Let’s build community based on

healing, honey, and harmony.

– Sharilyn Hidalgo.

November 2024

After a brief career in finance, I spent over two decades researching about the role of community in social change and wrote a few books on the subject. Finally, I had an opportunity to live in an intentional community after chancing upon a Guardian video on Honeydew, Is Community Living the Answer to Modern Malaise? Malaise, deja vu? From stress to an epidemic of loneliness – especially post-Covid – job insecurity and financial worries, social media addiction and tech dependence, insomnia and psychosomatic pains, ecological crisis and existential angst, modern life seems to present us an never-ending set of challenges.

Benjamin Ramm, a polyglot former BBC journalist of British and Iranian heritage, founded Honeydew in 2023 as a response to political, cultural, and spiritual crises. With the goal of unlearning mainstream consumerism and competition, the community exists to facilitate healing and create alternative modes of living. After a lifetime of abundance including my recent epic three-year-long journey and a transformative yoga teacher training, to be in the service of a community feels like a natural next step in my spiritual journey. How does it work? How are community and individual needs balanced? How are conflicts managed? Is community life the solution? Above all, how can I serve? I arrived at Honeydew with an open mind, eager for the experience and hoping to find at least some answers.

Healing through Sharing

Nestled in the woods in the small village of Maiolo in Rimini province and spread over five hectares, the property of Honeydew had a colourful history, as a posh hotel with pool parties back in the 1970s and 1980s before becoming the home of an Osho community. Sadly abandoned then for over a decade, the sprawling structure of twenty rooms and ten bungalows was in need of much love and renovation. Since its opening last year, Honeydew has welcomed over hundreds of guests and volunteers and is in the process of creating a forest school, permaculture, and programming for spiritual retreats as part of an eco-village.

You arrive at good timing, Benjamin beamed a big welcoming smile when I appeared in mid-November for a three-week stay as a volunteer. Guada and Celes, from Argentina, just baked a mouth-watering apple cake and a gâteau au chocolat. It’s Sunday evening and the open kitchen was bustling. A few local friends of Francesco, all hailing from Puglia – the birthplace of many Italian delicacies – whipped up a feast of carpaccio di zucchine, orecchiette pasta with broccoli, and Polpette dalla Puglia/meatballs, served with a mountain of crostini. Benjamin’s right: what a better place to create a healing community than in Italia!

A weekend income-generating birthday party wreaked havoc across the property, requiring major cleaning. I spent my first Honeydew morning scrubbing toilet, a humbling zen task, before Benjamin asked, Would you like to offer a French class? Avec plaisir! I said. Volunteers here were encouraged to share whatever skills, and language lessons had become a fixture as a post-lunch enrichment cultural activity. Oh la vache/oh my gosh! Damien, an engineering student with Frenchie humour, rose up to the occasion and we co-taught a few argots/French slangs. Il m’a posé un lapin!/He stood me up. Il fait un froid de canard/it’s bloody cold! And his (subconscious) favourite: avoir le cul entre deux chaises/to have one’s ass between two chairs, aka, undecided! Maybe that why he’s here…

Being freshly minted as a yoga teacher, I was excited to teach my first class at Honeydew before helping to make dinner. The long evening had only just begun, as Robin, a professional men’s coach at a tender age of twenty-eight, led an unforgettable fire ceremony to mark the season’s change from autumn to winter. One by one, he smudged us with burning sage as we crossed a metaphorical gate. Inviting us to draw/write whatever that no longer served us and offer it to the fire, he helped open up space for vulnerability and sharing – from family trauma to heartbreak, resentment and self esteem, disconnectedness and despair. Most of us have a hard time trusting, yet trust we must. Listen to your heart, Robin said, as we traveled down memory lane. Soften your heart…

Awak(en)ing with a Vision

Winter’s zeroing in and Honeydew prepared for its annual closure with rigorous general cleaning, tasks shared among a dozen residents and volunteers, half Italian and the others from France, Germany, Holland, Argentina, and Brazil. Lucky us, Ciro, an Italian chef who had lived in London and California, joined us for a week and prepared an abundant spread of salad and cardamon rice, chickpea stew, and baked fennel with parsley and sesame so soft that it melted in your mouth. To top everything up, Giorgio introduced me to sweet creamy Sicilian pistachio liqueur. What heaven!

