ground breaking

this week we officially break ground on the physical development of balvida, a women-centered commune, a dream 10 years in the making and a reality 1 year in the making.

i have a lot of ppl i want to thank at this step in this process, so if you're not trying to read all this or just here for the pics & videos to get a look at what's actually gonna be built here, you can just use the button below to jump ;)

& if you're new here and wondering what balvida is, you can visit the info page or this blog

skip to visuals

i want to start with a thank you to the people reading this, sharing this, who have shared my tweets and blogs and follow and support. many of you are women i've connected with over the years in-person or online who share similar ideologies, goals, visions.. women who also dream of more balanced communities and lives that prioritize us, our safety, our freedom. women who aspire to more than the bullshit patriarchy has sold us, women who want to reclaim their own greatness. many of you have come to & contributed to workshops, dinner parties, or one of the various other ways i've tried to offer and build community and spaces for us over the years. or maybe you have no idea who i am and simply found your way here because of a shared interest or curiosity. however you found your way here, i just wanted to start with thanking you bc its meant so much to me whenever any of you has expressed to me even a tiny way one of these endeavors has added to your life. every word of support, every DM, every email sign-up, every time one of yall has shown up in any way, it has encouraged me and reassured me that there are like-minded women out there

next, thank you to the real estate team @ black sands realty, for taking me not only to the places i wanted to see but for suggesting we go see this one last piece of land because it was so beautiful to them (they were so right)

thank you to the whole team at arquimia, for being such a pleasure to work with. thank you to pato for taking my shitty photoshop slop of a vision and turning them into the work of art i knew it could be. thank you to juli, who first put the concept of co-creation on my radar and has exemplified it by continually adding to & improving my original vision. and i cant express enough for important it has been to work with somebody who believes just as much in the woo-woo vibes aspects of this project.

thank you to the permaculture team @ la herbaria, far their expertise in adding another dimension to balvida, for covering every inch of the land, and working to ensure that it develops into a truly sustainable, beautiful, & abundant oasis

thank you to all the costa ricans & others from around the world who have welcomed me, encouraged me, connected me, taken time to walk me thru various logistics, translated for me, been patient with my shit (but improving!) spanish, brainstormed with me about ways balvida can be a true asset to the existing community and for giving me endless ideas and examples of ways to incorporate costa rican values like environmentalism into this project.

thank you to my family, for visiting, listening and affirming me & my goals, and for showing up for me

thank you to my dad for ensuring i grew up with the very jamaican value of believing you’re capable of anything you put your mind to (expertise & experience be damned!) and who will def have a garden dedicated to him, full of callaloo, just like he would’ve wanted 

thank you to my mom for planning for a future in which i’m able to follow my dreams, for showing me how to be a woman who isn’t afraid to do something different, for being so vocally proud of me and for instilling in me a taste for beautiful spaces

thank you to sabrina, for being there at the genesis of this project and contributing your energy

thank you jamila, for being the nudge that took me to puerto viejo & the jamaican community there, and for always being so affirming

thank you jae for being my first friend in puerto viejo, and for helping me get shit done

thank you to tiffany, for designing such a beautiful logo & palette that set the tone for the visuals for balvida and allowed me to reach out to serious ppl without feeling mortified by a joke of a website, and for being the cofounder of our two-person women-centered commune at a time when we both needed sisterhood

thank you to robert, for stepping up to enable me to move freely back and forth this last year, for being so willing to even consider such a huge change for our family, and for helping me name my second baby lol

thank you to my lovers over the years, for breaking ground on parts of myself that have proved essential to this process, for pushing me to develop a political framework that has demanded movement from me, for giving me more words for the leftist ideals i held, for challenging me to think about creative ways to use the resources i have, for being the reasons costa rica ended up on my radar, for holding my hand as we traveled there for separate but connected journeys, for inspiring creation in me, for pillow-talking my dreams with me, and for listening to me ramble about things like rammed earth walls 

thank you to my daughter orion, my first baby, for sharing me and my time, for sharing my excitement, for enduring long car rides and spiders, and for being the motivation to do my part to build a better world

thank you to my commune, my friends, the women in my life who have supported me, helped me, walked the land and trudged thru the mud with me, contributed their hopes & dreams, "joked" with me about the inevitability of this commune, and many of whom already are or will be my partners in this. you are my community and i cant wait to see your spaces and your contributions to the communal spaces and the ways they reflect your own visions. i cant wait to have dinners with you, eating meals made with love & things we’ve grown in the garden. i cant wait to see your kids picking fruits off the trees and make art together in the workshop with yall. i cant wait to twerk at the pool with yall. you are the reason i know women-centered community can not only work, but is ideal.

