What My First Retreat Taught Me About Space, Connection, and the Power of Being Heard
On the first night of our retreat, we sat around a bonfire and asked a group of women one simple question:
What is your intention for this weekend?
At first, there was hesitation.
I could tell a few women weren't quite sure how to answer. Or maybe they knew the answer but weren't sure they were ready to say it out loud in front of a group of women they had only just met.
And I remember thinking, Okay. Don't force it.
So we didn't.
Jodi and I went first. We shared our own intentions. We allowed ourselves to be vulnerable and tried to show everyone sitting around that fire that this was a space where they could do the same.
Then one woman shared.
Then another.
And another.
Eventually, everyone did.
I sat there listening to these women go deeper than I ever expected us to go on the very first night, and I remember thinking:
This is it. This is exactly what we hoped would happen.
We hadn't even really started the retreat yet.
But something had already shifted.
I Didn't Really Know What to Expect
Jodi and I had been planning the Dare On Retreat for almost a year.
Of course, we had a vision for what we wanted it to be.
We wanted to give midlife women permission to step away from the noise long enough to assess how they actually felt about the lives they'd built.
Not in a burn it all down kind of way.
Quite the opposite.
We wanted to create enough space for women to ask themselves:
Is this the life I would have truly chosen for myself?
Does my life actually feel good, or does it just look good?
And maybe the answer would be,
You know what? My life actually does feel pretty damn good.
Maybe they'd realize they didn't need some massive reinvention. They just needed a little more of what energized them and a little less of what drained them.
Or maybe they'd realize there were things they'd been carrying for years that they were finally ready to put down.
We weren't there to decide that for them.
We wanted to give them the space and tools to figure it out for themselves.
That was the vision.
But this was also the first retreat I'd ever cohosted.
So despite all of our planning, I really didn't know what was going to happen when everyone actually arrived.
We Kept Coming Back to One Thing: Don't Overcomplicate It
Over the year we spent planning, Jodi and I met again and again to talk through the retreat.
What should we include?
What should the schedule look like?
What did we want women to experience?
And every time, we kept coming back to the same thing:
Let's not overcomplicate this.
Instead, we asked ourselves what we would need if we were attending a retreat like this.
We'd need time to reflect.
We'd need some actual downtime.
We'd want workshops that gave us practical tools, but we wouldn't want to spend the entire weekend sitting in a room being talked at.
We'd want meaningful conversations.
We'd want laughter.
We'd want quiet.
We'd want nature.
We'd want opportunities to connect with other women and permission to step away and be alone when we needed it.
So that's what we created.
We chose a location surrounded by nature where there weren't a million distractions competing for everyone's attention.
We intentionally left space in the schedule.
We created workshops that helped women look at where they were, what was draining them, what was energizing them, what they were carrying, and where they might want to go next.
And then we left room for whatever else needed to happen.
It turns out, that space may have been one of the most important things we gave them.
Sometimes We Don't Need Another Answer
We live in a world that constantly gives us more.
More information.
More advice.
More podcasts.
More books.
More things we should be doing.
More people telling us how to be healthier, happier, more successful, more productive, more fulfilled.
But sometimes I don't think we need another answer.
Sometimes we need enough quiet to hear the answer that's already trying to come through.
That's what I watched happen over the weekend.
One woman later told us the retreat helped her realize where she was in life and actually made her feel
better about it. She could see what was already working and what could make it even better.
Another recognized that so many of us are struggling with the same things and that we don't have to do everything ourselves. We can ask for support.
Someone else walked away with this realization:
“Just because you are carrying something does not mean you have to carry it with you in the future.”
Another woman connected deeply with the idea that balance isn't about making everything equal. Sometimes it's about recognizing what drains you and intentionally creating more space for what gives you energy.
Different women.
Different lives.
Different realizations.
That's exactly how it should be.
Because the point wasn't for everyone to leave with my answer.
The point was for each woman to hear her own.
Something Happens When One Woman Goes First
What started around that bonfire continued throughout the weekend.
Women who were navigating divorce found one another and started supporting and encouraging each other.
Women beginning new careers in midlife connected over the excitement and uncertainty of starting something new.
Women who arrived quiet and hesitant began opening up.
We laughed.
A lot.
We cried.
We had hard conversations.
We had ridiculous conversations.
We reflected privately and shared openly.
And something became very clear to me:
Women want to be vulnerable. They just need to feel safe enough to do it.
I think we sometimes tell ourselves that people don't want to talk about the hard stuff.
I'm beginning to think that's not true.
Maybe we don't want to talk about the hard stuff in spaces where we feel like we need to perform.
We don't want to be vulnerable when we're worried someone is judging us.
We don't want to admit we're struggling when everyone around us seems to have it all figured out.
But put women in a space where someone is willing to go first?
Where no one is trying to fix them?
Where they can say, This is where I am right now, without someone immediately telling them where they should be?
Something changes.
The walls start coming down.
I Had to Be Willing to Go There Too
I went into this retreat thinking a lot about what I wanted to give these women.
My intention around that bonfire was pretty simple:
I wanted to create a safe enough space that every woman would leave feeling better than she did when she arrived.
I hoped we'd created something worthy of the investment they had made in themselves.
What I didn't expect was how much I would receive from the experience too.
I found myself wanting to be vulnerable because I never wanted one of these women to sit in that room thinking:
I'm the only one.
So I shared too.
I took time for my own reflection.
I meditated.
