Courting the Essential Self
A Five-Day Retreat in Mendocino, CA
For Girls Entering Junior or Senior years, and
Those Who Have Just Graduated 

There comes a moment in many young women’s lives where the deeper questions begin arriving…

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Who am I, really?
What is mine to offer?
What feels true in me beneath pressure, comparison, and expectation?
How do I find my path?
What am I going to do with my life?

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This retreat was born from those questions.

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This August, we are offering a 5-day retreat for young women entering their junior or senior year of high school, or newly graduated, centered around the Japanese concept of Ikigai: often translated as “a reason for being.”

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Ikigai points toward the meeting place between:

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• what you love,

• what you’re naturally gifted in,

• what feels meaningful,

• what the world deeply needs

• and how those meet to support you financially in the world. 

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At the heart of our time together will be helping young women begin listening for that place within themselves.

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Over five days, we’ll move through a carefully held journey:
arriving, descending beneath social identity and performance,
allowing truth and authentic expression to emerge, and integrating what they discover as they prepare to launch more fully into adulthood.

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 *** Portraiture that encapsulates their essential self

will be offered.***

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The middle days of the retreat will focus deeply on Ikigai and vocation ~ not simply career, but calling.

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Together we’ll explore:

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• What are the inherent gifts I naturally carry?

• What comes alive in me?

• What qualities do others genuinely experience in my presence?

• How do I identify and nourish my essential self?

• How do my gifts meet the needs of the world?

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The girls will reflect these gifts back to one another,

often seeing in each other what they cannot yet fully see in themselves.

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We’ll explore the relationship between:
body, mind, spirit, and heart.

We’ll work with:

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• body awareness

• friendship dynamics

• nervous system regulation

• boundaries and voice

• emotional truth

• creativity and movement

• solitude and reflection

• the masks we wear

• and the courage it takes to truly be seen.

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This retreat includes:

 

authentic portraiture,
ocean immersion,
forest walks,
dance in the dark,
art and expression,
celebratory dinner,
ritual,
music,
laughter,
stillness,
and honest conversation.

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Held in a beautiful home on 22 acres in Mendocino near ocean and forests, this experience is designed to help young women step outside the noise long enough to reconnect to something deeper and more enduring within themselves.

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Not who the world tells them to be.

 

But who they actually are.

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