Reflections on the 'Sowing Seeds of Healing Justice' retreat

This is a guest blog by Oana Sânziana Marian, a participant of our 'Sowing Seeds of Healing Justice' weekend reteat in May 2025. 

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In May 2025 twelve activists from Ireland, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Palestine, Ukraine, Papua New Guinea, Bolivia, Spain, and Romania gathered together for three days and two nights in a residential retreat at Cloughjordan Ecovillage to be present to grief, joy, each other's stories, and the healing power of this abundant earth. This retreat is the second Sowing Seeds of Healing Justice Retreat in as many years, dreamt up by Lelo Thebe and Oana Marian in 2021, created with the generous financial support of Friends of the Earth and their supporters, FEASTA, Concern Worldwide, Irish Aid, and a seed fund from the Global Diversity Network. 

Reflecting on the experience of these retreats, Lelo and Oana want to highlight two things that have been important to them - the location where the retreat would be held, and the collective care that would be woven through the preparation and facilitation of the retreat. 

Lelo shared,

The importance of the location for the retreat was the most important. We wanted the participants to be in an environment where they could imagine what the future would look like. And holding the retreat in an ecovillage resonated with the grounding work, with building community, healing our core, allowing others to listen and be supported by a group of people from different backgrounds, nationalities and races.

As with the previous retreat, it was important to Lelo and Oana, who are from Zimbabwe and Romania, respectively, and call Ireland home, to connect with the land, rather than just to use it as a venue. One of the activities was a grief ritual that took place on the land, with facilitators preparing a site ornamented with local natural elements such as flowers and leaves, where all the participants reflected and returned their grief to the earth.

For all of this to be possible, as well as healing for participants, facilitators, and also the earth, there was great emphasis on collective care, not just during the retreat, but before and after. For example, Sara Hurley coordinated travel in a way where everyone felt looked after and many of the participants arrived together, already forming friendships before the retreat was even underway. In turn, Claudia Tormey, who is undergoing professional, trauma-informed training in Compassionate Inquiry and has several years experience as a facilitator in the Work That Reconnects, agreed to participate as added emotional support for both participants and facilitators. Seeing participants lean on each other in the recognition that we all carry generational and lived experience of trauma and are affected by climate change, there was acknowledgment that healing work, individually and within our movements, is an integral part of social justice work.

The retreat included activities that brought in intentional embodied movements to help communicate stuck pain and allow conversations that cannot be put into words. Storytelling activities such as the River of Life, introduced to last year’s retreat by Samirah Siddiqi, opened the way to representing participants' (and facilitators’) journeys as migrants into the land that holds them today. This and other activities illuminated how climate change has impacted everyone and how people can be more impactful connecting for the same goal, fighting for life on earth. Similarly, the sharing of meals, as well as the choice of food, was considered in the scope of collective care, with thanks to Dee Creasey for donating her time and culinary care for the welcoming dinner. The care around food recognises that we all have an impact on the earth in how we eat and how we care for the land that provides the food. 

Activism is a lifelong journey. The framework of healing justice is a reminder that the earth is worth advocating, demonstrating, and fighting for. Healing justice incorporates personal and collective healing within activism, making our movements more resilient, recognising that no one can do the work that is needed while disconnected, unwell, or burnt out. Movements thrive when activists are well rested, and this retreat allowed both participants and facilitators to pause together and support each other to envision a future worth fighting for. The love and connection created during the Sowing Seeds of Healing Justice in Ireland 2025 retreat continues to grow.

Gabriella Burnett, one of the participants, said:

 Grief lives in the spaces between the homeland I left and the new place I've come to inhabit. It's the ache that surfaces when I smell a familiar spice or hear the language of my childhood, reminders of what was left behind. Grief marks the ruptures in my life: family separations, lost cultural connections, and abandoned dreams. I grieve the person I once was, the professional identity and career suddenly rendered invisible in a new country. I mourn the confident woman who knew how to navigate her world, replaced by someone who stumbles through basic interactions in a foreign language. Yet this grief connects me to others with similar journeys, creating community through collective mourning. In my activism, grief transforms into determination. Each story of identity loss becomes both wound and call to action. Grief has taught me that healing doesn't mean forgetting, but carrying all versions of ourselves forward with purpose and dignity.