Living in Gratitude

At retreats we take many opportunities to go both within yourself and a deeper connection to those around you.  Some of the repeated patterns of our retreats are:

Releasing Item Ritual
As women who have been divinely gathered together, we will give and receive many unexpected, but sacredly intended, gifts to and from one another.  In this weaving ourselves together, one small but, beloved tradition truly symbolizes these spontaneous, intangible blessings we both give and receive at retreat. The Releasing Ritual gives us all an opportunity to bring an object from home that has served its purpose in our lives to be joyfully released into the life of another.  Please take some time to reflect and decide upon the object or objects you wish to carry into this ritual.  Past items offered have included jewelry, past retreat crafts, divination tools, medicinal plants, books, candles and pictures.  Your item should be any object you have enjoyed and can freely release so that it can find its next intended among the sisterhood present at retreat.  The beauty of this tradition illustrates what happens when we let go with gratitude of that which no longer serves us.  That which is needed appears when you take home an item released by another that may now serve you.  (Thank you to Kate for the wonderful explaination)

Gratitude Boxes
It is with much gratitude that we thank you for taking time for yourself to attend a retreat.  In the main space we have Gratitude boxes for each participant with index cards and pens available which are provided for you to use throughout retreat to say motivational things about other retreat participants. At times during retreat you might have a conversation with someone that moved you, index cards are provided for you to write out what you feel about them. You can write on your index card what you feel about one particular person or for everyone in general. The whole purpose of these cards is for each woman to feel special and important. Whenever you have time to fill these out is entirely up to you and is not mandatory. After you write on these cards there will be a box with each woman's name on it - slip the card into their box. At the end of the retreat, you will take your box home with you and read your cards at home, remembering certain wonderful times you had at retreat.  Over the years many now have started to bring little gifts for everyone so there is quite an assortment of items within this box at the end of the weekend.

Gratitude Gifts
Due to the retreat being an experience, all workshops have a momento which everyone will walk away with at the end of the weekend.  For example at the Embracing Your Divine retreat each woman went home with a coin scarf skirt and they still come back each time.  Another example is our Spring retreat usually includes a ring of flowers for your hair and those tend to come back year after year as well.