A Retreat of My Own is a personal retreat guide developed by Karen Ely, founder and director of A Woman’s Way, the country’s premier women’s retreat program. It is an affordable alternative for women who aren’t able to attend a structured retreat but still want to be able to step back from their lives—to pause, reflect and relax—and begin to create lives of meaning and futures steeped in passion and joy.
A Retreat of My Own is for all of us who believe that the world will stop spinning if we are not caring for everyone and everything at all times. “Remember that nurturing yourself gives you the insight and passion to contribute more meaningfully to your world,” says Ely, “but more importantly, it has the capacity to give YOU back to YOU!”
Your mini-retreats awakened my tired soul. ~ Sarah M. (CT)
Cultivating peace and clarity doesn’t necessarily require hours of meditation or days spent alone in spiritual contemplation. It can take only moments a day--just a small step back from the hectic pace of our daily lives and the frenzied world around us. During these moments--these mini-retreats--we can savor joy, express gratitude, and experience wonder. In doing so, we gently open space for magic and possibilities to grow.
Since 2008, Karen Ely’s inspiring weekly e-mails have been inviting women to take min-retreats into the oases of their own souls. Now collected into a single volume, her messages provide weekly inspiration and exercises to help busy women slow down and find peace and clarity in the noise and bustle of everyday life.
Your mini-retreats feel like a friend reaching out to pull me up. ~ Nancy W. (NY)
Your mini-retreats deeply touch my heart and spirit. ~ Heather C. (CA)
Thanks for being there for women who need other women. ~ Verna F. (NC)
Daring to Dream: Reflections on the Year I Found Myself is an intimate chronicle of loss and renewal, of love and grief, of focus and confusion, but most of all it is a story of growth and transformation.
Daring to Dream takes the reader through a year in the author’s life -- a year of rebirth following the end of a 32-year marriage -- into those private moments of anguish and reflection where we discover that we have the strength, wisdom and power to grow from life’s most challenging experiences.
Karen Ely’s journey toward an authentic life and a stronger sense of herself is both heartbreaking and exhilarating. Throughout the book, her honesty reaches out invitingly, encouraging all women to turn their attention inward and listen to the beatings of their own hearts.
