Mom's At-Home Retreat

This weekend, I took my first ever retreat. It wasn’t what you might think of as a retreat in the traditional sense, but it was definitely a retreat for me, and it might appeal to other busy, frugally-minded moms. Initially, I was going to attend or create a retreat for myself in some delectably warm place, far away from what I consider to be the recent frigid temperatures of my home. As a native Floridian, I consider the sun to be heavenly. However, the ice storm came the day before my birthday—when I was supposed to leave for my retreat—and so afterward, my husband and I compromised and came up with this plan.

First, I have to explain that my youngest daughter, now four years old, has never traveled well. After she was born, we quickly realized that ANY travel was out of the question. Even driving to the grocery store 20 minutes away was a nightmare, ending with her screaming in terror the whole time and me crying hysterically in response. (More on that another time.)

So, for us to even think of traveling with her became a question we never asked. However, as a gift to me, my brave husband took my two daughters, (and all of the SCD food my youngest daughter would need to his dad’s house two hours away. They left on Saturday morning around 9:30 a.m. and returned Sunday afternoon around 5 p.m., in time to get the girls reestablished into their routine.

On Thursday and Friday I finished up the laundry, cleaned the parts of the house that would be important to me during my retreat, such as the bedroom, including decluttering, dusting, and sweeping. Then I did some grocery shopping for the family (while picking up a few treats for me : ) and gathered some yoga dvds, guided meditation cds, and inspirational music cds from the library and Half-Price Bookstore to add to the Eckhart Tolle books that I’ve been studying. On Friday I also prepared SCD freezer meals to replace the ones that we lost during the power outage.

On Saturday and Sunday I did yoga (I’m definitely still a novice in this area), meditated (and in this one too), read and wrote. I made sure to eat at least one of my meals each day in complete silence, attempting to be fully present, meaning that I didn’t even read, which is really hard for me to do. I wanted the whole experience to be uplifting, yet grounding at the same time, helping me to focus on what’s truly important. I ended the weekend by attending a prayer and meditation service at my church on Sunday evening, just after my family returned.

If you’re like me, and haven’t seen that many consecutive hours strung together in more years than you can remember, then you’ll understand just how amazing the silence alone made this endeavor. Of course it felt indulgent, but cleansing. Apparently, it was a weekend of dichotomies ;)

I hope you’ll create a similar opportunity for yourself. When you do, make sure to let me know what you did and how it went for you!