Experience your becoming (a retreat, transformation, and a cricket)

Sometimes you don't know what you need until you get there.

That's what happened to me last year at a retreat that serves as the context and inspo for a retreat I'm co-hosting this year, The Becoming Experience Retreat. So let me take you back to last year, when I went on a retreat and came back changed…

The retreat was hosted by be here now in Seattle and with who led this week of rest and who signed up, it ended up centering the experiences of people of color.  The theme was root & riise . The vibe was set from the beginning and focused on being present to transformation, embracing rest and movement, and understanding what it means to show up fully as yourself. Overall, it was deeply moving, included some shifts for me in declaring how I want to live life (hint: more boldly and with less fear!), and planted a seed of renewal and restoration that I'm still cultivating today.

Many of us arrived at the retreat really tired and never having been on an international retreat. We arrived with a “tired in my bones” type of tiredness. Untethered. Maybe a little fragmented. We were holding so much (the weight of work, of family, of what the world asks of you just to exist in it, the list goes on). For me personally, I knew I needed a break, but I didn't exactly know what to expect while on the retreat.

The vibe

The retreat weaved together movement, learning, and rest: yoga, walks to the ocean, time in nature watching whales migrate past, workshops, journaling & reflection time, and spaces for storytelling and sharing. (Some of the workshops I led, which included teaching micropractices for everyday living, exploring ancestral wisdom and strengths with identity, and exploring our connection with nature from an ecological perspective (that we ourselves are part of nature even despite being surrounded by our digital worlds!).

In thinking back, I realize that the retreat offered an invitation to pivot. Not a fix, but a shift in how we frame ourselves, our experiences, and our values. It was a space to expand rather than shrink, to stop apologizing for the full range of who you are, and to remember and reflect on what formed you. 

It was about remembering where you came from, and pivoting into centering fullness, joy, and stepping into our whole selves.

The learning was incredible but it wasn't the main event. The main event was the vulnerability that happened in the room between people and with ourselves.

Last year's retreat was held in Mexico during Día de los Muertos. Being in a place that honors grief and communal mourning so openly and beautifully, added a layer that's hard to put into words. But the best way I can describe it is that it gave permission for me to be vulnerable with  processing my own grief, to go deeper, explore, and de-throne fear and pursue life more boldly holding multiple truths and facets of myself. 

The cricket

This all came from an experience with a cricket.

For context: I strongly dislike crickets. This dislike is a fear rooted in a very specific, memorable childhood incident. 

On the first night of the retreat, a cricket found its way into my room and into my bathroom. Another attendee graciously removed the cricket. Then it came back. And then she came back and removed again. Phew!

By the end of the retreat, after a few days of writing, reflecting, moving my body, and sitting in circles with people who I began to felt really connected to, I opened my door the second to last morning and laying dead in front of my door was the cricket.

It felt like a symbol of the work I'd done in this retreat. Fear had to come, be explored and be wrestled with, but it also had to die and not rule my experiences.

This was a reminder that the things we carry, our oldest fears, our most stubborn stories about who we are and what we're “allowed” to be, don't just dissolve on their own. They have to be encountered. And then, through healing work and spaces, they stop running the show.

That's what this year's The Becoming Experience Retreat is really about. Not leaving yourself behind and not letting yourself be held back by your struggles or fears, but stepping more fully into yourself with boldness, reflection, and with other people who are doing the same right alongside you.

This year's retreat is open to people of the global majority who are ready to stop shrinking and fully expand into who they are. If you're tired, untethered, or somewhere in between, you're exactly who this was designed for and we'd love for you to be there.