How unfamiliar I am with stillness when first leaving the office on retreat. How carefully constructed my busyness and the insisting voices of “should’a, would’a, could’a”. As if the world will fall apart without my constant attention.
It’s the morning after my week-long Women’s Wisdom Retreat on the wild and gorgeous Hawaiian island of Molokai. With a usable land area of only 260 square miles, Molokai is 38 miles long and 10 miles wide. Yesterday we hiked to a point where we stood on the cliffs at the narrowest point on one coast and easily saw the top of the cliffs on the other coast 10 miles away.
All of us who are striving to lead from wisdom can benefit from regular doses of inspiration, which is one of the reasons why I developed these annual women’s retreats. This time away supports women from all walks of life including, leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, authors, and managers, to relax and begin to develop a more authentic and effective leadership style. For instance, this year we learned to employ the four steps to personal power that can be used to overcome the three detractors: self-doubt, shrinking into smallness, and self-dismissal. Our caring, compassionate truth telling felt vulnerable yet awakened new possibilities for more effective action.
I convened my first Women’s Wisdom Retreat on Molokai at The Hui Ho’olana Retreat Center, in 2012. A living sanctuary, the verdant grounds of the ‘Hui’ welcomes us each year. A diverse group, we hail from corporate, nonprofit, and community leadership positions, artists and movement specialists, retirees and college graduates.
Together we discover the ways feminine wisdom flourishes in a caring circle of women peers. This wisdom retreat is an annual gathering every May. Visit the retreat page if you are interested in joining us in the future.
Since 2003, I have been co-hosting retreats, in places such as Europe, Mexico, and California. My esteemed co-hosts included Pia Gyger, Anna Gamma, and Nikolaus Brantschen, Directors of the Lassalle Institute; Fay Freed, Co-founder of The Wisdom Connection; Tina Kelly Green, photographer and Reiki master; and Dianne Morrison, Director of Effective Action Consulting. Each gathering was unique, gorgeous, and a week of timely breakthroughs and welcome change for each attendee.
This morning, after the women from our 2018 retreat have flown home, I am spiraling into an inner silence. Never dropping straight into silence, like a stone falling from the top of the well into the dark waters below, I spiral round and round into myself. I’ve learned to be patient, to expect that as I let go, I first receive any unloved, wobbly, nascent voices lurking below the daily press of running the retreat.
Part of me wants to jump back into busyness. And yet, after seven days, I’m ready to stay longer in the silence. Welcoming these wild, and often unwieldy first thoughts takes a certain courage. Yet only by embracing them do they relax their stubborn grip so I can sink further into the quiet, inner well of wisdom. My heart yearns for the softening. My belly hungers to fill with the richness of my creative soul.
The women’s faces arise, how they left the island yesterday bright with discoveries and a newfound strength, more powerful than their fears. I remember the moment when our eyes met in mutual recognition, the moment when each one broke open and spoke her deepest fear, the moment when she accepted the joy, or the moment when she discovered she’d become funny again.
We now share a desire to more completely own our place in the world, and a commitment to do our part and create a viable future for all life
This morning, as gray light reveals my view of koa trees, palms, red earth, ocean, and far-off Lanai, below the excess thoughts, worries, and to do lists, lies my own authentic essence. A delicious quiet surrender and a willingness to step into my next level of leadership arises with the dawn.
Click here to see a video of Karen speaking directly to women leaders.
Mahalo to Rikki Cooke for this gorgeous photo!