thank you to myself— for being unhinged enough to take the helm on such an endeavor, for investing all the skills ive developed over a lifetime of random sidequests and resources at my disposal to bringing this to fruition, for being willing to learn, pivot, and/or stand my ground when necessary, for maintaining hope of making a difference in a system that is trying it's hardest to crush it and ultimately for trusting in myself & my vision.

thank you to god for providing such a beautiful world, one worth saving, and for restoring faith in me at the times i needed it most, and for the clarity and capacity to move in a way that feels in alignment with myself, my loved ones, and the world around me

and now, here are some first looks at what balvida will actually look like.

starting with the overall site plan here and ill get into each individual piece below.

commune house

this is the genesis of balvida. its basically a big ass house with oversized spaces meant for gathering. a few of the amenities for balvida will be here— a gym, pool, sauna, library, home theater, and 4 bedroom suites that’ll be available for visiting friends & family of the ppl living at the commune. 

below is my original vision & layout in the photoshop slop i passed on to arquimia, and then pato's finalized & not-slop render of that

commune center

this is a dual-purpose building with two main functions. the first is housing more of the amenities for balvida meant for creating, learning, and healing. this includes a workshop for art/woodworking/whatever tf you want to make, a serenity space for spiritual practice (yoga, meditation, maybe massage therapy, etc), a class/meeting room, and a play room geared more towards children.

the second function & level of this building is short-term housing. the intention is to have a bunch of suites which can be used for a variety of purposes— hosting women from around the world who are doing residencies at or visiting balvida, small retreats, transitional housing for women in the community in need, etc. so if youre a woman following this project this is probably where you’d be staying when you come visit

this space will get a makeover in the next phase of design, but here's the slop version of the commune center in works

la comucina

this is one of the newer ideas i had but quickly becoming my favorite bc i fucking love food and we get to reuse the one building that was already on the land. so this is gonna be converted to a communal kitchen & food processing space for all the good shit that we’ll be growing & producing via the permaculture gardens. there’ll be an outdoor kitchen, a brick oven, a smoker pit, a dehydrator, and  storage for all the dried, fermented, pickled, smoked, and canned goods. im even hoping to squeeze a small wine room here 

the treehouse

tied with the comucina for my favorite aspect of all this is the treehouse. balvida is women-centered, not women-only, so that means boys & men are occasionally (& conditionally!) allowed to be in the other spaces. however, i did want to have at least one space that was truly just for the girls. the treehouse is that space. think soft, plush areas to drape yourself and talk shit with your friends, candles everywhere, a telescope (hey mj!), a hot tub, a pole,

the greenhouse

this is a grow space for some of the more finicky things i want to have growing here, including tomatoes and weed. i also want it to have a room inside to provide a beautiful quiet space for reading, relaxing,

guest houses

two 2-bedroom houses available to guests of balvida

pools

theres two pools at balvida. the first is attached to the commune house, and its for the bad bitches to get their IG photos with a signature balvida cocktail in their hand. this second pool (and the surrounding area) is the main pool, so the kids can do all their very bad-bitch hostile activities like splashing around and jumping in the water. this pool is gonna be a natural pool, and im realllly hoping we can throw some sand around it too to create our own little beach vibe. 

tiny houses

so, these are the homes of the women who actually live here. pretty self-explanatory. the idea is we can gather in the communal spaces and go tf home to our own spaces. cuz at the end of the day, i need a room of my own. doesn’t that sound perfect?!

interior spaces of the commune house. some tweaks have been/will be made, but this is pretty much it

wrapping this post up with a reminder that subscribing to the site is the best way to keep up with the development if youre interested

&some words that juli wrote and shared at the little groundbreaking ceremony we held.