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Ho’opili DeSilva - O’AHU PHOTOGRAPHER

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Mahalo nui for spending time with us!

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What. A. Doozy.

I feel like I’ve finally crawled out of one of the craziest chapters of my life. When I think about everything that’s happened over the last two years, I’m honestly amazed I’m still standing.

I took a minute off Instagram….. I was tired of my own saga. It just wouldn’t end.

A few fun facts:
• No toilet for 3 months.
• No hot water for 2½.
• Four pairs of mud boots became my entire personality.
• I mastered a new sleep technique: lay down… asleep as head touches pillow.
* I witnessed pure, unhindered heart in motion in our community. Pure Aloha.
• Mold, mud and I got way too well acquainted.

But then…

Grass.

That beautiful, stubborn little miracle grew through every crack and turned a muddy mess into a field again.

Yesterday I got to mow, and I’ll tell you what—I have officially entered my Full Farm Lady Era because mowing my new grass was one of the best birthday presents I could have asked for.

New grass. ❤️
New chapter.

For the last three months I’ve spent every day rebuilding this farm, and she’s finally starting to look like herself again.

Funny enough… so am I.

Here’s to the friends who carried me when I couldn’t carry myself. Here’s to God’s endless blessings. Here’s to faith that never wavered. Here’s to Mother Earth for holding me through it all.

This is 54.

A sober Cheers to you.

Life is beautiful. ❤️

Photos show the old shallow, small stream and the new dredged steam. 😳 They show me and my angel gardner Tino mowing and weed whacking the grass for the first time since the flood. The resilient grass found the sun through a foot of new flood earth on the Wahiawa side of the field and grew back. 💫

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Thank you @onesixmag for the feature!!! Thrilled to share my story 🌺🌺. Mahalo to everyone who has helped along the way ❤️❤️

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Living Kuleana continued…..

I can make plans and walk toward them, but they turn and twist along the road. They divert you, change you, grow you. The only constant is a love for the land, a love for God, and the surrender you must choose over and over again. If you can walk in that way, you can walk in peace.

It takes everything you thought you needed—plans, identity, certainty. But it gives you what is real. It shows you who you truly are. It heals you. It refines you into someone who walks with sovereignty, with discernment—who walks humbly in surrender and faith.

As you cross the threshold from who you thought you were and who you planned to be, you step into something else entirely. A life where you move with the seasons, with the unexpected waters. You acclimate. You become present.

Through your duty, you find joy.Through your duty, you find understanding.Through your duty, you find presence.

Through your hands, you find purpose.

And what remains—is living with the land,and living with spirit.

This is living Kuleana.

And I am deeply grateful for it.
Mahalo ‘Aina.
Mahalo Akua.

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Living Kuleana

When I came into this journey of farming, I had so many dreams—ideas fueled with the excitement of living with food sovereignty, of working with community, of living in love with the land. Of nurturing and being nurtured. Caring for and listening to ʻāina. Growing tropicals, food, mushrooms. Making syrups, oils, and value-added products.

I had a whole plan designed in my mind—a future. I would retire from the retail world, open a flower and garden shop, wrap her in the most yummy, green, moody design, where the vibe just filled your cup with yum.

But, as is life, the journey is quite different. The vision keeps you going, but the journey is more about the duty that you have signed up for. You’re on a ride that is out of your control. It is unknown. Your future path becomes guided, not driven, and you are in a school.

You are a student—a student of the land, a student of self. If you force, you fail. If you flow, you glow.

You are learning and healing. You are cared for and tested, and tested again and tested again. It’s the time of my life where I have felt that I’m not navigating it—it is navigating me. She has been the greatest teacher.

And she has taken everything from me—every dollar, my blood, sweat, and tears, every ounce of energy. The love is a grand, grand love affair that changes you in ways that you can’t quite understand until you are on the other side of it.

I’m a different person because of becoming a farm dweller and farmer. I am in the school of the land. I now feel more at peace living in the space of not knowing what the future looks like.

Continued….

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One year ago today, I closed a HUGE door.
Not in chaos, not in collapse— but in a quiet, ordinary moment that held more blessings than I could see at the time.
I had my last drink.

