Vol 2.21 The Calm, the Chaos, & the Ghost.
London > Marrakech > Paris
Happy Saturday
This is a very long piece with pictures/videos and would be best read at the URL rather than in your email box.
This trip was unfortunately sandwiched between a natural disaster (Morocco earthquake) and a human disaster (Hamas/Israel/Gaza). I purposely have decided to leave my thoughts on those matters out of this particular piece. Below is simply my experience traveling for a writing retreat.
I hope this finds you warm and well.
March, 2020. Yellowknife, Canada. Image by Erin Merritt
March 3rd, 2020, the day I returned from the last retreat I hosted. Then the world shut down and it took all of my plans for more alcohol-free adventures.
During our world break, I decided that before I hosted another retreat, I would treat myself to a retreat as a guest. I imagined somewhere off-the-grid, tropical, hot, and sexy. Which is something I would want to offer my own guests after having just experienced -40 up in Canada.
I came across a writing retreat business in the early days of lockdown, and I loved how there was such a strong yet tangible purpose to gather that wasn’t just your typical yoga retreat. I never thought I would go on it because I never considered myself a real writer, but I was inspired by this concept of bringing a more tangible aspect to the AF retreats. However, we were in the middle of a pandemic, and no one was really going anywhere, so I pocketed the potential ideas and moved on.
After starting this Substack account and holding myself accountable to you, the reader, I knew I needed to take my writing more seriously and show it some respect. Since I have never had formal training in writing, I consciously started focusing on learning more skills, and I circled back to the fascinating idea of a writing retreat. I looked at a few different offerings but chose the company that first introduced me to this concept.
However, they had yet to put any information about their next retreat online besides a few hints. It didn’t take much, but I figured out their website and found the unpublished sales page promoting a country I had been dying to go to but never had a real opportunity to: Morocco. I was sold, and my planning began.
What was supposed to be a five-day writing retreat turned into a nineteen-day whirlwind. There were no direct flights from LA to Marrakech, and most flights had a ridiculous layover with a price tag pushing 2K. I knew I could find a better plan, I just had to play around a bit.
Scroll down to get all the details and personal take-aways from another incredible sober experience…..