I allowed myself to experience some of the quiet we'd intentionally created for everyone else.
And somewhere along the way,
I started hearing myself more clearly too.
I went into the weekend thinking I was creating space for these women to find clarity.
I didn't expect to find so much of my own.
From the Bonfire to the Final Circle
On our final morning, we gathered together one more time.
This time, we asked everyone to write down something they didn't want to leave the retreat carrying with them.
Again, no one had to share.
But everyone did.
Think about that for a moment.
On the first night, some women weren't sure they wanted to share their intentions.
By the last morning, every woman was willing to say out loud what she was ready to leave behind.
We read what we'd written.
Some of us crumpled the paper.
Some ripped it apart.
And then we threw it away.
Of course, throwing a piece of paper into a trash can doesn't magically remove something from your life.
We knew that.
But there was something incredibly powerful about naming it.
Seeing it.
Saying it out loud.
And then physically making the choice:
I'm not taking this with me.
From that first night around the bonfire to that final morning in our gratitude circle, I watched these women blossom.
And I think all of us left carrying a little less and taking something new home with us.
“It Was More Than a Retreat. It Was an Awakening.”
The day after the retreat, one of the women sent Jodi and me a message.
She told us she'd needed an entire day to process what she'd experienced.
And then she wrote something that stopped me:
“It was incredible, but I think for me it was more than a retreat—it was an awakening.”
An awakening.
Of all the words she could have chosen.
She talked about finding value in every woman who was there. About the balance between vulnerability and laughter. About having the space to be present, listen, share, and take everything in.
She also told us that if she had to find one negative, it was simply that
the retreat was too short. She wasn't ready for it to end.
I'll take that criticism.
But what meant the most to me wasn't that she loved the retreat.
It was that she felt something shift inside herself.
Because that's what we'd hoped to create.
Not a weekend where women escaped their lives.
A weekend where they had enough space to really look at them.
This Weekend Changed Something for Me Too
I've spent a lot of this year thinking about where I want SheHandlesIt to go next.
One of my biggest goals for 2026 has been getting on bigger stages.
I want to speak to more women.
I want to share
The Midlife Awakening
with larger audiences.
I want more women to hear that they are allowed to question the scripts they've been handed and decide for themselves what success, love, purpose, and a good life actually look like.
I still want that.
But this retreat showed me something else.
Impact doesn't only happen from a stage.
Sometimes it happens around a bonfire.
Sometimes it happens sitting next to another woman who says, Me too.
Sometimes it happens in a workshop when you finally see on paper just how much you're carrying.
Sometimes it happens during a quiet meditation.
Sometimes it happens while you're laughing so hard with women who were strangers two days ago that you forget you're supposed to be doing some serious personal-growth work.
And sometimes it happens when ten women sit in a circle, tell the truth, rip up a piece of paper, and decide they're not taking something home with them.
The stage allows me to reach women.
These intimate spaces allow me to sit with them.
I want SheHandlesIt to make room for both.
I Want to Create More Rooms Like This
I came home from the retreat with more clarity about my business than I expected.
Not necessarily about exactly what comes next.
I'm still figuring that out.
But I know what I want more of.
I want to create spaces where women feel safe enough to tell the truth.
About their careers.
Their marriages.
Divorce.
Motherhood.
Midlife.
Burnout.
Ambition.
The things they're proud of.
The things they're scared to admit aren't working anymore.
And the things they secretly want but haven't quite given themselves permission to say out loud.
Maybe those spaces will be another retreat.
Maybe they'll happen through
Beyond the Bullshit, the virtual community conversations I'm building.
Maybe they'll be small workshops where women can do more than sit and listen. They can actually talk to each other, learn from each other, and realize they aren't the only ones figuring this stuff out.
Maybe there are versions I haven't thought of yet.
That's what I want to spend the rest of 2026 figuring out.
Because this weekend reminded me that women don't necessarily need another person standing in front of them telling them what their life should look like.
Sometimes they need someone willing to create the room.
And then trust them enough to discover what they need once they're inside it.
Coaching Reflection: What Might You Hear If Things Got Quiet?
You don't have to go on a retreat to begin asking yourself these questions.
But you may need to create some space.
Put down the phone.
Turn off the noise.
Step away from the roles you play for everyone else, even if it's only for an hour.
And ask yourself:
How does my life actually feel right now?
Not how does it look on Instagram.
Not whether other people think you should be grateful.
Not whether you've checked all the boxes you thought you were supposed to check by this age.
How does it
feel?
What's giving you energy?
What's draining it?
What are you carrying because you've convinced yourself you have to?
What are you ready to put down?
And what do you want more of?
You don't have to burn everything down because one answer surprises you.
You don't have to make a dramatic decision.
You don't even have to know what comes next.
Start by telling yourself the truth.
That's where an awakening begins.
Come Find Your Seat in the SheHandlesIt Community
If you've been craving more conversations like these, I want you to know something:
I'm going to keep creating the rooms.
Retreats. Workshops. Beyond the Bullshit gatherings. And probably a few things I haven't figured out yet.
Places where we can put down the performance for a little while and have open, honest, sometimes hard conversations about the lives we're actually living and the ones we still want to create.
Because after this weekend, I'm more convinced than ever:
Women want to be vulnerable. We want real connection. We want conversations that go deeper than “How are you?”
Sometimes we just need to feel safe enough to answer truthfully.
And when we do?
Something pretty incredible can happen.
We start hearing ourselves again.