After lunch, Alessia and Giorgio gave us an Italian+Sicilian combo intro language lesson. Minchia/Yo, Bro! Benjamin then led a tour for the new volunteers. Awaking with a vision to share meals in a community after a psychedelic trip in 2020 while living in Nice, he created Honeydew with a mission to rekindle our social bonds and tend to the collective heart through mutual care and ‘radical trust’. Without doubt, it’s neither a low-cost nor easy undertaking. The main building still requires an insulation and heating upgrade while many bungalows are in need of major revamping. Summer residents from as far as Australia and Israel took off due to visa requirements. Now preparing for the next season with permaculture, a forest school, and well-being retreats, Honeydew is family friendly and multi-generational, fully integrated in and beyond Maiolo, celebrating rich Italo-cosmopolitan cultures.

From Competition to Collaboration

A new day began doing Kudalini yoga with Katia at seven before collecting strewn-around objects after a midnight mini-storm. Julia, a health researcher from Ancona joining us for a few days, led an Osho meditation in the afternoon. A home-made “mama cake” from a fabulous local nonna/grandma was served at tea-time. We’re blessed to have Ciro – a chef wizard – and a big contingent of Sicilians and Pugliese obsessed with sacred Italian food. Sweet fragrance of in-season baked pumpkin and Katia’s cinnamon apples flowed out of the buzzing kitchen. Come try this! Francesco said, pouring me a shot of his signature home-brewed rosemary liqueur, the best Italian immersion – no pun intended – anyone could dream of!

Shared Spaces are Sacred Spaces: Honeydew’s Open Kitchen

Robin, a vanlifer who came for three days, ended up staying for a month, blessing Honeydew with spontaneous hugs and his soft masculine energy. His farewell request? An Asian buffet to remind him of his Far East travels. What joy to cook with others, especially Italians who know more than a thing or two about slow soulful food. I peeped at Ciro’s spreadsheet of bread ingredients, committing his rapid-fire instructions to memory, before attending to my chicken in the steam pot.

In the afternoon, Celes and Guada led a fun lesson on the back slang of Argentina that might come in handy for my next trip to Buenos Aires. ¡Che, boludo!” – Hey, dude! Finally, la cena è pronta/dinner is ready! A mini Chinese-Indian-Bengali banquet of pakoras and curry, pineapple beef and sweet and sour veggies, steamed chicken with garlic ginger sauce and very sweet rice pudding. What a joyful and sumptuous evening, thanks to an open kitchen as an integral part of Honeydew healing.

Autumn is Like a Second Spring

Lucia, a Dutch physiotherapist, shared a beautiful poem she penned during her morning stroll. Even Michelangelo, the local handyman, felt compelled to join the closing of our sharing circle.

My father used to say

Autumn is like a second spring

With the leaves transforming into the most magnificent colours…

And the trees are left bare

Ready to enter a deep sleep

Until the next spring

To welcome the sun again

And bloom to all its might…

That nothing in nature blooms all year

Just like us

There is so much pressure sometimes

To appear perfect, to always look your best and be okay…

Allow yourself to be

All of you

Rest if you need

And remember

You are like nature,

Like the trees

And it all is part of the cycle

And it will be okay.

I noticed one thing missing in this beautiful place and proposed to Giorgio to scout for a piano befitting to the grand salon. He spotted a 1820 made-in-Wien grand piano on Subito – offered at a steep discount for quick sale – within 30 minutes’ drive from Maiolo. Maybe the universe was responding to our intention! Together with Robin and Antonella, we took a scenic back road to San Marin through bucolic country, first to pick up a few second-hand bed frames and mattresses before heading to the showroom. The magnificent antique, though still standing grandly, was sadly completely out of tune with more than a few broken keys. Alas, no surprise present for Benjamin!

