A five-day retreat for mothers
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Photo: Maddy Baker / Unsplash
You have been holding it together for so long you forgot that wasn’t supposed to be the whole job.
The dishes. The appointments. The emotional labor. The invisible thousand-piece project of keeping everyone alive, okay, and loved. Somewhere in all that doing, you stopped being able to hear yourself think.
You’ve been saying, “I just need a few days away” for over a year. Then something gets in the way: the schedule, the guilt, the logistics, the feeling that needing to leave shouldn’t be this hard.
But you do need it.
Not a girls’ trip. Not a spa day. Not another surface-level pause for a soul-level exhaustion.
Five days where:
someone else cooks every meal and washes every dish.
you are not responsible for anyone’s emotional weather but your own.
you stop performing okay and hear what’s true underneath.
That’s The Threshold.
What these five days are
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El Caracol, Pojoaque Valley, New Mexico
Thirty minutes north of Santa Fe, we’ll gather in the high desert of the Pojoaque Valley, near the Pueblo of Pojoaque, one of the six Northern Tewa-speaking Rio Grande Pueblos. Archeological studies date habitation in the historic Pojoaque Pueblo area as early as 500 AD, and Pojoaque has long been known by its Tewa-speaking neighbors as “Po-suwae-geh,” the water drinking or gathering place. This is not empty desert. This is a place shaped by generations of people, story, survival, culture, water, and community. We come as guests, with respect for the land and the people who have belonged to it across centuries.
El Caracol, named for its striking spiral shape, was designed by architect Allen McNown and built brick by brick by the Friedman family, each adobe formed by hand by the people who would go on to live and love there for over forty years. The architecture revolves around a spiral staircase at the heart of the home, and there’s something about that, a home literally built around a spiral, that feels exactly right for five days of coming back to yourself.
The house gives us room to gather and room to disappear when we need to. There are spaces for circle, conversation, shared meals, journaling, rest, quiet walks, and the kind of unplanned connection that often becomes the thing people remember most. Outside, two fenced acres hold a hot tub and pool, open sky, desert air, and the slow sound of Nambe Creek along the back of the property. Cell signals are spotty. Ubers don’t really exist. Life in the Pojoaque Valley moves at a slower pace, and that is part of the invitation.
This is where we’ll spend five days together. Not in a hotel. Not in a polished retreat center. In a beautiful, specific home with edges, history, warmth, and space enough for ten women to exhale. -
Morning facilitation from 10 to 12, where we go deep together in circle. These sessions are held in the MotherWorthy tradition: somatic, relational, tender.
Afternoons are yours. Read, sleep, sit in the sun, walk the creek, or do nothing, we mean it.
Afternoon facilitation from 2 to 4, where we continue the thread.
Evenings are for gathering: a bonfire, community singing led by a song leader, witchy time around the fire, the kind of conversation that only happens when everyone has stopped performing.
Massage will be available to book on one of the afternoons. There's a yoga offering for those who want it. Nambe Creek runs along the back of the property and several of us will probably end up sitting beside it (or in it) without planning to.
Every single meal is cooked and cleaned up, not by you.
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This is personal transformation work that does not stay private. By attending this retreat, you begin to reclaim the parts of you that got buried beneath responsibility, devotion, and the quiet pressure to keep everything moving. You will have space to hear your own voice again, name what still belongs to you, and feel what your body already knows before your life talks you out of it. You will be held in deep connection with women who are also standing at the edge of something, witnesses who can help you remember you are not alone in the unraveling. You leave more grounded, more honest, more able to choose from sovereignty instead of survival. And you leave with a circle that holds the work after the retreat ends, because the real return is not to Santa Fe. It is to yourself.
Your guides
Drea and Justine are both graduates of MotherWoven, Beth Berry's transformative facilitator licensing program, and have each been in Beth's retreats and other programs for many years. We are not newcomers to this work; we are deeply formed by it and bringing everything we've learned into this container.
If you've been to a MotherWorthy retreat, you know what it feels like to be held in this tradition. We carry that lineage, and this is the next chapter of it.
If you haven't been before, you're in the right place. You don't need to know anything going in except that you are tired and you are welcome here exactly as you are.
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I'm a mother of two boys, sixteen months apart, and I came to this work because I needed it. Not because I had answers, but because I was lost in the middle of it, resentful, overwhelmed, quietly despairing, and desperate for other mothers who would name it instead of rushing toward fine.
I found Beth Berry and Motherworthy in the haze of the two-under-two years, and it changed everything. I've spent five years in her work, completed her MotherWoven facilitator licensing program, and have been holding community space for mothers through For Love & Babes for just as long. I came to this through experience, not a clinical path, and I want to be honest about that. What I offer is facilitated space, honest conversation, and the kind of slow witnessing that most of us never get enough of.
I'm still in the long middle myself. I'm not on the other side of this. I'm in it with you.
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Justine: I’m a mother of two, a recovering corporate drone — also known as an entrepreneur — and a wild and wise woman still learning how to live without abandoning herself.
I came to this work because I was angry, resentful, and done being the capable one who was quietly disappearing. My breaking-open season came from the convergence of many things: career disruption, toxic leadership, being silenced, marriage, family roles, default parenthood, and the slow realization that I felt utterly alone inside my own life.
Through this work, I have come home to myself in ways I didn’t know were possible. Not because life became easy, but because I now have tools, language, community, and a deeper trust in my body and intuition.
I’m not here as a therapist. I’m here as a facilitator, witness, and pattern-breaker. I bring lived experience, presence, painful honesty, and truth with tenderness.
I have not perfected sovereignty. I practice it daily. I’m in it with you. Rooted enough now to help hold the lantern while we walk.
The details
When: October 15-19, 2026. Arrive Thursday, depart Monday.
Where: El Caracol, Pojoaque Valley, New Mexico, thirty minutes north of Santa Fe. A vehicle is recommended; cell service is limited, and that is a feature, not a bug.
What's included: Five days and four nights lodging, all meals prepared and cleaned up for you, morning and afternoon facilitation sessions in the MotherWorthy tradition, community singing with a song leader, bonfire evenings, optional yoga, optional massage booking, hot tub access, creek access, and all the unscheduled time your nervous system is desperately craving.
Investment: $1650-$1950, with variability based on room configuration. Equity scholarships are available; if cost is the thing standing between you and this, reach out before you talk yourself out of it.
Capacity: Small and intentional. This is not a conference, and everyone will know your name by the second day.
Photo: Gabriel Tovar / Unsplash
Photo: Bryan Kaufman / Unsplash
The guilt is the last thing we want to name
Because it’s probably already rolling around in your mind: that little voice saying you shouldn’t need this. That a good mother wouldn’t struggle this much. That the money should go somewhere else. That your partner will have to manage. That your kids will be fine, but what if they’re not.
That voice is not the truth. It’s the system talking.
Your kids don’t need you to disappear into their care. They need you to come back to yourself. BOTH they and you need to exhale, be held, and remember who you are when no one is needing something from you.
You are allowed to do this. You are allowed to need this. You are allowed to stop waiting for the perfect moment.
When you do, your children see a woman with edges. Your relationships become more honest. Your life stops organizing itself around everyone else’s comfort. The pattern begins to break with you.
Come to the Threshold.
Photo: Hannah Busing / Unsplash
Reserve your spot
Spots are limited by the size of the house. When it's full, there will be a waitlist.
Or if you have questions, want to talk through the scholarship option, or just need someone to tell you it's okay to do this, reach out directly. We mean that.