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Dear Nurturers,

It's raining in that delicious 'it's fall and I'm cozy inside' way as I write this, a few hours later than I meant to. You see, I got distracted in the grocery store produce section today by some of this season's local bounty and was inspired to buy all the ingredients for a warm 'bowl' of brown rice, roasted beets like candy, ribbons of radicchio, crumbly feta, baby kale & toasted walnuts with a tahini maple dressing.

One thing I am certain of: In order for our dreams to grow, to nourish, sustain and develop them, we must feed them by feeding ourselves.

I often think about how the pioneers must have felt, faced with a new land and all the infinite possibilities it contained. How does one take an idea and nurture it to life without getting buried in overwhelm? There's my never-ending to-do list and important things to accomplish under deadline (edit the business plan draft! design menu for November retreat! find local makers to sponsor the gifts in our Self Care Starter Kits for the retreat! p.s. know anyone?). It might seem counter-intuitive (mind the pun) to spend an hour chopping and toasting and tossing this lunch-for-one. However, it has never been more vital to me than now to understand the link between the attention I give myself and the things I am desiring in my 'outside life.' Everything reflects everything.

So, I played with food for a bit. And it made me happy.

As I chopped, I marveled at the play of colour between the deep purple of the radicchio and the vibrant yellow of the golden beets – the beauty of food sends literal shivers up my spine (anyone else a Chef's Table fan?!). Cooking for me is less a science and more an intentional matchmaking service. I roamed around Loblaws today, radicchio in hand, holding it up against various produce until I came upon the beets and said out loud: “Oh, Radicchio you would LOVE this!”

This creative process and the direct tie it has to love is what Nurture: A Retreat is all about, and it is the approach I wish to infuse everything about my retreat centre project with. For me, it's food. For you, it might be words, paint, systems, flowers, spreadsheets, stretches, you name it! Maybe when your client can finally hit that pose, or when your dahlias bloom, or when you organize the seating chart, you feel that same shiver.

It's a combination of yes-thank-you-love-truth-beauty-rightness that is felt from within. Everything about it confirms. Importantly, it is there for no other reason than for its own sake. No agenda, only listening to what is being asked to do and approaching that task with love. It is from this place that dreams are born and realized.

If you've been along on the journey so far, you'll know that the dream I have is a big one. It's a new-paradigm, might-cause-spiritual-stretch-marks kind of dream. It scares the shit out of me. But, I'm bringing that shit to the garden – letting it air out; working it into the soil and using it to grow things. Ideas. Lady Balls. Community.

If you want to get in touch with this place in yourself where nurturing of this sort happens, a place where you create without guilt and it infuses your own life/business/relationships with direct access to your dreams, consider joining us this November.

The Nurture team and I have been carrying this weekend in our hearts for a long time now. We're so ready to meet and support you when you arrive, set your bags down, let your shoulders drop, and breath a deep sigh of coming home to someone you haven't truly spent time with in a while: yourself.

We still have a few spaces left. Got questions? REALLY want to come and need a customized payment plan? Let's talk.

I'm curious – what is it that brings a shiver up YOUR spine? What is your language of creativity? Send me an email, find me on Instagram. Let me know!

Much love,

Sonja

p.s. Leaders who are readers: check out Pioneering the Possible by Scilla Elworthy (3-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee) – it's a book that found me at my local library the other day. I am only two chapters in and it's already changed the way I think about big ideas, the internal and external resistance that accompanies them, and what to do about it.