In the afternoon, Antonella, our DJ diva, gave us a lesson on romantic Brazilian bossa nova, through the works of virtuoso Gaetano Veloso. Alegria and saudade, felicidade and amor… Joy, longing, happiness, and love! She made us dream to head to her homeland. Why not volunteer in Teresópolis and Guapimirim, two Honeydew extensions in Brazil, set in the lush hills not far from Rio de Janeiro, apparently with an unlimited supply of lychees, mangoes, and avocados!

Pizza Night: A Honeydew Tradition

It’s the chore-free weekend! Antonella led an energizing morning Ashtanga yoga session before I mingled with Chef Ciro in the kitchen, me preparing two loaves of chocolate banana bread for Sunday breakfast and him the slow-cooked tomato sauce as well as a dazzling array of pizza ingredients from garlicky Italian tomatoes to Sicilian eggplants, grilled peppers and mozzarella, rosemary and oregano, and the highest quality olive oil. Saturday Pizza night: a Honeydew tradition! It felt so special to see the ritual of pizza-making in the brick oven, from Francesco’s laborious fire-building (up to 400°C) to Ciro’s masterful dough tossing, culminating in the smoky and aromatic flatbreads that made everyone’s stomach rumble. Buonissimo! The long autumnal evening was not even over yet. Paola, Simone, and Jessica who came for a brief stay graced us with their beautiful singing…

Tra due minuti è quasi giorno/In two minutes it’s almost daylight

È quasi casa, è quasi amore/It’s almost home, it’s almost love.

– Francesco De Gregori, Generale.

After all the pizza, vino rosso, and late-night singing, it was not easy at wake up at seven, but I thoroughly enjoyed giving a yoga class for Paola and Simone, two guests from Breshia, on Sunday morning. I just had enough time to bake some chocolate chip cookies after breakfast while Ciro’s breads were cooling before we headed out for a beautiful walk to Santa Maria Chapel in nearby Antico, passing through bucolic country steeped in autumnal colours and golden light in a region known for its spiritual energy.

Honeydew Pedagogy: Learning by Unlearning

The first incredibly full and busy week flew by, leaving a few of us yearning for more structured time for deeper reflections and discussions. After lunch, I volunteered to lead the first Honeydew Pedagogy session on Krishnamurti: Timeless Being. Based on quotes from my decade-long reading of the spiritual teacher, I focused on four related themes of timeless being, dying while living, love, and freedom.

To think is to be afraid, Krishnamurti said. Doubt is a precious thing… the seed of doubt clarifies our investigation. It would be my intention for Honeydew to provide a safe space to explore self-understanding, “not as an abstraction, but the here and now, via relationships to all things.”

Time is sorrow, according to Krishnamurti. The past is pain and the future fulfillment. So death is not in the future. Death is now when there is no time, when there is no me becoming something… The ending of everyday is also the ending of oneself every day. Dying to everything you love each day so that you are reborn. To end attachment without time is dying while living. The trees and the flowers have no time, no problems, and suffer from neither painful memories nor future anxiety. Why is non-attachment so hard for us?

I ended yet another very full day leading a yin yoga Pawamuktasana sequence. Great for digestion!  

The Drama Triangle

Income-generating activities for the 2025 season was on top of the Honeydew agenda and I had a nuts-and-bolts financial planning discussion with Benjamin. Given that the hotel structure already exists, it’s a matter of finding a niche focus – a Honeydew strength – as well as market research, advertising, and program planning. Yoga and dance retreats, writing workshops and wellbeing weekends, theatre and music festivals, and summer rentals… This place holds so much potential. Covering the recurrent monthly expenses of food and energy sounded manageable but generating an investment budget for future infrastructural upgrade presented a real financial challenge. Piano, piano/slowly, slowly, as the Italians say. What Honeydew managed to achieve within the short span of a year and half was already very impressive. Keep the tiny homes on wheels project, abandoned house acquisitions, and solar panel replacement for later. Millionaire donors, Benjamin non-jokingly said, was what he needed the most at the moment.

