From Hustle to Harmony: A Lesson from the Earth and Poop

It was 2019, and I was living what most people would call a dream—an off-grid permaculture farm on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, known as Punta Mona. Picture it: over 300 varieties of fruit trees, an apothecary brimming with medicinal tinctures, rainwater harvested from the sky, a secluded palm-filled beach, and meals made almost entirely from our harvest.

We were 25 souls from all corners of the globe, living, working, and breathing community. We tended the land, cooked, gardened, and fermented food together—all while laughing often, turning the world into our playground as we served the earth. It was paradise.

But paradise doesn’t spare you from shadows.

Each day, I threw myself into work, sweating under the Costa Rican sun, my hands deep in the soil. I felt alive and aligned—until I didn’t.

I began noticing the women around me—lounging in hammocks, reading, or simply resting while I came in exhausted from the gardens. A wave of anger and judgment would rise in me: Why aren’t they helping? How can they just rest while there’s so much to do? I was working not just for myself, but for everyone.

At the time, I was still on Adderall, and it had become my lifeline. As long as I have Adderall, I’ll be okay. I’ll be me. Without it, I felt lazy, unmotivated, incapable.

But the truth? It was fueling an unsustainable cycle of overextension. My productivity was robotic, my nervous system fried—and yet, I was being praised for it. Overworking wasn’t just normalized; it was commended. Sound familiar?

My judgment of others was a reflection of my disconnection from myself. I had rejected the feminine energy within me—the energy of rest, play, and being. I didn’t feel safe slowing down. I thought if I stopped moving, I’d fall apart, lose love and validation, and fail those around me. So, I kept running, judging others who rested—when the anger was really about me.

But the land had other plans.

At Punta Mona, the land has its own way of saying, “Slow down.” For me (and many others), that message came in the form of poop—yes, poop 💩. One minute I was sprinting through the gardens, the next I was sprinting to the bathroom, clutching my stomach. Parasites—a rite of passage, really—are no joke. Well played, nature, I thought.

Parasites don’t care about your hustle. They force you to stop, to rest, and to confront the ridiculous pace you’ve been running at. You are faced with your own shit. And in that moment, I realized: I wasn’t just running myself into the ground—I was completely disconnected from the rhythms of life.

The land, as Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, was working on me as much as I was working on it.

In permaculture, observation is everything. It’s the first principle: watch how the sun moves, how water flows, how the land breathes. You can’t force nature into submission. You listen. You align. And that’s the lesson: the feminine informs the masculine. Without rest, without receptivity, without the feminine’s creative energy, our creations are stunted.

True labor—the kind that leaves a legacy—requires the heart’s wisdom, the kind of steady devotion born from balance, not burnout. Without rest, we can’t build a future that honors life—not for ourselves, not for others, and certainly not for the earth and her species.

Rest isn’t indulgent. It’s revolutionary. It’s what allows us to create art, community, and work that outlives us.

I made a choice. I walked to the hammock, lay down, and picked up a book. I rested, and even when it was uncomfortable, I moved slowly. And my life is forever different from that choice.

The wisdom of the moon—the reflective, cyclical, feminine—taught me to honor the sun’s drive without losing myself in it.

But here’s the thing: I’m not writing this from a place of arrival. I still struggle. Just the other day, I caught myself rushing through errands, darting through the grocery store, snapping at Brad when he took a wrong turn adding a whole minute to our destination time (uufff).

This practice of slowing down? It’s a lifetime devotion. It’s choosing, over and over again, to walk instead of run, to breathe instead of rush, to savor instead of skim.

To the parts of us that feel like rest is unproductive, that play is wasteful, that slowing down means falling behind: I see you. But I’ll tell you this—those moments of “doing nothing” are not nothing at all. They are your purpose. They are where the magic happens, where your heart cracks open to the joy of being alive.

When we honor rest and our cycles, we find ourselves building a legacy, not just passing time. We find ourselves in the work of our lifetime, rather than merely working for a lifetime.

We create something soul-filling—work, art, connection—that honors not only our lives but the earth’s rhythms and future generations. In those sacred moments of deep knowing, we whisper, “Yes, this. This is what I’m meant to be doing.”

So please, join me. Sit in the hammock. Take a walk. Laugh with a friend. Lie in the grass and stare at the sky. Weave in intention and stillness into your days. Act and create from the space of deep intention that only pausing allows. Let the earth remind you of her rhythms and the feminine guide you back to the wholeness that is your birthright. Future generations—and the species we risk losing—will thank you.

As I am,
Liz (once known as Lizerd in a Costa Rican paradise)