EWP RETREAT 2026

Our theme for this year’s retreat, was Saying Yes to Yourself and Your Unique Brilliance, and naturally, part and parcel of that, is the need for self-care, so we were each welcomed into our temporary boudoirs with this beautiful quote of Eleanor Brownn’s:

“Rest and self-care are so important. When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve others from the overflow. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.”

And with that gentle reminder, our annual retreat at Vincentia on the NSW south coast began and for the best part we were blessed with delightfully warm Summer’s-end weather, which many of us later took advantage of to stroll to the close-by beach. There were also a couple of secluded little bays, and for once in a long, long time, I ventured further than dipping my toes into the surf - and it was like immersing myself in a salty bath of coolishly warm champagne. In fact, it had been so long, I had forgotten how buoyant and refreshingly cleansing sea water is. Far beyond skin deep.

However, back to dry land, where we enjoyed our usual Friday evening’s meal together, catching up with old friends, and getting acquainted with the three ladies joining us for the first time at our retreat. Let’s face it, what’s not to love when women bring together delicious food to share, with lashings of laughter and joy!

Most then had a pleasant evening winding down from the usual performance of ‘getting away’ for the weekend. Some went for an evening stroll, and two of us made a hasty return to the Highlands to retrieve forgotten material.

Next morning after breakfast we got straight into Tisiola’s workshop, where the foundations for our quest to saying Yes, to Ourselves and our Unique Brilliance were laid. As Tisiola stressed at the beginning of the workshop, she wanted this to be less informational and more transformational for each one of us.

This was the day we wanted to claim our rightful place as equals in the world where historically, women have been confined and suppressed into a status of ‘less than’ for millennia. We have been indoctrinated through words and actions, that as long as we are useful, agreeable and self-sacrificing, then we are worthy of our second-place status in the world. Of course, not all women have suffered through this indoctrination, but I am sure, all women know of its existence and persistence down through the ages.

Unfortunately, this has meant that over time, many women grow to doubt and suppress their own gifts, dimming their light and becoming shadows of other people.  Helping others to shine more brightly, at the expense of dimming their own light.

We began by working on our own, setting our intention for the weekend, by truly listening into ourselves, and then determining what saying Yes to ourselves would mean for each of us.  Part of this listening was to remember the last time we had truly listened to ourself, without judgement, and sadly for me, I could not even recall when that was!  We also reflected on what we believed our unique brilliance was, why it was important for us to know this, and those who wanted to, shared this with the rest of us.  

Then, still working on our own, we set about identifying our unique brilliance through self-discovery. Reflecting on the following:-

•     When we felt most like ourselves?

•     What strengths others saw in us?

•    What parts of ourselves we have learned to hide or downplay?

• What would saying to myself today, look like?

  
  

After completing these exercises, and discussing them, we broke up into pairs and each person shared for two or three minutes either a moment when we felt proud of ourself, or, a time we felt we had overcome something difficult. The partner then had to reflect back one strength they had heard. Very interesting, because often what we regard as negative traits in our stories, are perceived entirely different (even positive), from another’s point of view. 

These were challenging exercises, because let’s face it how often do we sit ourselves down and ask ourselves these questions? Also challenging because ‘In order to love who you are – you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.’  You must embrace yourself, warts and all, while at the same time stripping back the layers of untruths both you and others have told you about yourself. And that is not easy. It is not painless. And there is no quick fix. Instead, there is a lot of work involved in dis-powering fear, silencing self-criticism, and discarding the judgements of others. Years and years of layering, submerging, and hiding our light, in order to ‘fit in’ to be ‘accepted’ to appear other than who we were born to be. Our beautiful selves!

This returning to ourselves, rather than continuing to be a copy, a reflection, or maybe just a faint and dim version of ourselves, is a choice we can either embrace, or not.  We can choose to live our life authentically as our true self, resisting conformity, and any external pressures which deny our specific unique traits to shine, or we can wither on the vine.

But in order to arrive at that choice, we need to reflect deeply on what saying yes to ourselves entails and to understand where and what barriers we have placed around ourselves. And then - if we choose to say yes to living our authentic life - set about dismantling the barricades, hurdles and roadblocks we have erected and maintained for most of our lives. Free ourselves from the versions we have allowed ourselves and other people to create for us to live.

This can be achieved by learning to practise and trust our innate inner knowing rather than living our lives along the well-trodden path of fear and habit.  Because our higher self always knows what is best for us; we just have to listen to it - and then make our choice. And when we get stuck or lost along life’s merry confusing way – all we have to do, is remember how this saying yes to ourselves and our unique brilliance today, makes us feel – and we will be led back to our true beautiful selves. Work on it, and trust yourself, because you are meant to be here, at this time, now – as your Authentic Self!  Not as a replica, a shadow of, nor someone else’s version of who you should be. As Your Self!

And yes,  ‘unlearning’ can often  be more difficult than ‘learning’, however, having spent my entire adult life (like so many women), downplaying my strengths and unique brilliance, I have decided to shine a light on my repertoire, and live the rest of my days expanding and improving and finding ways to use my talents as best I can to serve others. I know this is possible, because it has been quoted:

Now briefly before I go – we had a delicious Thai meal locally that evening and woke to gentle rain the next morning. But all was well, because we had extra sleep-in time; a lovely meditation and ended our retreat with an interesting, playful way of expressing ourselves in characters out of Rumi’s poem, "The Guest House."

And speaking of Rumi, I would like to end this blog with another of his wise and appropriate poem’s entitled To Each is Given:-

God never gave His bigger beasts a sting

He gave it to the bee

With an invisible wing.

And with the skill of storing

Sweetness in the hive

The silkworm spins its gossamer

In order to survive.

However large, the elephant

Has no such subtle skill

God gives to each his powers

His wonders to fulfill.

Toodle pip for now

Bella.h.

February 2026