A few weeks later  I made an agreement.
With God. With my body. With the woman I am becoming.
To no longer carry the poison that plagued my family.

Alcohol— a thread woven through my bloodline, woven with pain, with disconnection,
With dysfunction, abuse, distortion, and disassociation.  Patterns that could and would end with me.

And so, I set it down.
With that chess move,
Everything changed.

Clarity where there was once fog. Truth where there was once distortion. Steadiness where there was once reactivity.
I have met myself more honestly. Held myself more accountable. Loved more deeply,
walked steady with my na’au,
Set stronger boundaries.

Some things fell away. Some things found me.
All of it, a reordering.

Today, I stand in gratitude— for the message, for the choice, for the quiet discipline of honoring it.

Mahalo Ke Akua. Mahalo big Nicci,
Mahalo little Nicci.

One year sober.
Deeply blessed with a sight I never knew I was missing.

🙏🏼

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Good tidings, my beloved friends. Happy Easter.

I love Easter—not for the bunnies or the eggs—but because it celebrates Yeshua, our great teacher, our beloved. There is nothing more joyful to me than honoring the divine.

It has been a deeply challenging year—really, a few years—of growth for many of us. Lesson upon lesson, pushing us toward higher versions of ourselves. Fighting these lessons only makes them harder. Life asks us, what have you been called to learn?

For me, it has been surrender. Faith. Discernment. Clear communication. Boundaries.

In the process of learning, people fall out of alignment—and we must move on. There have been entanglements that have been difficult, but I trust these challenges carry lessons for both sides. So we keep walking—sometimes frustrated, sometimes disillusioned—but still moving forward, because God leads us.

I’ve received many messages over the years—about following the North Star, about Noah’s Ark, about changes in the Earth and the waters. It’s part of why I chose to buy land—to move toward sovereignty and care for the essentials of life. Walking this path can feel treacherous. It’s not one many choose.

But what have I learned?

I’ve learned that the people who truly show up—the ones who are authentic and heart forward, those are my people. I hold them close and honor them. I’ve been gaining clarity about what feels aligned and what doesn’t. People show me who they are, and I’m learning to witness that with acceptance.

I place my attention where it belongs: on my people, on service, on loving the land—my beloved Waialua. On speaking truth, even when it is inconvenient, so others can make informed decisions about their health and protection.

In these times of uncertainty, these are the things I can hold onto.

Everything else can be taken—by water, by fire, even people.

So I return, each day, to what is real: love, authenticity, new connections, the land, the water, the truth, and God.

Happy Easter, my beloveds.
May God watch over you and surround you with divine kindness and love.

I love and adore you. You are seen by me. Have faith. Times are hard. We have each other and God. We have it all. ❤️🙏🏼

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So wonderful welcoming our new Executive Director, John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas, to HCAN! 🌟🌸

It was also so special to reconnect with our former EDs and the many incredible people who make the HCAN community so strong. Grateful for moments like these that bring us together. Here’s to many more in-person gatherings and opportunities to connect! 🌸💛

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Anxious attachment 3-

I believe my partner saw those wounds clearly. I think he understood them — but they were very difficult for him to live with.

Now, through this willingness to admit the parts of myself I resisted,

The dark, hidden parts of me. Buried under my warrior. My strength. My resilience. My competent, rational, mature adult self- a part of me was buried. Hidden.

Seeing her. Accepting her as part of me is where the deeper healing can begin.

It is these hidden places —
the quiet basements of the self —
that the deepest healing lives.

From 1,296 days ago to 439 days ago, I lived inside that love.

857 days.

Eight hundred and fifty-seven days of my heart commitment, where I experienced the deepest love, that I had known to that point.

And in that sacred container, a small frightened child inside me woke up — terrified of being hurt.

Frightened. Emotionally immature. Fearful. Alert. Activated. Overly aware - little Nicci.

Sometimes she saw danger where there was none.
Sometimes she misread what she saw.
Sometimes she placed meaning where there may have been none.

And yes… at times that anxiousness shaped the course of that relationship.

This is not to erase the ways he contributed. It always takes two to tango.

This is simply me acknowledging my part.

During those 857 days I had the opportunity to love deeply — and to see parts of myself I did not want to admit were there.

