To tell the story of a mega storm is to tell the stories of the people who went through it. Each story is unique, some are mini-stories, while others could be a full length Hollywood blockbuster. Writer and spiritual teacher Barb Tremlett is taking on the task of telling some of the stories from the hurricane in her new book with the working title, “Hurricane Irma, the first 30 days.”
Tremlett is new to our island, but she feels the love for St. Maarten deep in her being and that passion has put her on the path to creating a book about Hurricane Irma’s effects on the Friendly Island. “People are hungry to know what happened here,” she expressed. This will be her third book and adds to her life’s accomplishments which include raising three children and starting a successful and ongoing business in New Hampshire called the Holistic Self Care Center.
Tremlett’s own story is one of serendipity and rich inspiration. A year ago she didn’t even know where the island of St. Maarten was. She was caught up in her own emotional storm as her husband was in the midst of passing away from a slowly progressing illness. Her grown children suffered along with her, but ultimately they each had to walk the path of grief alone. And when the time came to try to start anew, she traveled to Tahiti to heal her broken heart. “I was dying, I couldn’t even hear myself think.” Friends and family were shocked she would travel so far away, especially alone, but noted, ‘you always said you wanted to live on a tropical island.’ While she was in Tahiti she wrote her second book, this one was all about her husband, Doug, and is appropriately entitled, “Dougisms.”
After Tahiti, she planned a very special cruise with a friend. The cruise had the theme of spiritual growth and featured workshops with the famous Abraham Hicks. This Miami-based cruise made stops in San Juan, St. Kitts and St. Maarten. Her intent had been to go on this cruise with a friend, but her friend bowed out and so again she was traveling alone.
Her stop in St. Maarten was a revelation; she met many islanders, “I got along with everyone so well,” she said with a snap of her fingers. “My heart sang! I felt like God put me here for a reason, but I didn’t know why.” The cruise was scheduled to overnight on the island, and that also felt fortuitous. That was last December, and by March she was back, staying on the French side. “I lived in New Hampshire for most of my life, but I never really felt like I belonged there. Here I felt it immediately,” she said over a drink at Mark’s Place. “I could breathe.”
She reached out to the friends she made before and they reciprocated. She told them, “I think I’m gonna move here,” and they rolled their eyes at her, “yeah, yeah, everyone says that.” By May she had made the move, staying with a friend in Dutch Quarter and organizing to ship her furniture and precious belongings from the states to St. Maarten to start her new life. Things were just getting organized for Tremlett when Irma set her sights on the northeast Caribbean. She messaged her family and friends back home, sending love and reassurances that she would be alright.
The preparations were intense, shutters and plywood, every kind of protection they could manage for the home, which is mostly concrete. It wasn’t enough, they got through the first half of the storm by holding the door closed against the force of the wind. After the eye passes the door blew in. Small gaps and large in the walls and windows brought in water, mulched tree bits and mud. “The water running down the walls and windows,” said with a catch in her breath, “it looked like everything was crying.”
All her things, so carefully shipped down just weeks before, were ruined. “She looked around and thought, ‘Ok, what is the lesson in this?’ It’s a question only someone with Barb Tremlett’s perspective would ask at a time like that. She has made her career around teaching people to handle stress, build their self confidence, and harness their own metaphysical energy. “Gaining material possessions are not what we are meant to do,” she said with conviction, “we are meant for much bigger stuff than that.”
It took a few days to let her family and friends know she was alive and well, and of course they expected her to return home right away. But she held on to her sense of purpose, “I believe I am meant to be here, and now I know why. I feel I can be a part of the rebuilding of the island.”
Her vision and ability to make things happen has already taken her to working with the upcoming plans to rejuvenate Philipsburg. “Starting on November 11 we will be hosting theme nights on the boardwalk, there will be street performers, musicians, lots of things to do and see and eat and drink. The plan is just to make people happy again, and to believe in the magic of the island again.” This is the official opening of the tourist season with the first cruise ship coming back to call on Port St. Maarten. As a part of this initiative there is a plan to plant 200 palm trees in Philipsburg.
Along with those plans, Tremlett is almost done writing her book about how Hurricane Irma affected people’s lives on the island. She has also taken steps to create a spiritual retreat at the Hillside Plantation, collaborating with Joselyn Richardson’s Nature Park in Reward. Information on this can be viewed at her new website www.soulsolutionssxm.com. She has also liaised with some of the schools to teach workshops in building self confidence, and dreams of developing a mobile studio for expanding her reach to the communities for similar workshops.
For now the home where she is living has no electricity and the generator can only run about two hours a day. She charges her laptop battery and spends most of her days writing. “Irma has taught be how to be patient,” says Tremlett. “And I’ve learned that I am in control of my stress.” Clearly this is someone with much to offer all of us, and with her optimism on our side, the sky is the limit for the future.
By Lisa Davis Burnett
