One week ago today, my wife and I returned home after a 16-day trip of a lifetime to Hawaii. For the sake of simplicity on my part, and for ease of you the reader, I have broken this into three separate blog posts – one for each segment of our trip. First, an overview.

We had been anticipating this trip for nearly a year. While we had long dreamt of traveling to Hawaii, it was about a year ago that the dreams began to form into a reality. Isabelle had embarked on a journey with a new mentor and coach, Anne Bérubé. Based in Nova Scotia, Canada, Anne has been holding retreats in Hawaii for a few years now. We had actually looked into going on said retreat a few years prior, but we couldn’t justify the expense at the time. My how the times have changed.

Largely due to COVID-19, we have had a major shift in our priorities. No more would we stand back and hesitate when opportunities presented themselves to us; who knows if we end up with some other global pandemic or other event that prevents us from doing anything for the better part of two years. As avid readers of my blog will know, Isabelle and I had been planning our 10th anniversary trip for about 7 years, putting away money monthly to allow us to have an extravagant, fun-filled trip to Walt Disney World for October 1, 2021. This would be the convergence of our 10th wedding anniversary as well as the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World. But thanks to the aforementioned pandemic, our plans were canceled. Unable to travel, we decided to repurpose our savings from Disney 2021 to Hawaii 2026. We would finally take our long talked of trip for our 15th anniversary.

Cut to Isabelle’s program with Anne Bérubé in 2023. She was again holding a Lemurian Huna retreat in Hawaii in 2024. We had money this time. We had motivation. So we booked two spots on the retreat and started planning for our big adventure.

Since we were going all the way to Hawaii, we thought we would take the opportunity to extend our trip beyond the retreat. We decided that we would stick to two islands for this visit. Anne’s retreat would be on Kaua’i, so that was island #1. We opted to choose O’ahu for our second island so that we could visit Honolulu and Disney’s Aulani resort. But more on those in the second and third parts of this series of posts.

Lemurian Huna

The first week of our trip was the retreat. We arrived in Kaua’i on Sunday and were promptly picked up by our friend Annette and her daughter Arianne. Both Annette and Arianne were also participating in the retreat, and had arrived a few days early as they were staying off-site from the rest of us. Where the sessions would only begin on Monday, they had offered to let us crash at their rental for the night. Having been to Kaua’i before, they were our tour guides extraordinaire! We were chauffeured around like two big shot VIPs. Mom and daughter would drive us around, show us sights, visit beaches, take us to fun food and drink spots they had found… it was a perfect situation for Isabelle and I.

The next day, we were dropped off at the site of our retreat early afternoon. The location was aptly named Shangri-La. It lived up to the name without question; such a beautiful spot. The property is designed and decorated in the style of a Balinese building. Our bedroom was just next to the primary meeting space that we would use for our retreat sessions. When the sessions were not going on, the entire space was essentially ours to use.

We were joined by 12 other beautiful souls for the week. And what a week it was. While only together for seven days, each day felt like two or three days (in a good way!). We felt like we were there for the better part a month. Time seemed to have a different pace on the islands. Our days would begin with a short walk to the local beach for sunrise, then we’d have breakfast together at 7:30, with our daily sessions starting at 9AM. Some days we gathered in the meeting space next to our bedroom for group discussions and meditations that ran through the morning until the lunch hour. We’d then have lunch together and our afternoons free to do as we saw fit; a way to integrate what we’d experienced over the morning.

There were also some excursion days on our schedule for the week. We would mostly alternate having a day on premises with the group followed by a day with off-site excursions. It was the best of both worlds. During our excursions, we visited some energetically potent sites like a Hindu temple where we had a self-directed meditation session. We did a hike on the start of the Napali coast, visited an ancient Banyan tree, saw ancient sacred Hawaiian sites, and soaked up the amazing beauty of the landscape around us.

Over the course of the week together, our little group of strangers bonded together over shared meals, laughs, stories and experiences. I am still processing some of the experiences and realizations that were made throughout our meditations and sessions together. It will likely take me some time to fully integrate what I have experienced.

I am greatly indebted to Anne Bérubé for organizing and facilitating this amazingly transformative session for us. Had Isabelle and I done this trip on our own, we could never have had even near the experiences that we had. Everything was exquisitely planned. I am also very thankful for the other participants in our Lemurian Huna. Despite only knowing Isabelle and Annette among the group, I immediately felt comfortable and at ease with them all. The experiences and connections we had together will forever be treasured in my heart. If even one of us had not been part of this group, the experience would not have been the same. We are forever bonded together.

I would also like to take a moment to recognize and thank all of the support staff – Paul, Anne’s chef husband who prepared all of our meals; Olivier and Hanalei, Anne and Paul’s children, who assisted with the meal prep and service; Sadie, a friend of the kids who also helped with the meal prep and service; Eben, our expert outdoorsman; Annie, our on-site coordinator.

This experience set the tone for our vacation. It allowed us to be fully present, to take time to rest and relax, and it gave us the permission to be authentically and wholly us. The first week of our Hawaiian vacation was exactly what we needed. I will treasure these moments and memories forever.