Writing is therapy for me.

I take the time to weave words and tell stories, tapping out tirades and taking the reader on a journey of authenticity that starts in my brain and ends here on the screen.

Today I have been trying to fashion a clear and cohesive plan for our myriad of projects, travels, and businesses.

Over on another channel I allowed the included AI facility to fashion a blog about regenerative mindset. It’s strange and when I read it felt somehow unhinged and detached. I posted it anyway, more as an experiment than anything.

Here’s the thing.

Everyone but me seems to be embracing this revolution. AI makes creating content, pulling together ideas, and shaping brands a much easier and clearly more voluminous prospect.

I fucking don’t trust it.

And…

Do not even get me started on Data centres. What kind of cretan thinks precious life-giving fresh water is better served cooling circuitry at a data farm that is moving us further toward the singularity or some post-apocolyptic matrix nightmare.

No fucking thank you. And what the actual fuck.

But what can I do? I am just one rage filled woman who dragged myself through the ashes of my own fucking personal hell. Only to rise like the divine, chubby, curious and creative creature I am and phoenix into a fucking beautiful existence where nearly nobody is ever allowed near me.

While that’s pretty cool, and I am eternally proud of my plucky little self, I am not in the habit of joining forces with too many other humans or collaborating these days.

So.

Clearly, I’m smart enough to know that anything and everything about me that has been posted on the Internet is somehow the property of the machine that is AI. I do not live in a cognitive dissonant world where I assume privacy or protection of any kind from the digital monster and the menagarei of megalomaniacal men encouraging the tsunami of shortcuts and simplifications.

But I don’t fucking like it.

How do I navigate this?

We are building a very low tech experience. We have to use social media and promote ourselves digitally, and of course AI is ensconced in many if not all of the digital tools we use, from booking platforms to editing software.

My darling children never spare my feelings and point out daily that I am actually a cunty hypocrite. They also admit that I do try to not be a cunty hypocrite, and actively stand my ground as a thinking, feeling human being in very strange and divisive times.

Lemme give you an example of not being cunty but still kinda being a cheeky cunt, which I must say I love about me.

Because we live in the CBD and travel a lot, we eat out a lot. When you eat out in 2026, you are often (or always) asked if you have any allergies or dietary requirements.

I do not have any religious or dietary requirements.

However.

Nearly every time I am asked this I volunteer this piece of personal infromation:

“I am deeply and importantly allergic to fascism.”

My 12 year old son, bless his earnest and lovely little socks, will volunteer that information if ever I forget.

This sentence has earned me several high fives. My first high five was actually at the Savoy in London at breakfast where the lovely and talented waitress did a double take. Paused. And said with a broad smile:

“Same actually.” And a magical high five moment was burned into my memory.

I am not particularly brave or well organised. Probably safer to describe my activism as slackdivism or paltry attempts to assuage my white-middle-class-privileged-guilt.

I do not brand myself as a change maker or disruptor or infuencer. Simply a tired, peri-menopausal witch trying to stay safe, sane and sleep well at night by not being too terrible.

A mini-messiah complex and the conviction that it was my job to help every person who crossed my path sent me to the funny farm back in 2018 so now my peace and mental hygiene are paramount, and anyone who threatens to disrupt these things will not be tolerated. Not that I’m particularly mean to anyone, I just don’t and won’t a lot more than I can or will.

So here is what we are trying to achieve.

A place where people feel safe. Genuinely enjoyable offline and off-grid experiences and robust options for curbing digital addictions. Opportunities to be a part of mindful and regenerative practices with like-minded people who are equally keen to belong to a counter-culture of kindness and inclusive community.

Rather interestingly though, I don’t really participate in any of these things very often. Life has left me seriously cynical and it is safe to say I am pretty angry about injustice and fuckery in general. I do not people much these days. Even lovely humans drain my batteries and take my spoons. I don’t start most days with many spoons and those I have get handed to strangers more than people I know. The few friends I have may not hear from me for days, months or even years as I navigate the gauntlets of life with my wife and cat being the only constant companions. The kids too, but being delightfully divorced means I get at least half of my life sans children should I choose to be somewhere they are not.

But I’ll be good god-damned if I am not keen as fuck to create a safe place I did not have access to when I was falling apart. People get bitter or better, and I want to be a better person. Truly I do. But… I also want to be left the fuck alone most of the time.

So, with the passionate and impressive skills of my beautiful wife Damon, we are attempting to put together a suite of services and situations to encourage kindness, creativity, and a welcome an enriching escape from the digital age.

As it is an incredibly complicated and multi-faceted system, I will bullet point and abridge a version of the plans because people are always a bit stunned and confused when we try and fail to elevator-pitch our plans.

Matakana Retreat

Around 50 acres of topographically challenging, biologically significant and genuinely magical surrounds.

This patch of paradise is located about 10 minutes away from Matakana village along a dirt road. We will never be interested in providing access to huge numbers of humans, this is a boutique offering that will always give a serene sense of solitude and access to getting off-grid and off-line.

We’ve had guests ask for us to provide a secure safe to store devices during visits. Essentially an opportunity to grab devices (a-la White Lotus) and hide them away to allow families to digitally detox together.

