I’m writing from my chilly studio this morning, hot water bottle on my lap, as I adjust to the Melbourne winter after living in what felt like a different world in Bali. While this experience isn’t new for me, it’s always somehow shocking.
Life seems slow in Bali, but the transformation moves quickly – for me personally, and for the women who step into the retreats I hold there. As a professional writer for more than 30 years, I still struggle to find the best words to adequately describe what unfolds in my retreat spaces. I think that’s because some experiences are beyond words. I will try to express myself here anyway.
The Held retreat was an opportunity to explore our grief and losses, tend to our hearts, and celebrate beauty and joy. We dared to meet the depths of our grief, and experienced ecstasy on the other side (yes, for real). We cried and laughed. We meditated and danced and did rituals and ate yummy food picked fresh from the garden that day. We connected with ourselves and one another and nature in deep ways. We made offerings from nature to our grief and extraordinary magic happened. We loved. The love and support in this group! There were poems, love letters and more tears because it was just so incredibly beautiful. We marvelled at the beauty too – of one another, the land, the flowers, the waterfalls, the women in the kitchen smiling and cooking our meals with so much love. Mama Bali’s mysterious ways of guiding us and giving us just what we needed at the right times. Oh, and the fire flies over the rice fields, with their magical little blinking lights.
I continue to be in awe of the magic (that’s the only word I can think of that works) that happens when a group of women with a shared intention and kind hearts gather. In our ritual spaces I could almost see the healing that was rippling out to the planet.
I carefully design my retreats to take everyone on a particular journey. I hold a clear, sacred intention. From the moment a woman gives me her yes I hold that intention for her and love on her (I really do. You have no idea how much I love you :) How it will all unfold though from the moment the group comes together on the first day I can never know. Every group is different, and that’s part of what’s so special. One thing that is always the same though is that the woman who work with me are warm, kind and wise, supportive with huge hearts. Always.
I’m reminded that we are more powerful than we can ever know, especially when we do this work together. When we choose ourselves and our truth and power, when we invest in ourselves in this way, life meets us there. Always. Mama Bali has a way too of showing us what’s not in alignment for us, and showering us with the most incredible love and compassion when we choose our truth.
I hope you can drink into your cells everything that’s radiating from these photos from the Held retreat:
May we all feel Held as we navigate whatever transitions we’re managing in our lives.
Grief and loss, midlife, significant relationship shifts, an empty nest, reinvention, leadership evolution, exhaustion from over-functioning or over-tolerating, success that no longer feels meaningful, a longing for deeper aliveness, or a question deep down inside that’s not going away. These are all threshold moments. We know that what has been no longer fits for us and we’re called to something new and to take charge of it. Life is full of these thresholds. We outgrow ourselves - our identities - again and again.
When you’re asking yourself Who am I becoming now? the answer lies in becoming more fully yourself. What would that look like for you? What’s calling you now? What will you do to expand into it?
We are powerful, and we can write a new story for ourselves - again and again.
May you enter your new story with grace.
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