A women’s gathering is a tonic for modern life | Read time: 5 minutes, linger with the playlist

I just returned from a weekend in the mountains with the most wonderful group of kind women. We spanned fifty years — risk takers and elders, changemakers and young-child-mothers. My heart is renewed in hope and strength.

As I sipped my coffee this morning, I said a prayer to find a passage that could be "scripture" to me — I'd already done my morning pages at 4am, and I'd already left most of the circles that would prescribe any fixed definition of what scripture means.

So I reached for a book I'd carried to the retreat: The Feminine Face of God.

Here I am, feeling into a new future.

The marks in the margins and cobalt blue underlinings came from a reading session at a café in the Latin Quarter almost three summers ago when I was noticing a growing impulse in me for change. With the wisdom of the past few years and with the community I met on this weekend retreat, I realize now I’m getting the affirmation I need to trust this future. What a beautiful response from, as Albert Einstein would say, a friendly universe.

🎵 A playlist for your read:‍ ‍put it on wherever you are and let the mountains find you.

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I know this in my bones—A women's gathering is a tonic for modern life.

Women in threshold arrive from many lives. Oh, a breath of fresh air. Food that is deeply nourishing. Gratitude for one another’s existence. Hugs, real hugs. Laughter.

Earlier this year I softly opened the doors to a new collaborative retreat this April. It quietly sold out. I'm bowing to the hearts of the women who shaped this intimate weekend together.

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Friday, we settled into deep rest. Saturday, we built a fire and told truths under the stars.

By Sunday, every woman had put so much down. You could feel the lightness in each beautiful face. You could see each of  us...remembering herself.

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We asked each other what was longing to be said, tended our inner wellbeing, shared what brings us joy, recognized profound hope.

We offered this healing to the women of our country and to wherever it can do the most good. 

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The Way Knows The Way. This is what a generative retreat actually is. Not something you attend or complete, but a living circle where everyone brings something to the center.

And on that last morning, something happened that I'll carry for a long time…but that story deserves its own telling. (I’m promising myself to set aside the laundry and write it this weekend.)

I'll be going deeper into each portal of the creative process — the studio, the she shed, the art session with Lisa, the writing session with Kelly, and that Sunday morning in the movement space that I'm still sitting with. If you receive my letters, keep an eye on your inbox.

For now, sit back with a cup of tea and thumb through the Recipes for Joyful Living + Collective Wisdom this group of gorgeous women and I created.

—Shari 💓

P.S. The next retreats are forming with some very loved and familiar faces. Dates will be announced to the interest list first, always. If something in you just said yes, you belong on that list!

Be the first to know about the next retreat ♡

Step into the archive of this retreat here:

The Way Knows the Way: a creative retreat for women who desire to know and love themselves well