For years, I have tried to understand healing.

I mean that literally. I have studied it, trained in it, certified in it, built entire careers around it. I chased frameworks and modalities with the most earnest devotion, always believing that if I learned enough, if I understood enough, I would eventually arrive at the answer. The thing that actually works. The thing that gets people closer to feeling whole.

I don’t regret any of that searching. It shaped me. It sharpened my thinking. It gave me language and discernment. But what I know now, in my body, not just in theory, is much simpler and far less impressive on paper.

For me, healing has everything to do with beauty.

Not beauty as decoration. Not beauty as indulgence, although please don’t get me wrong, I really, really do love nice things. But beauty as a felt experience that softens something inside us and reminds us that life is worth being in.

That understanding sits at the heart of why I keep hosting retreats.

The Weight of Hosting

Hosting a retreat is far more vulnerable than people realize, at least it is for me.

There is a pressure that comes with inviting others into a space you’ve curated. A pressure that I have, at times, put entirely on myself. The responsibility to make it meaningful. To make it “worth it.” To somehow orchestrate an experience that delivers something profound.

For a long time, I believed that the work rested on my shoulders. That if someone left unchanged, that would mean I had failed. That the value of the retreat was proportional to how transformative the workshops were, how articulate the conversations sounded, or how much insight people could name at the end.

It’s taken me years to see how misguided that was.

What I actually do is organize. I curate. I pay attention to details that most people never think about. I choose locations carefully. I care deeply about pacing, food, light, texture, environment. I hold the container.

But the space does the work.

Nature does the work.

Beauty does the work.

The relief I felt when I finally understood that was enormous.

Why Beauty Matters More Than We Admit

There is something profoundly regulating about being surrounded by beauty.

I don’t mean excess or extravagance, but again, yes, I really do like nice things 😆. I mean spaces that feel intentional, cared for, and alive. Places where the nervous system receives that unspoken message that it’s safe to soften. That it doesn’t need to keep bracing.

This is why the physical environment matters SO much to me. Why the retreat spaces are lush, quiet, and undeniably beautiful. Why the rooms feel luxurious. Why the pool matters. Why the view matters. Why the plates of food are colorful, abundant, and alive.

It’s not about impressing anyone.

It’s about what happens internally when beauty becomes unavoidable.

When people are immersed in beauty, they stop defending themselves against life for a moment. Their bodies can settle. Their breathing changes. Their humor returns. Their edges soften. And from that place, something very honest becomes possible.

This is not escapism.

This is nourishment.

Stepping Away Without Running Away

I am very clear about this: The purpose of a retreat is not to escape your life.

If the goal were escape, we would all need to keep escaping forever.

It’s about making deposits into your internal account. The kind you can draw from when “real life” inevitably asks more of you again, when stress shows up, when grief shows up, when responsibility shows up, because we know it always will.

When you step out of your day-to-day patterns, intentionally, something recalibrates. Perspective shifts. And this isn’t because anything dramatic happens, but because the wheel stops spinning long enough for you to feel yourself again.

People often tell me that the most meaningful moments of the retreat are not the scheduled ones. They happen over the long dinners, where we all just sit and hang out around the table, enjoying the most delicious meals. Or they happen by the pool, in the laughter of when someone, *cough, cough, me* confesses the truth of what lives on their Kindle library. It’s in the conversations that wander and deepen without any agenda.

That doesn’t surprise me at all.

Real connection can’t be scheduled. It emerges when people feel safe enough to be unguarded.

Connection Without Performance

What makes these retreats special has very little to do with me or Matt, despite how visible our roles are.

Yes, we put a ton of thought into the workshops, and yes, of course, the conversations we have there are incredibly intentional. But the real magic lives in the spaces between. In the honesty that surfaces when there’s no pressure to be impressive, insightful, or healed.

Connection without pretenses. Without hierarchy. Without expectations.

Human to human.

I’ve watched strangers become mirrors for one another within days. I’ve watched laughter crack open grief without either needing to be explained. I’ve watched people remember parts of themselves they thought were gone, simply because they were finally relaxed enough to notice them again.

That kind of connection only happens when we interrupt the momentum of daily life. When we step out long enough to drop in.

What I Know Now

If I am honest, the most important thing I have learned through all of this is not about healing as a process, but about life as an experience.

When I’m able to feel beauty, I’m okay.

When I can see it, taste it, sit inside it, share it with others, something essential inside me aligns. That doesn’t make pain disappear. It doesn’t eliminate hardship. Life will always continue to life. But it gives those things context.

Beauty makes life feel inhabitable again.

That may not be everyone’s truth. But it’s mine.

And that is what this retreat is actually about.

We’re not chasing transformation. There’s no empty promises to fix anything. We’re not arriving at some elevated version of yourself.

It’s about living inside beauty long enough to remember why being here, why your life, why YOU matter.

Everything else is secondary.