Dreams, Gratitude, and the New
I am just landing back after running my 6th retreat experience at Joyful Journey Hot Springs with an incredible group of badass women… exhausted yet beaming with gratitude. I am digesting the magnificence that unfolded and the profound transformation that circulated in the collective nervous system.
I am in awe of the fortitude that these women hold after navigating extreme hardships and challenges in their lives yet showing up with spaciousness in their hearts to look within and drop a layer of tension that has been keeping them from connection. There is so much to say and process after these 3 and ½ days, which I will certainly be sharing snippets of in the weeks to come.
This is the last retreat at this particular venue, for the moment, which was a dream-come-true for me many years ago. Recognizing that running this powerful retreat consistently over the past 7 years (took one year off for COVID!) at Joyful Journey was a tremendous steppingstone along my professional path.
I am truly humbled and heart-filled to have shared these experiences with so many women over the years.
Women’s lives were changed.
As I close out this chapter I am holding each of their brave and beautiful hearts close to mine. It has been and remains my deepest honor to create these containers of healing. Every woman that attended over the years helped to build a sturdy and solid foundation and platform for the work to grow and touch many more women’s lives.
As I take in the richness of each journey, I feel the deep power of dreams and visions in shaping both our lives and the ways we serve. And I’m also aware that some dreams need time—time to take form, to find their flavor, to fully land in the body of our becoming.
Each shape these dreams take—whether clear or still forming—is worthy. The path is rarely linear. But every step, every pause, every redirection lives in the body as part of the becoming. These movements shape us, inform us, and deepen our capacity to serve.
There is wisdom in the timing. When we trust in the pace of life, we allow our visions to root, to rise, and to reveal themselves in their own sacred rhythm.
Nearly 30 years ago, while seeped in my own personal addiction crisis and exploring a holistic approach to healing in a residential treatment center, I had a vision…I felt the stirrings of a calling….and, a dream.
This dream appeared in moments of lucidity over the next 10ish years as I spent much of my life force committed to my healing. I immersed myself in the path less traveled at my ripe, young age. I focused on unwinding my body and heart, studying and practicing relentlessly, and choosing day-after-day to show up with as much presence as I could muster in midst of the swirls of profound angst that I was coming up against.
No matter how loud the voices were screaming at me to do otherwise, I knew that this was my path of life and that I needed to meet it.
This path was going against the grain of what 20-somethings “should” be doing and yet, for me, I felt as though I did not have any other choice. That the only other choice was a grim existence laden with addiction, paralyzing depression and anxiety, and complete dysfunction.
This dream that shone its light to me in those moments of exhale was around bringing women together in a safe, contained, therapeutic retreat setting to do a deep dive into their healing.
An integrative, healing group process that entailed a wide array of holistically-based embodiment practices that would support women to do a full immersion into their bodies and their hearts…to unwind their frenetic nervous systems and to explore a wide array of channels and pathways towards their own unique healing needs.
To come together and release all the gunk that has kept them stuck in the spirals of outdated stories, messages, patterns, and ways of being…and, allowing them to BE exactly who they are.
To have the space to release emotions and move stagnant energy. To connect deeply with their bodies and listen and feel their hearts.
To explore their creativity and to find the words and images for their experiences of life that had perhaps been buried.
To be nourished by foods and teas and treats that helped to ground them and bring joy and satisfaction. And…hopefully provide an experience of support around the healing of their relationships to food and feeding themselves.
To be a part of a community that is safe and welcoming and accepting…that which so many women are lacking in.
To remember that they are not alone in their struggles and challenges of life.
To feel seen and heard and loved for the entirety of their humanness.
All of this to say…. dreams appear in our lives and plant seeds to bloom in their own aligned timing. Although these particular seeds were planted all along the way after the vision first entered my awareness, this body of work was not birthed until I was in my early 40s…over 20 years since the dream began.
Although this particular variation of the dream is completing, there are many more on the horizon. The dream has been birthed.
I will end with that gem…. hopefully to keep each of you inspired and hopeful on your own path of life, fulfilling your dreams, and finding your impact in this world.
Trust your timing and your process.
Open to the NEW.
Find gratitude for the simple and grander experiences, opportunities, and relations of your life.
Wishing you all an easeful and connected New Moon week ahead. As always, I am out here for support and connection. Reach out anytime!
Take good care of yourselves and be kind to each other.