Another fabulous lunch of Italian bread with chickpea flour and rosemary, paprika pumpkin soup, fried veggies and rice by Ciro before our favourite chef turned sociological. Today’s Honeydew Pedagogy was on the Drama Triangle. Find yourself in a habitual victim (“poor me”) mode? Flip it around with consciousness to become a constructor (“found a solution”). Or, be a supportive coach rather than a patronizing rescuer. And there’s always time to change from a critical persecutor (“it’s all your fault!”) to an encouraging challenger. A long moment of silence ensued as we let those ideas – so prevalent in our individual and community life – sink in. I’m 100% responsible for my own reality could very well be a turning point in a healing journey. Let go of all resentments. Now!

Robin led a moving Breathwork session in the yoga hall before we both dashed off to prepare a birthday dinner for Emily. What do you fancy: lemon, carrot, or chocolate date cake? Tutto, per favore! Honeydewers’ preferred language of love is edibles!

Nonviolent Communication

I woke up early to compile a list of retreat/conference topics for Benjamin for the next season. From Tao Te Ching to
Rumi, desire and aversion, painful childhoods and trauma, the gifts of imperfection and radical acceptance, the art of solitude and untethered living, tantra and the ends and beginnings of relationships, non-attachment and minimalist living, and walking, reading, and writing as spiritual practice, the list seemed infinite, the fruit of my lifelong explorations.

To thank Robin, together with his sweet dog, Fine, for their beautiful presence – from the fire ceremony to the Men’s Circle, breath work and photography, spicy curries and sumptuous cakes – I shared a quote from the Buddhist master, Thich Naht Hanh:

laugh with me,

hold my hand,

let us say good-bye,

say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.

We will meet again tomorrow.

We will meet at the source every moment.

We meet each other in all forms of life.

After lunch, Maria who had rich experience in intentional communities led a Honeydew Pedagogy discussion on nonviolent communication. When we communicate, what are the feelings behind our words? Above all, what are the needs behind those feelings that want to be met and yet might not be met? How can we make requests to the person we are communicating with so that our needs could be understood, if not met. Through role-playing, we recalled an incident in which we felt mis-understood or frustrated. Many questions followed in the group. What if we grew up in a family where feelings – let alone needs – were never allowed to be expressed, how do we unlearn those patterns of (mis)communication and learn new ones? And how deep are we willing to go in this exercise, exploring our long hidden subconscious needs and emotions? By no means an easy terrain to navigate, nonviolent communication seemed indispensable in Honeydew life.

Before the day ended, I taught a fun beginners’ cha cha class set to Michael Buble’s Sway. Release those blocked emotions! When marimba rhythms start to play, dance with me, make me sway, when we dance, you have a way with me, stay with me, sway with me!

Radical Trust

Abandon all thoughts that weaken us. In the sharing circle this morning, I shared Wayne Dyer’s teaching. True freedom lies at the level of each thought, a high art!

Ciro and Maria would be leaving early tomorrow. The chef showed Alessia, Katia, and I how to make bread before asking: Are you making more cookies? Certo/surely! I said. I like them because they are not sweet, he explained, guessing right that I had halved the sugar dose. Hurriedly I put together a dough for about 50 cookies to refrigerate before joining the communication workshop led by Guada, a psychologist. Half of us got blindfolded and led to the yoga hall through several flights of stairs. How could we trust In our socio-political systems built on profound mistrust? Benjamin had repeatedly mentioned “radical trust” as an underpinning principle of Honeydew. Surrendering to life’s unfolding is nothing obvious…!

Heal My Fear

This morning, I asked everyone to try vrkasana, the tree balance pose, to close the sharing circle. Instead of focus, there was a lot of giggling! Then I shared Thich Naht Hanh’s heal my fear chant:

Breathing in, I am aware of my in-breath. In

Breathing out, I am aware of my out-breath. Out

Breathing in, I am aware that I grow old. Old.

Breathing out, I know I cannot escape old age. No escape.

Breathing in, I am aware of my nature to have ill health. Ill health.

Breathing out, I know I cannot escape ill health. No escape.

Breathing in, I know I shall die. Death.

Breathing out, I know I cannot escape death. No escape.

