Hello Reader,
I want to say something I've been sitting with for a while.
I know that some of you read my emails about the ROAR Retreat and think — she's really trying to sell me on this.
I understand why it feels that way. And I'm not going to pretend I don't want you there — because I do. Deeply.
But I want to tell you the real reason why. Because it has nothing to do with filling spots.
I have been there looking out over the jungle to the ocean beyond. I have felt stress fall away from my body in a way I don't ever remember experiencing. I have felt the air change the moment I stepped on the property. I felt me change. Even more than that, I have talked to multiple women who had their lives changed by going to Imiloa. I was told about its almost magical properties before I ever went. While I was there, I met women who were now preparing to lead their own retreats — after experiencing something profound there themselves years before. They all had the same thought I have now: I want everyone to feel this.
And how do I describe the feeling? I would say it is like finally being restored. Like the scars of a life fully lived are given a healing salve.
By now, many of you know I had my own awakening there — along with other women, and my husband. What makes Imiloa unique is hard to fully put my finger on, but I'll try.
Imiloa sits in what scientists call an epicenter of negative ions — what Dr. Jacob of Harvard called "vitamins of the air." Your home or office has roughly 100 of these per cubic centimeter. A waterfall generates up to 100,000. Imiloa has a river, a waterfall, the jungle, and the ocean — all the biggest generators of negative ions in one place. That feeling of stress leaving my body the moment I arrived? There's real science behind it. That's your nervous system being fed something it has been starved of for years.
Costa Ricans believe that being of service is the highest calling, and the staff embodies this completely. Every person there cares for you in a way that makes you feel like you truly don't have a single care in the world. The food is clean and alive with the kind of flavor you remember from a tomato or an apple as a child — locally sourced, organic, prepared in ways that feel both new and like coming home. A friend who led her own retreat there told me the entire group gave the kitchen staff a standing ovation. Every night.
And the peace. There in the jungle there is a peace that envelops you — and your body, which these days is so often on high alert, in some stage of burnout, finally relaxes. With your brain free from managing the details of life, you rest. Not a lying-in-bed rest. I'm talking about living and doing, but in such a way that you are fully present in it — nothing else. Even the concerns you left at home aren't there anymore. From that vantage point, all of life seems to come into focus in a new way.
Imiloa is not like any other "vacation" you have experienced. Because it isn't a vacation. It is a stepping into a green sanctuary, a haven. And every single time I think of it, I think the same thing:
I want this for everyone.
I'd love us all to live in this every day, but we know that isn't possible. What is possible is to experience it once — and let it stay with you. Let it continue to live in you and imbue your life going forward. I experienced that. And you may decide, as others before you have, to take someone else there someday too.
I have one goal for this retreat that has nothing to do with business.
I want every person who attends to feel exactly what I felt: "This is the best thing I could have ever done for myself."
Not because five days in Costa Rica fixes everything. But because five days truly away from your regular life — in a place that feeds every part of you with its beauty, its food, its community, surrounded by kindness in luxurious comfort — in that place, you will hear your voice. Not the one that comes from fear or conditioning. The voice that is uniquely yours, the one that has been drowned out.
You will meet yourself again. The real you.
I built this retreat because I wanted to give other women the experience that changed me — and so many others I have met.
I hope that if something in you is feeling the pull, if you find yourself thinking I need this, you will listen to that.
I did. When my close friend Yvonna Kopacz Wright — who had hosted her own retreat at Imiloa — first told me about it, I felt something almost like a lightning bolt in my chest. A knowing that I was supposed to do this. Since making that decision, I've often wondered: was this for the path I'm supposed to be on, or was I being put in this position to open a door for someone else who needs it?
I've decided it's both.
Six weeks from today, these women will be standing in that jungle. If something in you is stirring, now is the time.
If you have questions, write me. I personally answer every email.
With more love than you probably expect from a newsletter,
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