Negril, Jamaica

Every landscape has a story. Every pilgrimage leaves a footprint. Every lesson begins by listening. Welcome to Lessons from the Land, a continuing series exploring the wisdom discovered through sacred travel, personal transformation, and our relationship with the living world.

In my previous blog posts, I shared that my teacher and dear friend, Andrew Steed, will be traveling to Spokane, Washington, for the first time this coming September. Over the past ten years, I have had the privilege of joining Andrew on sacred pilgrimages throughout the British Isles, the United States, Canada, and Jamaica. As we count down to his visit, I’ve been taking a trip down memory lane through some of these adventures. This week, we travel somewhere warmer: Negril, Jamaica, for a pilgrimage that unfolded in February 2023.

Why Jamaica?

Before I go further, it is worth pausing to explain why Andrew leads pilgrimages to Jamaica and what connects this island to the British Isles, where so many of the stories in this series have taken place.

English forces seized Jamaica from Spain in 1655. In the years that followed, indentured laborers—including many Irish people—were brought to Jamaica from Ireland and other English-controlled Caribbean islands. Some entered indenture by agreement, while others were political prisoners or were transported through coercion. Their exploitation was real, but it was legally and historically distinct from the racialized, hereditary enslavement of African people that came to dominate Jamaica’s plantation economy on a far larger and more brutal scale.

The presence of Irish, Scottish, and English laborers within Jamaica’s colonial history is one thread connecting this land to the islands that have shaped so much of Andrew’s work. It felt important to acknowledge that history before telling the rest of this story—not to equate experiences that were profoundly different, but to recognize the complicated ways these lands became connected.

For readers interested in learning more, the UK National Archives offers a historical overview of Irish indentured labour in the Caribbean.

What I Carried with Me

This pilgrimage arrived during a heavy season of my life. Not long before we left, I had walked away from my job at the university after twenty years. It was a huge transition and, in its own way, a kind of death. So much of my identity had been wrapped up in that work, and I did not yet know who I would become without it.

At the same time, our sweet four-year-old mini dachshund, Maeve, was battling cancer at home. Leaving her behind was one of the hardest parts of getting on that plane. I knew my cousins would take wonderful care of her and our other dogs, and thankfully, she was having a good week when we left. Still, part of my heart remained at home with her.

As if that were not enough, I was also in a great deal of physical pain from a slipped disc and pinched nerve. I arrived in Jamaica using a cane.

As part of my training with Andrew, I have learned about what we call the Celtic Gateways, or the Celtic Medicine Wheel. One of its central teachings concerns the continuing movement of life, death, and rebirth. The Northgate is where this medicine holds its greatest strength.

Looking back, I can see how much Northgate medicine I carried with me to Jamaica: the death of work I had loved, the approaching loss of a beloved companion, and the death of an old way of being—all arriving at once. It was heavy, to say the least. There was a great deal to release and unload. One week could not hold all of it; that process would take much longer. But the pilgrimage helped carry me through what was still ahead.

Jackie’s on the Reef

We stayed at an extraordinary retreat center called Jackie’s on the Reef, created by an elder woman named Jackie. She was quite the character and quite the goddess, in the best possible sense. The simplest way to describe Jackie is this: she is a Force.

Jackie’s on the Reef | Negril, Jamaica

Jackie is deeply respected and adored within the local community. She takes care of people, and they take care of her. Her center has a genuine family feeling, and Brandon and I had the good fortune of sitting beside her at dinner each evening. We very much enjoyed our conversations with her.

She has created a special sanctuary: morning yoga, fresh and delicious food and drinks throughout the day, and a massage hut nestled near the ocean. It is paradise—but not the sort that simply invited us to escape our lives. It gave us space to meet what we had brought with us.

The Medicine of Showing Up

Despite the pain from the slipped disc and pinched nerve, I made myself go to yoga every morning, cane and all. I told myself that if I needed to remain in Child’s Pose for the entire class, that would be enough. All that mattered was showing up.

