A tech entrepreneur built a retreat center in the Azores to help people drop shame and feel genuinely accepted. He argues that society labels too many things as not okay—addiction, sexuality, dreams, money—when the real work is discovering the beauty underneath what people hide.
I think what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to make people feel welcome. It's not just the feeling of belonging, it's the feeling of being okay. Addictions are not okay, sexuality is not okay, dreaming is not okay. You have to be like planning things and making money and anything else is not okay. You know, we've done so much like okay-not-okay kind of sorting things that we got completely lost. For me, it's very important to develop a way to help people feel okay, which to me just means, yeah, come in, feel good. I don't care what you're ashamed of. I'm pretty sure under that shame is something beautiful.
