While the experience of wealth is an envied one, inheritors of wealth and their partners know that the enjoyment of it is more complex than is readily apparent. Summer Institute is a community of inheritors of wealth and their partners who create an annual personal growth program to focus on the challenges and opportunities of inherited wealth.
ALUM STORIES
From Olivia Boyce-Abel, February 2024
Dear Fellow Summer Institute Folks,
This is a note of celebration, joy and gratitude for all of your support over the years since I met you. Many of you remember, the life long “fight” I’ve been in with my family over preserving our inherited family homes and land on the coast of South Carolina.
I’ve since learned that “Intent is the building block of the outcome”. I have accomplished my life’s intention of selling my South Carolina land for preservation with the vision of inspiring others to do the same. This has been a powerful transformative spiritual journey for me.
To heal my family’s ancestral patterns of conflict over land and assets and waiting for the person you love to die so you can inherit, I finally sold all of my land in South Carolina to the state for a conservation outcome as well as gifted my land in the Santa Cruz mountains to my son. I have shifted and transformed these ancestral patterns with my actions and my intentions.
I have felt the role of stewardship since I was 4 when I would experience dreams of I walking on the pristine barrier island beach watching houses being built and tugging on my mother’s hand and saying,”You are the only one who can stop this Mama!”. This land was purchased by my grandfather as a consolation gift for my grandmother to take her mind off of the loss of her daughter, Olivia. I know that I am the little Olivia I was named for who died at 4 ostensibly of food poisoning but actually because she felt hopeless ( there is more to this than I am sharing here). There are many other lifetimes interwoven and involved that are being healed thru this process that I won’t go into in here.
For the first time in 69 years I am no longer the steward of my family land and no longer in conflict with my family! In a profoundly healing way my brother and I who were adversarial and opposed each other in litigation over my mother’s estate and her foundation were quoted in the newspaper one after another about our conservation sales. Once I paved the way, he followed by also selling his land for conservation. Other siblings and cousins are considering similar outcomes. The SC governor, The Office of Resiliency, state organizations and conservation groups are creating an increasingly larger state park there as well as a Natural Heritage Trust Preserve on the barrier island. This is the path I have been steadily working towards and I am grateful to have created.
The story behind all of this interweaving and transformation is so much longer than I can express here. My transformation is a direct result of all the amazing wisdom and teachings coming from my spiritual teacher, Jonah (www.jonahlifeinstitute.org) as well as my work with Be Present( www.bepresent.org) which led to my own remembering of self empowerment, love and trust in myself and my own inner knowing. I feel extremely blessed and grateful.
Thank you for holding space for me all these years as I struggled on my path knowing it was the only way for me yet not knowing how – following my heart and expecting a miracle!
Deep deep gratitude to all of your for being a container that held me on my journey.
With Love and light,
Olivia.
PS: I am open to phone or in person conversation about any of this at my number below.
OPEN SPACE INSTITUTE’S ANNOUNCEMENT:
https://www.openspaceinstitute.org/news/waties-island
POST & COURIER ARTICLE
POST & COURIER EDITORIAL
​
Olivia Boyce-Abel, Principal
Boyce-Abel Associates & Family Lands Consulting
M & O: : 831-251-9223