Flourishing Time
Marley is my rainbow sister and a free spirit, she emanates pure bliss and grace. Marley reins from Sydney but has found her way over to Byron where she is constantly enveloped in nature. Marley takes passion in painting and gardening. We sat down over a vegan picnic at the beach to talk about how nature connects her to herself and the main messages she has learned from nature.
“The ocean is a place of happiness for me. I listened to a TedTalk by Rupi Kaur. She was saying how she would have a shower and it would wash the day off of her. Thats what the ocean does for me. Whether you’ve had a good day or bad day, once you are in the ocean you are just in a better mindset. When you have walked through the sand and you are leaving the beach and you have caked sand on your feet, It makes me feel really grounded as well. I’m not washing them,” Marley explains.
“Nature makes me realize that everything has its time. Everything will flourish when Its supposed to flourish. Whether its a tree or a flower, it all has its time. You can apply that to your own life. You are going to go through ups and downs and ugly times and beautiful times,” says Alvarez.
I next questioned Marley on how her own passions help her to be kinder to the earth. Marley explains:
“You appreciate it more. If you’re getting inspired by the earth, you want to preserve it. You wont be doing anything negative to it, you will look after it because it feeds your passion. I think there is something about nature that reminds you to just be. I don’t know what it is but it reminds you to get out of your head and into the moment.”
Marley also spent a few months living in out of a converted shipping container in Byron Bay, Australia. I asked Marley to tell me about that experience:
" I had seen it and thought it would be cool to live in a shipping container but I had never saw myself actually living in one. But, I really liked it for the amount of time we spent in there. I guess if it was our shipping container, we would have enjoyed it more because we could make it exactly what we wanted it. There were a lot of things that weren't practical. So if it was more practical it would have been enjoyed more. It was so nice to open the doors and see the rainforest right in front of you. You're in such a confined space that you are never really inside unless you are cooking or sleeping. Always outside in the garden, it got us outside of our house. The shipping container was above the ground, so we weren't actually wrecking the ground underneath us. There were vines growing up it and greenery underneath it."
Marley has a green thumb for gardening and magical fingers for painting. We talked a bit about how she is influenced by nature to keep creating.
"I actually never realized that my passions all revolve around nature until recently. All my paintings are of the ocean, the rainforest, or the elements. I also really love painting outside in the daylight. The water and nature has given me inspiration to be artistic and an outlet for me to express it. Gardening is something recent that came up, I used to look at it and admire it but recently I started working with a girl called Emma, who is a chef where I work. She gave me a few plants when we moved into the shipping container and it went from there. She gave me a few succulents, and one was the mother plant. They just kept duplicating and getting my hands dirty and knowing that its also a life that I’m growing. We had fifty plants within a short amount of time. I got sunflower seeds for my birthday and thought not all of them would grow and they all did. Eating out of your own garden makes you feel so happy and you know its completely natural. "
