A Beautiful Forces Retreat

May 22–24, 2026

Whippoorwill Retreat House at Snug Hollow Farm  ·  Irvine, Kentucky

This is not a retreat of sessions and practices.

You have done those.

This is three days of room to stop producing anything at all.

You have read the books. You have sat the cushions. You have journaled and breathed and centered and read your way through a decade or more.

You are not broken. You are dry.

You are not recovering. You are ready.

Something in you has gone quiet — and you have tried, dutifully, to fix it with another technique. The technique has stopped producing. Not this time.

This retreat is built on a single conviction: Beauty arrives when you stop producing.

Not during the workshop. Not after the prompts. When the reaching ends.

There are no sessions here. No guided meditations. No worksheets. No circle where you are asked to share on a schedule.

What matters is embedded in the weekend. Readings, ritual, a small library of Hildegard's words, the land itself, a living altar, a book of women's names, and a gift to carry home. None of it is delivered in sessions. All of it is here.

Hildegard von Bingen called this kind of rising viriditas — the green life that moves through everything alive. She did not describe it as a practice. She described it as what happens.

Something in you that had gone quiet begins to move again. It happens at three depths at once.

Within

You are alone on the porch with coffee before anyone is awake. You are in your room with a candle. You are at the altar, adding the stone you found in the meadow. The weekend works at the level of your own ground.

Between you and the world

Beauty is in the creek, in the watercolor, in the violet in the jar, in the late light on the hills. What is in you rises to meet what is in the world. Neither has to be manufactured.

Among women who are also greening

Three or four women arrive at Whippoorwill over the weekend, each in her own greening. This is the field — not made of what you produce, but of what each of you is when you stop producing.

You arrive Friday afternoon. The road winds through the hills and something in your body begins to settle before you step out of the car.

Friday evening is a shared meal and a short welcome. One candle. A passage read aloud. Then rest.

Saturday is long and open. A few rooms in the house are quietly ready:

•  A watercolor table with pigment and water, no instruction.

•  A small Hildegard library, for reading in daylight or lamplight.

•  A station with violets and brandy and jars, for any woman who wants to take a little of this land home in tincture form.

•  A chant station on the porch — Hildegard's music in the air or in the headphones.

•  A living altar, seeded with almost nothing, that you will complete across the weekend.

•  The land itself — walking trails through the woods, a creek at the bottom of the meadow, a swing that looks out over the hills.

Before dinner Saturday, the labyrinth. Walk it with me if you want company. Walk it alone any time the weekend gives.

Sunday morning, a leather-bound book comes out. Every woman who walks a Beautiful Forces retreat is invited to sign her name to a shared vow. The women before you have signed. The women after you will sign. You are entering a line.

Then a gift — substantial, hand-sourced, made for you alone — to carry home.

Then you drive back into the world, quieter than you came.

Whippoorwill Retreat House sits tucked into the Appalachian foothills at Snug Hollow Farm. Porches over rolling hills. Earth and woodsmoke. Trails and meadows and a creek that knows its own rhythm.

Meals are vegetarian and prepared by the inn — Friday dinner through Sunday brunch, all of them at the long table.

Sleeping is slumber-party style, which is often one of the most joyful parts of the weekend. A limited number of private rooms are available for an additional $250.

•  A substantial gift from me at the close — hand-sourced, unique to this weekend.

•  Your name, if you choose, in the lineage of women who have walked this.

•  A small tincture made from the land, if you tend it.

•  A complimentary one-hour Listening session with me, within 60 days of leaving. My gift to you, in continuation of what began here.

•  A quieter way back into your own life.

$750  Founding Circle — first three women to reserve

$900  Regular

+$250  Private room (limited availability)

Includes:

•  Two nights lodging at Whippoorwill Retreat House

•  Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast and dinner, Sunday breakfast

•  Saturday midday snacks

•  All retreat experiences, readings, materials, and the closing gift

•  One complimentary Listening session, redeemable within 60 days

Group size: 3–4 women. This is an intimate retreat.

A $200 deposit reserves your spot. Refundable for 14 days; transferable afterward. Balance due 14  days before the retreat.

After your deposit arrives, you will hear from me three times before May 22 — once at booking, once two weeks out, once three days before. Everything you need will be in those emails.

•  Save my place  ($200 deposit)

•  Pay in full

•  Flame Bearer Scholarship Contribution

If three days of room to stop producing sounds like the answer to something you could not quite name in yourself, you are in the right place.

If you are looking for another workshop, another method, another technique — this is not the weekend for that. I would rather tell you plainly than have you arrive and feel adrift.

Something in you already feels the invitation. A quiet yes beneath the noise.

Come to Whippoorwill. The land has room for you.

For questions or to reserve your place:  stephanie@be-a-force.com