The Retreat I Wanted to Leave

I almost left the Captiva retreat. Not because anyone was unkind, or because I didn't belong there. But because I could not believe that I did.

I arrived at a small retreat in Captiva, Florida, last July (2025). I was very excited for everything, and I thought I was ready to meet new people, to heal more. I was ready to say yes to life in a way I never had before. But my inner child, the one that said "people don't care, people don't stay anyway, why try," took over.

Within the first day, something triggered that hurt part of me. No one said or did anything wrong. But the part of me that spent a lifetime feeling unseen suddenly came rushing to the surface. So I hid for more than two days. I stayed under my weighted blanket, or way up in the top of the crow's nest of the beach house.

Part of me desperately wanted someone to notice, wanted someone to ask if I was okay. Another part of me kept saying to myself, it's okay. "They don't know you." "They probably think this is your process." "They're here healing too."

My mind never stopped. By the morning of the third day, I had made my decision that I was leaving. Not because the retreat wasn't beautiful or the people were unkind, but because I believed I didn't belong there.

I stood there in my room trying to figure out how to quietly gather my things and disappear without anyone noticing. Then Robby walked by. He almost kept walking, but then our eyes met. He asked me how I was doing.

I didn't sugarcoat it. I looked right at him and said, "I'm trying to figure out how the hell to get out of here." He didn't judge me. He didn't tell me I was wrong. He simply listened, and we sat down on the floor for a while and talked. Then he invited me downstairs for breakfast, knowing I had hardly eaten in days.

Part of me didn't want to go, because I knew if I went downstairs, I would stay. For me, giving these people one more chance changed everything. So I said yes.

That breakfast became one conversation. Then another, and another. The walls I had built around myself didn't come crashing down all at once. They softened, little by little, at each meal. Conversation by conversation, smile by smile. Somewhere along the way, I stopped wondering how to leave and started wondering how I had almost missed all of this.

The people I had been so afraid to get close to became people I laughed with, meditated with, cried with, hugged. People who would become part of my life after that retreat ended.

A year later, many of us gathered again on Zoom. We were no longer in the same beach house. We were spread across different states and countries. During a few quiet moments of silence, I looked at all their faces. Goosebumps covered my body. My eyes filled with tears. And all I wanted to do was reach through the screen and hug every single one of them.

That's when it hit me. A year earlier, I had been hiding under a weighted blanket, trying to disappear without any of them noticing. Now my heart had opened so wide that all it wanted to do was love the people who had become part of my journey.

Loneliness still visits me. Healing is still unfolding. There are still days when I wonder what my future will look like. But I'm not the woman who arrived in Captiva. And I'm not the woman who was trying to leave it either.

Sometimes we don't realize the moment that changes our lives until we're looking back at it. For me, it wasn't the retreat. It wasn't breakfast. It wasn't even one conversation. It was the moment I chose to stay.

And looking back now, I'm so incredibly grateful that I did.

Find Your People on the Connection Map