We host guests on this property across three self-contained and character-packed private vacation rentals. One rather spiffy ec-chic lodge that can comforably host up to 8 people.

A safari tent that we have decided to shut down over winter because it does get a bit cold and not everyone loves the idea of snuggling in bed with an electric blanket and you simply cannot keep a tent toasty in the winter time. It is a tent.

And the newest member of the retreat family is the work-in-progress that is our airstream caravan site. It is much warmer in the winter, and has a cedar hot tub, but to be absolutely honest we have tweaking to do. It just doesn’t quite flow or feel as private as the other options. We are working on that and it is still a very cosy and well-reviewed spot.

Along with these three options, we are spending this winter (2026) upgrading and improving the paths, planting and introducing a comprehensive wellness suite.

That’s probably enough information to whet some appetites on the retreat portion of our priorities at present.

City Surrounds (Persephone’s Palace)

This is where we live most of the time we are in Aotearoa, as the retreat is booked out and providing resource to pour back into the other projects.

The building is in midtown. It is four full stories of fucking whatever. This whatever needs a new roof, new elevator, new just about everything.

I suspect that most sane human beings would not be even remotely interested in living in the building while imminent and comprehensive renovations were on the cards.

Luckily, I almost always find other people’s idea of sanity and sane behaviour (as in where to live, and what to do with resources) rather boring. Doing shit that other people think can’t be done is my idea of fun. And the kids have found that they are quite content to be along for this particular ride.

Our adult and older teenage kids have their own apartments in this building. My youngest who is 12 has a room in our penthouse apartment and his 16 year old brother can come and go as he pleases.

The ground floor and first floor are being gutted and moved around to provide a flexible third space for creative cohorts to find community and pay fair and reasonable prices for state of the art premises.

Well… maybe. It is all evolving.

What was a restaurant will be gutted and turned into a flexible third space for events and banquets. The banquets and regular community-centric gatherings (mocktail and menopause Mondays, live music, poetry nights, open mics… so many options!) will be able to showcase the produce we grow ethically at the farm.

Regenerative Farm (Persephone’s Paddocks)

The incredible response we have had to the retreat had left us running out of room to process resources (mainly lumbar) and diversify our project.

So we found a well-maintained finishing block 15 minutes from our Matakana farm.

This is all new to us and we are very grateful to have a brilliant farm manager and clearly engaged agricultural consultant helping us ease into the scene.

Swales and continuously regenerating forestry projects will set the stage for a multi-generational and protected in perpetuity project.

We will be building a barn, and inviting animals to live long, healthy and happy lives as friends not food.

We will also be nourishing beef cattle who have fantastic and free-range days of comfort and happiness until they get too heavy for the land to comfortably carry. Then they will be moved on to the next finishing block or off to have one final bad day after what we hope are many happy ones.

The ethicality of this is something I am struggling with. I adore animals, but I also eat meat. While most of my diet is vegetarian as a result of my personal opinions and particular tastes, I would much rather raise happy healthy bovines who are calm and loved for their time here.

Food security is something a lot of us have to come to terms with.

Finding Persephone Projects

This is the core of where my passion comes together.

So I had hoped to never own/manage a registered charity after volunteering and establishing more than I can count.

Experience had me incredulous to the concept of charities. I’d seen too many strange and less than transparent shitty shenanigans happen as a volunteer, and watched a couple of situations I’d kicked off fall into the hands of actual assholes who did not carry on in the spirit of the work I’d done.

The idea of a social enterprise seemed somewhat more transparent. But the fact is, there is a need for the mechanism of giving with both hands. There is a function in society that lifts and asks nothing but allows people to reciprocate and contribute when and how they can. And there is a rigorous level of checks and balances in managing a charity that I hope to not only uphold but smash out of the park with integrity and clarity.

I adore women.

I’ve watched our ideas and efforts be stolen in real time and at every angle by misogynistic men who have been handed what women have worked for.

This is the essence of Persephone.

In Greek myth she was the daughter of deities (Zeus and Demeter) who was kidnapped by her uncle (Zeus’s brother Hades) and taken to the underworld.

What absolute fuckery.

Demeter so loved her daughter and missed her so much that she bargained with the bullshit men to have her back and as the Queen of agriculture and the harvest her daughter became the feminine deity associated with Spring.

I hate everything about this story,

I hate the male dipshits that stole and bargained for the beautiful, autonomous, magical being that is Persephone. I hate trauma bonds. I hate the concept of kidnapping being considered okay if she gets to be queen… but FUCK ME DAYS I do adore a woman who just takes what she has been dealt and fucking rises.

Persephone is my greek mythological perception of Leonard Cohen’s sentence:

“There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”

Well circumstance certainly cracked Persephone.

And, in my imagining, she became a loving and gentle advocate for every creature who has their time in the underworld. And we all have and will experience our own and others’ deaths. Plants, animals, fungus… even light must expire. And she is uniquely qualified to understand that without death and decay there is no birth or growth.

I want to see women thrive. And I want them to encourage others to do the same. I want our broken to become our beautiful and I want to be vulnerable together.

Thanks for reading.