This weekend was magic. Lead with Creativity led a women’s retreat on a farm nestled among the Shenandoah mountains, where rescued farm animals are living their best lives, ducks offer up luminous eggs daily, and the “Gentleman Farmer” uses his voice to promote equality and justice. We focused on values and how to live aligned with what is most important to us. Values like connection, joy, wholeheartedness, inclusion, openness, family, nature, creativity, integrity, feeling known - in some ways these values were already showing up in our lives, and in other ways they were languishing. As we progress toward a new year, this was an opportunity to consider claiming these important values with intention, recommitting to living with purpose and meaning, and quite practically, making a plan for doing so.
Through activities, journal prompts, group discussion, bonfire musings, delicious meals, favorite music, and an incredible farm experience, this creative group of women connected with each other and themselves in a bigger way than any of us had expected. Women who hadn’t met before bonded over intimate life stories, shared challenges, and genuine caring. Everyone could benefit from this, they said. How rare for women to step away from their daily lives full of work and caregiving to focus on themselves, and how restorative it is. It’s like putting on the oxygen mask yourself first before helping your child to put one on. Connected in a circle on the last morning, we committed to aligning our actions with our purpose, and harnessing the support we need to follow through. It feels like a jolt to leave the cocoon of connected sisterhood, mountain beauty and sweet animals to go back into “the real world” of routine and expectations. The hope is that we are all now more focused on and grateful for what’s most important, which will guide us toward living aligned with our true selves.
More retreats are coming. Supporting people to live into their purpose and feel aligned with their true selves is an honor, and the world needs more of this.
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” - Howard Thurman