04/09/2026
A Year of Sheba Heart Retreats 🩷
A year ago, I started Sheba Heart Retreats.
I don’t think I could possibly have known then how much life could fit into twelve months.
I’ve grown so much.
Loved so much.
Lost so much.
Found so much.
Learned so much.
Felt so much.
But most importantly, my heart has healed.
Not overnight. Through introspection. Listening to my dreams and my subconscious. Listening to God. Allowing my tears to flow when they needed to. Looking at wounds I’d carried for years instead of pretending they weren’t there. Understanding myself – and learning to love what I understood.
The innocence of childhood can never really be recouped because life teaches us too much. We learn fear, rejection, loss and disappointment. We learn how to protect ourselves and, somewhere along the way, many of us learn to edit ourselves according to what other people expect.
And then comes one of life’s great contradictions:
With time and experience, we almost have to learn what we need to unlearn if we’re ever going to find true peace.
Not the wisdom.
The fear.
I’m no longer seeking approval to be my authentic self. I can’t perform healing for others most effectively if I’m living a lie myself.
At 55 years old, I’ve earned the right to be Me.
Intelligent. Self-sufficient. Imperfect. Complicated. Loving. Strong. Still learning. And weathered by more than a few insufferable life storms.
I have nothing worthwhile to offer anybody if I am not entirely myself.
I’ve always been naturally sensitive and empathetic, and I wouldn’t change that about myself for anything. Those qualities are part of what allows me to understand, connect, love and heal.
What I’ve changed is where I allow that energy to go.
I’ve removed the noise.
Other people’s ill will, judgement, projections and opinions no longer get unrestricted access to my sensitivity. I don’t need to absorb everything simply because I’m capable of feeling it.
I have the right to respectfully decline a war.
I no longer have the desire to defend myself, my beliefs, my choices, my abilities or who I choose to love.
You don’t have to understand me. You don’t have to agree with me.
Your choices remain yours. And mine remain mine.
Anything threatening my peace now gets limited consideration and no more than the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
Consider. Evaluate. Act – or don’t. Move on.
Things I once would have taken personally can now receive a very simple response:
I really don’t give a s**t.
Not through bitterness.
Through perspective.
I used to think my time was my most precious commodity. I’ve changed my mind.
It’s the peace within my time that matters more.
There is simply too little life to spend any meaningful amount of it worrying about the unimportant.
I reserve my energy for the people I love, the experiences that make being alive worthwhile, and those I believe I’m here to serve as part of my purpose – to love and heal through the gifts God gave me.
Much of the rest is incidental.
And perhaps the deepest healing of this past year has been around love itself.
My experiences of relationships haven’t always been kind. I’ve been used, abused and taken for granted.
Then I spent most of the last twenty years largely alone. My primary focus was raising my children and giving them as solid and loving a foundation as I possibly could.
They were my priority.
And I’d make that choice all over again.
But somewhere inside me, I always believed my time would come.
I knew I still had an enormous capacity for love and believed that one day I would experience a connection beautiful enough to deserve everything I had to give.
And I did.
Albeit complicated. 😂
I fell deeply in love.
It woke up parts of me that had been sleeping for years. I remembered what it was to be a woman in love rather than simply a woman getting on with life – excitement, desire, vulnerability and that extraordinary sense of connection with another human being that reaches somewhere words don’t quite manage to reach.
And whatever life ultimately does with that love, I’m grateful I experienced it.
Because being in love became one of the greatest catalysts for change, strength and growth I’ve ever experienced.
It challenged me. It exposed vulnerabilities. It brought some very old wounds to the surface.
And somewhere in the process of finding another person, something unexpected happened.
I found myself too.
For most of my life, abandonment and rejection were probably my deepest wounds. Somewhere inside me lived the belief that I needed to be coupled with someone to survive life’s storms.
But this past year somehow put the finishing touches on those wounds.
I finally grieved the death of my mother, after 50 years. Without noise. Just compassion, understanding and love. 🙏
That doesn’t mean I don’t recognise those wounds anymore. Rejection can sting. Losing somebody I love can hurt enormously.
The difference is that I no longer interpret that pain as evidence that I won’t be okay.
I know I will.
I can recognise an old wound, understand where it comes from and allow it to pass without giving it control over my choices.
Now I can love someone because I choose them, rather than because some wounded part of me needs them not to leave.
So today, I’m grateful.
For my parents who gave me life.
For all my other parents.
For my children, who taught me what love is, truly.
For my family and friends who’ve loved me unwaveringly.
For the people I’ve loved and those who have loved me.
For what stayed and what left.
For every tear, lesson, storm and ridiculous moment of laughter.
For the experiences I wanted to freeze forever and the painful ones that eventually showed me something I needed to see.
I’m grateful for every single thing that brought me here.
And perhaps there’s a certain irony in creating something called Sheba Heart Retreats and then spending its first year taking my own heart on one hell of a retreat.
It loved.
It hurt.
It grieved.
It prayed.
It dreamed.
It learned.
It healed.
Perhaps I haven’t actually become a different woman at all.
Perhaps I simply stopped negotiating with myself about whether I was allowed to be entirely who I already was, the person others could see but I could not.
What a year. 🩷
Happy first birthday, Sheba Heart Retreats. Thank you for giving me a voice and for allowing me to bravely catalogue the change in myself that I want to help heal others with.
Here’s to another year of living, loving, learning and healing – entirely, authentically and unapologetically Me.
Letting the feather land… 🪶🌊🩷
And now, I’m off to the beach to touch the water and be with my Mother💙
