Spring 2022 Tri-Cities Women’s Retreat Updates

It’s all Happening!

Cue Kate Hudson a la Almost Famous.

In case you’ve missed it, my next women’s self-love retreat is officially open for ticket purchases.

I’m so stoked.

It will be held on Saturday, May 14th and tickets are $500. It’s an all day event with an add-on option to stay overnight and attend a morning workshop Sunday, May 15th as well for $200 more. All the info can be found on the retreat website, and I so hope you can join us!

I’ve been asked a few times why I decided to host women’s retreats. I always have a quick answer – you know, elevator pitch style – but never really go into detail. Today I thought I would give more insight into why these retreats are so near and dear to my heart. But before I get into it, I would love to have you join me during this day full of workshops and fun designed to help jumpstart your self-care journey and leave you feeling like an empowered and beautiful badass. Because you totally are.

Here is the event site to learn more about the transformation you should expect from attending, and more information about what’s included.

Here is the ticket site where you can purchase your tickets!

Now let’s get into this backstory…

Growing up in a Hispanic family comes with a certain level of judgement and expectations that my white friends didn’t seem to have to deal with. I had dozens of uncles, aunts, and cousins constantly giving me un-warranted feedback on every area of my life. I watched as my mom was constantly told she was too dark, or had gained too much weight, or cut her hair too short. Even from a young age I knew this was wrong and backwards, because my mom was constantly telling me I was smart and beautiful and I didn’t understand why her family wasn’t doing the same for her. This was the beginning of my understanding of the unrealistic expectations put on women by society to be perfect in every way.

I was a pretty nerdy kid, with a crazy style of my own that didn’t really fit into the fashion of the time. I was tiny, not breaking 100 pounds until my junior year of high school, with giant glasses and a really intensely weird personality that I usually wasn’t afraid to share with the world. But I was a pretty girl with a big booty and that garnered the interest of too many boys, and made a lot of girls pretty angry.

To this day I don’t understand hating someone because they’re pretty. But I digress.

It was easier for me at that point to be friends with all the guys, because they were nice to me and the girls were always much harder to make friends with. Needless to say, high school girls are mean and the ones at my high school were no exception. There were rumors about me that I was a big ol’ slut and the only reason all my friends were guys was because I was sleeping with them all. I had a couple of girlfriends who I still love and adore, but that was the point that I started to close myself off to female friendships. After graduation I found out that some of my guy “friends” participated in said rumors, and pretty soon I just didn’t want to make friends at all.

Fast forward to adulthood and I had some serious trust issues. That paired with finally having a name for the stressful feeling I constantly had – anxiety – and the deep sorrow I fell into sometimes – depression – and I was a hot mess.

After I had my daughter I was pretty lost. I was questioning a lot of friendships, my faith, and even my place in this world. No it wasn’t postpartum depression, it was regular old depression creeping in during my daughter’s toddlerhood and telling me I wasn’t good enough. I knew something had to change, so I started myself down my own bumpy, dark, confusing self-love path. I read a ton of books on spirituality, business, mental illness, and life in general, some that resonated with me and some that I couldn’t finish because I just couldn’t get into the ideals of the author. I put myself out there and tried to hang out with coworkers – which failed miserably.

Then in 2018 I came across an ad for a women’s retreat here in the Tri-Cities. I had never seen anything like this here. I didn’t know anyone who would be going. If you’ve ever experienced social anxiety you know that’s an immediate hard pass. But for some reason I felt called to attend and even though I tried to ignore it I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should buy a ticket. I talked it through with my husband, who in his ever-encouraging manner told me all the reasons he thought it was a good idea. So I went ahead and bought a ticket.

And y’all, that ticket changed my life.

I gave myself permission that day to go all in. I was vulnerable, I was honest, I shared openly, and I met some amazing women there who are still my friends to this day. In fact, the author Becky Benson who will be returning to the May retreat to present another journaling exercise, was the host of that retreat, and the next one I attended the following year. After her second retreat her life went in another direction and she had to let that piece of it go.

After that it was a whirlwind of growth and trying new things and being more open and honest with my loved ones and myself. It was 2 years of setting boundaries and standing up for myself and reading more books and joining networking groups and business coaching groups.

During that 2 years I was working on my business on the side, slowly but surely growing my client base and my following. The whole time I was considering hosting an event of some sort, but I wasn’t sure what it would look like. I knew I wanted it to be helpful for women, but didn’t feel qualified to create anything like that. I began offering self-love portrait sessions, which are empowering portrait sessions designed to pamper women and make them feel gorgeous and loved. Then in June of 2021 I realized: I could put together a retreat for women and get a bunch of guest presenters on board to share in their areas of expertise, and do mini portrait sessions for each attendee throughout the day.

But how the hell do you plan something like that with zero experience?

Well, you reach out to your friends.

I texted Becky and asked to buy her a coffee because I had this crazy idea. We met, she told me I wasn’t crazy and it sounded amazing and she wanted to help in any way she could… and the rest is history.

So there you have it.

The long, multi-faceted story of why I feel so called to be offering these retreats and bringing women together to form a new kind of women’s community sans judgement.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for being here.

And again, I would love to have you at my next retreat. Tickets can be purchased here and the retreat website is here.

If you have any questions you can fill out the attendee application on the bottom of the retreat page to get them answered!