Of course, once I was there, I always ended up doing far more than Child’s Pose. Little by little, my body began to respond. By the end of the week, I no longer needed the cane. I walked away from Jamaica differently than I had arrived. I had not forced myself to perform or prove anything. I had simply given myself permission to begin where I was—and discovered how much became possible from there.

As on earlier pilgrimages, we also worked with keening and the Three Strands of Poetry. I first wrote about this practice in the Iona pilgrimage, where keening gave sound to sorrow and helped me encounter emotions I had kept buried. In Jamaica, the practice met me in a different season. This time, I was not releasing one contained experience. I was standing inside several endings at once.

I had more to release than perhaps ever before. The pilgrimage did not remove the grief or complete the transition for me. What it offered was a place where I could begin letting some of it move.

Massages by the Sea

Throughout the week, Brandon and I each received three massages: one near the beginning of the pilgrimage, another in the middle, and one toward the end. These sessions were about much more than relaxation. They were active, intentional experiences that asked us to remain fully present.

As each massage unfolded, we were encouraged to focus on the visions, dreams, and intentions we wanted to strengthen within ourselves. Each stroke became an opportunity to imagine those intentions being worked more deeply into the body. I will never experience massage in quite the same way again.

Held by the Water

Another moment I keep returning to happened in a pool beside the ocean, where saltwater waves washed over the edge and sprayed us in the warm sunshine. One at a time, we floated on our backs while the rest of the group supported us gently from underneath.

Ocean Pool | Jackie’s on the Reef | Negril, Jamaica

Before taking a turn, each person chose a mantra—a phrase they wanted the others to speak into them. I chose, “I am a generator of divine love and light.” Jenna-rator, if you catch it.

Floating in that water, fully supported, while people I loved spoke my chosen words back to me with such love and strength, felt like its own kind of medicine. Release did not require me to drop everything and swim alone. I could let go because I was being held.

Lessons from the Land

Looking back, this pilgrimage was one long lesson in the medicine of the Northgate—the place that holds life, death, and rebirth together and refuses to let us have one without the others.

I arrived carrying several endings at once: the job that had shaped twenty years of my identity, the approaching loss of a beloved companion, and an old way of being I did not yet have words for. Jamaica did not ask me to resolve any of it. It asked me to release what I could and trust that release does not require completion—only willingness.

The cane I arrived with and walked away without became its own quiet reminder of that. At the beginning of the week, support was something visible I leaned on to walk. By the time I floated in the ocean pool, support had become something deeper: permission to stop holding myself up for a moment and trust the hands beneath me. I had not traveled to Jamaica expecting to heal my body. Yet healing sometimes arrives sideways, while we are busy asking for something else.

Iona taught me permission to walk my own path and permission to feel. Arran taught me permission to see. Fife taught me permission to ask, receive, and integrate. The Olympic Peninsula taught me permission to trust. Jamaica taught me permission to release—and, just as importantly, permission to be held. Yoga asked me to show up exactly as I was. The massages asked me to remain present. The water asked me to surrender my weight into people I trusted. Each offered a different form of the same medicine: I did not have to carry everything alone.

Perhaps the greatest lesson was that releasing something is not the same as losing it—and being held is not the same as giving away our strength. Some things we release because they no longer belong to us. Others we release so we can carry them differently. And sometimes, we can finally set something down because someone is willing to help us bear its weight.

What are you ready to release—and what support might help you feel safe enough to let it go?

See you next week, where we will step into another pilgrimage and listen for what the land has to teach.

With gratitude,

Jenna

In Loving Memory of Maeve

Maeve, our sweet mini dachshund, passed away on March 14, 2023, not long after we returned from this pilgrimage. She was four years old. This post is dedicated to her—to the joy she brought us, and to the Northgate medicine she was already teaching us, even from thousands of miles away, before we knew how soon we would need it.

Queen Maeve | Beloved Soul Companion | 2020