Breathing in, I know that one day I shall have to abandon all I love and cherish. Abandon all I cherish.

By the end of the second week, the question of whether some of us would be staying or returning came up. Robin’s gone to continue his life on the road while Ciro and Maria took off to explore other communities. At a sharing circle, Katia raised some important questions. Just how spiritual is spiritual if residents and/or volunteers are more interested in, say, alcohol rather than meditation and yoga? How do we encourage people to participate in spiritual practice without coercion? Feeling a wave of exhaustion from two weeks of intense experience, I wondered how community and individual needs were met and balanced. What parts of your autonomy are you willing to forsake for collective flourishing? To shift to a new mindset of collective manifestation, maybe that’s not even the right kind of framing. How can the highest individual and collective consciousness unify and amplify each other?

The weekend was a fun-filled redux of Saturday pizza night – sans chef Ciro – and Sunday hike. Fiorenzo and Giada, both buzzing with ideas about spiritual retreats and writing workshops, joined me for a leisurely stroll to San Leo, one of the most beautiful villages in Italy within perfect view of Honeydew.

Tuning Our Instrument Before We Tune With Each Other

A huge upcoming party with over a hundred guests took up the bulk of our energy in massive room and bungalow cleaning and prepping. We had a few more pedagogy sessions in the third week – on empathy by Giorgio and the power of crystals by Antonella – as well as last moments of beautiful sharing from dance to poetry and more great food. Lucia made a mouth-watering traditional Dutch dish of Stampport while Julka and Zuzanna baked a farewell Polish apple tarte. Good food always heals!

It is beautiful to see a group of “strangers” coming together for a cause. Whether it is through language classes and pedagogy sessions, yoga practice and fire rituals, or simply sharing music, dance, and food together, there is an undeniable sense of belonging and space for personal and collective growth. The most memorable for me were all the deep sharing and connection as well as the fabulous gourmet nourishment.

Community life might not be for everyone though. If autonomy, solitude, silence, and stillness are non-negotiable for you, this is definitely not your thing. Or, if you feel you have already shouldered a lifetime burden of domestic chores and/or free emotional labour, often in the case of women, for example, see if there might be other roles. Depending on your journey, ensuring that your needs and community values are aligned is crucial.

Lying at the heart of a spiritual life is ethical living, and the community setting accentuates its urgency. Attracting people with the right energy – open, loving, giving, growing – could be a deal breaker. The worst nightmare would be to allow mainstream power hierarchies and behavioural patterns to be reproduced at Honeydew. While there is no bullet proof strategy, community practitioners have experimented different ways from having clear language for volunteer/resident recruitment on various platforms to a code of conduct in a welcome guidebook, trial period, and exit interview etc. to minimize free-riders, entitlement mentality, narcissistic behaviour, and serious misconduct.

While community living facilitates acceptance and opens up space for shadow work – whether it is dealing with issues of abandonment, unresolved grief, anger, shame, or trauma etc. – trust, boundary, and consent are paramount in any collective healing space.

Unfortunately, conflicts are inevitable, whether they are due to ego and personality clashes, ideological differences or gender dynamic. Leadership training and a well established conflict management protocol are imperative. Of course, Honeydew is still young and growing. See for yourself whether community life is what your personal journey calls for at this juncture for meaning, support, love, security, growth, and service.

Grazie mille to Benjamin and all Honeydewers for these three unique weeks in an extraordinary community. The words of Jon Zabat-Zinn about “tuning our instrument, before we tune with each other” best encapsulate my feelings:

Don’t abdicate. Integrate. Bring all the pieces of you together. That’s the love affair. There’s no part of you that is not worthy… You didn’t ask for it. It’s impermanent. What else to do on this planet except wake up. And not be at war with oneself. We’ve got more important things to do.

If we are at war with ourselves, and we take our suffering personally, we don’t have a way of liberating ourself from it, and we can’t be the we that we need to be in order to own the body politic and bring sanity to the planet, even to a tiniest little degree.

I am not talking about saving the world in the conventional way. I am talking about healing the world.