000. Now that I am here, now that I have seen the damage and gotten estimates, I have raised it to $13,000. I have already spent close to $5,000 in legal costs, airfare, lodging, meals, transportation, and daily expenses, with bureaucratic delays stretching the timeline. I may need to stay longer than planned. I may need to return here in the winter to show I am still present.

Here is what the funds cover: airfare from Portugal and back, ground transportation within Ecuador, property repairs, garden rehabilitation, ten months of a vetted caretaker, legal fees, lodging and meals during my stay, and care for Sophie and Merlin while I am away.

​Donate or share the GoFundMe here →​

As of today, 73 donors have raised $8,661. Every one of those contributions put me on the ground where I need to be.

I want to speak directly to you — the readers of this newsletter. You are the people who have written to tell me that something I sent on a Thursday morning arrived at exactly the right moment. That a poem or an essay helped you breathe through a hard season. That a question I asked you during a coaching session shifted everything for you. I carry those messages with me. They are part of what keeps me writing.

I am not tallying debts. But I am telling you that the woman who has been showing up in your inbox, trying to offer something true, is now standing on a hillside in Ecuador asking the land what it needs and discovering she cannot afford to answer without help.

If you can give, give. If you can share the link with one person who might feel moved by this story, do that. If you can only hold this in your heart for a moment, that is also enough.

I'll keep writing to you from here. This is the most extraordinary threshold I have crossed yet, and the writing that comes from it will be unlike anything I have sent you before. And it may very well turn into The Shaman's Wife Returns, another book.

From the coast of Manabí, with salt air on my face and the ocean tides at my feet,

Alicia

P.S. I am documenting this entire journey on my website. If you want the full story — the psilocybin journey that called me back, the thugs who tried to scare me off, the land's slow pulse returning under my feet — you can read it all here:

→ Answering the Call → The Pulse Beneath My Feet → Thugs and Intimidation​

P.P.S. The other side is monitoring my posts. I share what I can. If you want specifics, write to me directly.

Today's Threshold Question

What is calling you back to complete?

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