Beyond Self-Care | Restorative Retreats for Women Leaders

Women leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, practitioners, creatives, changemakers, and community organizers are often exceptionally good at tending to what matters.

We tend to our families. Our clients. Our teams. Our businesses. Our communities. Our causes. Our homes. Our relationships. Our visions for what could be.

We notice what needs doing, and we do it.

But who tends to the women tending to the world?

This question has been sitting on my heart for a long time, and lately, it has been asking me to go deeper, not only in my personal life and my one-on-one work with clients, but also in my community and through Wild Grace Retreats, where we can bring these ideas to life through embodied, relational, and communal practice.

Because this work can't only be about helping us recover from everything we're carrying. It also has to include discovering what enables us to remain connected to ourselves, supported in our relationships, and sustained in the work and lives we've devoted ourselves to.

And I think that requires a conversation that goes deeper than self-care.

Beyond Self-Care

I don't think women need another conversation telling us to practice more self-care.

That isn't because self-care doesn't matter. It does.

Rest matters. Nourishment matters. Nervous-system regulation matters. Having practices that help us reconnect with ourselves matters.

But self-care cannot become one more responsibility placed on a woman's plate when she is already carrying too much.

It cannot be something we only manage to squeeze into the margins of an already unsustainable life so that we can recover enough to keep going.

At some point, we have to ask a different question:

What would it take to shape our lives, relationships, work, and communities in ways that actually help sustain us in this work?

Not away from self-care, but beyond self-care, toward truly restoring our capacity, vitality, and precious energy while creating lives that don't continually require us to recover from them.

From Recovery to Capacity

There is a difference between recovering from depletion and cultivating the capacity to live and lead in a more sustainable way.

Sometimes we absolutely need to stop and recover.

But if we continually return to the same patterns of over-responsibility, inadequate support, blurred boundaries, or trying to hold everything ourselves, eventually we find ourselves needing to recover all over again.

So what if restoration gave us enough space not only to feel better, but to witness how we are living, leading, relating, giving, receiving, and carrying responsibility?

What if we could recognize the patterns of overgiving, over-responsibility, and overachievement that continually deplete us and reclaim our agency to do something differently?

Not simply replenishing ourselves so we can keep going, but really increasing our capacity to tend to what matters most without losing ourselves in the process.

What has been depleting me, and what genuinely restores me?

What am I carrying alone that doesn't need to be carried alone?

How would greater support change my capacity?

Where might stronger boundaries or meaningful change be called for?

What have I devoted myself to, and is the way I'm tending to it truly sustainable?

These are questions I'm increasingly interested in creating space for women to explore.

Not because there is one right answer. And not because women need another person telling them how to manage their lives better. But because I believe we need places where we can step outside our usual roles long enough to hear our own answers.

Tending Ourselves. Tending Relationships. Tending Community.

This is the framework at the heart of Wild Grace.

Tending ourselves means noticing ourselves before we reach complete depletion, listening inward, recognizing our limits, understanding what restores us, and learning to truly embody it.

Tending relationships asks us to consider how we communicate, establish boundaries, share responsibility, ask for support, give and receive, and remain connected without automatically taking responsibility for everything.

And last, but certainly not least, tending community naturally asks a larger question:

What becomes possible when women don't have to do all of this alone? When we collaborate? When we co-create?

Not simply networking. Not being surrounded by people while still carrying everything ourselves.

But reciprocity. Collaboration. Shared responsibility. Belonging.

Because individual resilience can only take us so far.

The Way We Tend Ourselves Shapes the Way We Lead

And this isn't only about feeling better.

For women who lead, our relationship with ourselves inevitably enters the spaces we lead.

It shapes how we respond to pressure. How we communicate. How we establish boundaries. How we delegate and share responsibility. How we navigate conflict. How well we listen. Whether we make space for the strengths and ideas of others or automatically step in and carry the outcome ourselves.

The way we tend ourselves shapes the way we relate. And the way we relate shapes the teams, businesses, organizations, families, and communities we lead.

What becomes possible when we lead from greater presence, clarity, vitality, self-awareness, and intention?

When we learn to collaborate, communicate, receive support, share responsibility, and make room for the gifts of others, we aren't only building our individual capacity.

We're building collective capacity.

Resourced women build resilient teams.

And ultimately, we're learning to build the capacity to lead well, without sacrificing ourselves in the process.

Practicing Another Way of Being

I don't want Wild Grace to simply create a beautiful but fleeting experience that women escape into for a day or a weekend, only to return home and resume everything exactly as it was.

I want to create spaces where we can practice and embody what a more sustainable way of living, leading, and relating actually looks and feels like.

Where we can slow down without disengaging.

Where we can notice ourselves in relationship...with our own inner experience, our work, and one another.

Where we can practice receiving as well as giving.

Where we can collaborate and co-create instead of automatically assuming responsibility for the entire outcome. (Phew!)

And where we have enough spaciousness before returning home to ask:

What did I notice within?

What do I want to carry home?

What needs to change so that I can?

Because the goal isn't simply to help women recover enough to keep adding more to their plates.

It's to create space to explore how we tend to what matters most, what we have devoted ourselves to, without losing ourselves in the process.

Experience Wild Grace: November 8

Wild Grace Women's Leadership Retreat

On November 8, we'll bring this work into an intimate Wild Grace Women's Leadership Retreat.

Created for women leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, practitioners, creatives, changemakers, and community builders, this experience will invite us to explore these ideas not only intellectually, but somatically, relationally, and in practice.

The retreat will be intentionally limited to 12 women, allowing us to create the presence, depth, connection, collaboration, and experiential work that isn't possible in a large gathering.

I'll be sharing the full experience very soon.

If you've been reading this and recognizing yourself somewhere in these words, I'd love to invite you to be among the first to know when registration opens.

JOIN THE NOVEMBER 8 WAITLIST HERE

Tending ourselves. Tending relationships. Tending community.