06/01/2026
✨ahem✨ Is this thing on??
I’m breaking silence again to report that the Unbroken Woman: Mothered was an absolute success. And honestly? I think I needed this retreat just as much as the women who attended it. 🙏
This was year three. SHEEEEEEEEEW.
Our first year was our showing year. Our second year was our growing year. But this year? This is our glowing year.
Y’all, these women did really HARD work. I mean, it’s the kind of work that leaves mascara on t-shirt sleeves and makes you genuinely question your sanity! At the same time! 😂 Everyone’s nervous systems completely tapped out, people laughing so hard one minute they can barely breathe… then crying the next because somebody finally said the thing they’ve carried alone for years.
We talked attachment styles, mother wounds, vulnerability, resiliency, shame, identity formation, emotional labor, and what it means to spend your life mothering everyone else while still grieving the ways you may have never been fully mothered yourself. You name it and we probably talked about it…
And whew. The vulnerability in that space was nothing short of magical.
Women who walked in guarded left hugging each other like old friends. Walls came down. Stories came out. Shame loosened its grip a little. There were moments where the room felt so emotionally attuned and psychologically safe that you could nearly feel everyone exhale at the same time. It’s almost like holding space with other women is good for you or something… Check out that science here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301051121000508
Which feels especially meaningful because if I’m being real for a second, last year stretched ya girl a little beyond her own limits. Yes yes yes, I overshot my dreams. I bit off more than I could chew trying to make everything bigger, better, more impressive, more polished, blah blah blah.
Anyways. Some things went beautifully. Some things absolutely did not. 😂
But I think that season taught me something way more important: the magic is never found by doing more. It’s found by doing this work well; somewhere along the way, I think I forgot why I started doing retreats in the first place… and listen, if your jam is some hyper-curated “wellness” experience where everyone takes aesthetic pictures (while holding green smoothies), pretending they’ve transcended human suffering, then that is super awesome. YAY!
But for The Unbroken Woman, the goal is to create spaces where women can tell the truth about themselves, wholly and in a contained environment. I wanted spaces where women could rest without guilt, and be cared for through food made by someone else. Where laughter and grief are allowed to coexist in the same breath, and invited in like friends. Where someone can ugly cry at 2:00pm, laugh until they p*e their pants by dinner, and still know they are deeply loved by bedtime.
(Although to be clear, we still very much support weighted blankets, emotional support snacks, and cozy ambiance. We just wanna eat more than granola and green tea on retreat… Which is why we have Chinnu. 😂)
So, as a therapist, getting to witness the bonds that formed that weekend through both grief and joy was one of the greatest honors of my professional life. There is something profoundly moving about watching women recognize themselves in one another’s stories and realizing, often for the first time in a very long time, that they are not alone in what they carry.
So to every woman who trusted me with your hearts: thank you.
You made this retreat glow. 🩷🙏✨