And now, because I see her, I can begin to heal her.

So that one day when I choose love again — fully and vulnerably — I will recognize that anxious voice when it rises.

And I will be able to say gently:

There is no danger here.
You are safe.

I believe I chose a partner who valued freedom — and that dynamic revealed my wounds with clarity.

For that mirror, I am grateful.

Because in reflection comes revelation.

And in revelation… deeper healing begins.

xx little and big Nicci

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Anxious attachment 2-

In our deepest intimacy we often meet not only as adults —

we meet as the child within us.

My child is anxious.

She watches closely.
She feels everything.
She notices every shift in tone, attention, or energy.

Because when I was a child, a subtle change could mean I might get hurt. It could be devastating.

It could mean..
Physical pain.
Emotional pain.
Neglect.
Abuse.

I learned to scan.
To anticipate.
To protect.

So in that love, that is sometimes how I showed up.

When anxious energy shows up in a relationship, your partner feels it — especially if they lean independent.

It can feel like pressure.
It can agitate.
It can make them run.
It can make them turn toward their patterns.

So we began to move in that ancient rhythm — activating each other’s wounds without fully understanding what was happening.

For many of these 439 days of healing, I focused on the ways I had been hurt.

Slowly the tide turned.

Eventually I began to see myself clearly.

That was not an easy place to go.

It felt like walking down into a dark basement inside myself — a place I did not want to visit and did not want to admit existed.

Admitting that anxiousness lived in me felt weak… embarrassing something I didn’t want to claim.

But when I finally allowed myself to see her, something unexpected happened.

Compassion arrived.

Compassion for the little girl inside me who spent so many years worrying about being hurt… worrying about danger… worrying about abandonment.

Today I feel tenderness toward her instead of frustration.

Continued…..

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Anxious Attachment

It has been 439 days of sobriety.

Sobriety from the relationship.
Sobriety in the healing.
Sobriety from the woman I was inside that love.

Before this, I had never truly chosen love. I had always been chosen — floating like a feather in the currents of other people’s choosing. Understanding that fixation as the way love was to be.

This time was different.

We chose each other.

For the first time in my life, I loved with a fully open heart and conscious intention. And from what he shared, he opened that way too — deeply and vulnerably for the first time.

After all these days of healing, I can say honestly that there were many ways I did not show up well.

When two people come together with open hearts, they become mirrors for each other. This was the most raw and vulnerable mirror I have ever faced.

Today I am not the same woman who lived inside that relationship.

Healing has changed me.

Looking back, I see that I came into that love open, sincere and emotionally mature — but something else surfaced in me that I did not want to see.

Very often, I showed up anxiously attached. Yuck. I hate that phrase. I don’t associate with it. It feels abhorrent to me to call myself that.

It took me a long time to admit that.

I am anxiously attached.

In my adult self I am strong, capable, grounded, and confident. I never thought of myself as anxious.

It’s embarrassing. Weak to the adult Nicci. A part of me I wanted to deny.

That is my door way to healing. As much as I want to turn away, and blame. This is the threshold I am called to now, to heal this poor little abused child that lives within me.

Continued…..

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A N G E R~ continued…..

That fierce energy isn’t about punishment.

It’s about survival.

When you let someone into your inner world after experiencing betrayal in childhood, that access is sacred.
It is earned.
It is not casual.

So if betrayal is perceived,
the reaction isn’t just about the present moment.

It’s layered.

Itʻs all the moments you were not protected.

The body remembers all of the wounds.

They are kindling to the fire.

It was the child that trusted the people she loved to protect and honor her.
And they did the opposite.

So the nervous system says:
“Never again.”

And it activates the Guardian.

As an adult- The work for me hasn’t been suppressing that fire.

It’s healing enough to discern when it is appropriate.

I want to get to a point where I don’t feel that anger instantly.

And even if warranted, I donʻt want resentment and anger to live in me.

To take root and fester.

In this new sober skin of my evolving self,
I must learn when the flames are truly needed…
and when they are reacting to an old echo.

There is wisdom in that fierce energy.

But there is also healing in discernment.

Fire can protect.

It can also burn it all down.

I have done both in this fire.

I see my wounded shadow at work

And I must make amends……

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