Between What Is and What Could Be: Reflections from Costa Rica
What Happened When Ten Women Chose Themselves
Last month I led my first destination retreat.
In partnership with two of my most favorite people, Kim DeYoung and Serina Capuano, we guided ten women through a week of intentional choice, possibility and reimagination. We spent a year designing what we hoped would feel like coming home.
Yet nothing could have prepared me for what actually happened.
I have witnessed many things in my years of coaching; breakthroughs, insights, moments of clarity. But to watch a woman's face change when she realizes she doesn't have to become someone else, she just has to trust who she already is? That's something entirely different.
To see armor fall away, not because anyone asked for it, but because it was finally safe enough to set it down.
To witness the exact moment when a woman remembers what her own voice sounds like—not the one she uses to manage everyone else's needs, but the one that speaks her truth.
To watch ten women who arrived as strangers become a circle that holds each other's dreams as sacred.
This is what happened in Costa Rica.
I know my life and journey is unique. And I know it is also incredibly universal. As different as we are as women, we are also remarkably alike. We carry the same questions. We face the same edges. We doubt ourselves in similar ways. And when we finally give ourselves permission to want what we want, we discover we've been wanting the same things all along.
Ease. Truth. Rest. Connection. Joy.
To witness women rediscover their beauty, strength, courage and truth, to watch them surprise themselves with how much they already know, this is the work that matters.
To watch women love, celebrate and support one another as they step into vulnerability and disclosure? This is where love actually lives.
We spent a year designing an experience that we prayed would feel like coming home for the women who would choose to join us.
What we got was far more powerful.
And this is only the beginning.
Ten Women, One Shared Recognition
When we opened the retreat, we gathered as ten women standing at meaningful edges.
They arrived carrying questions—not small ones, but the kind that surface when old identities no longer fit and the next chapter hasn't fully revealed itself yet. Questions about becoming. About timing. About rest, joy, courage, and trust. Questions that arise when you sense that something is shifting, even if you can't yet name what it is.
They entered in transition. Some had just walked away from careers, relationships, or roles that once made sense but no longer felt alive. Some were navigating the wide-open uncertainty of possibility. Others were stepping into chapters defined by endings; children grown, caregiving complete, marriages transformed, lives reimagined. Different ages, different stories, yet a shared recognition: the old way was no longer enough.
They also entered honestly aware of what felt hard. Fear about money. Fear of getting it wrong. Exhaustion. Self-doubt. The reflex to withdraw. The ache for connection. The quiet grief of joy that had gone dormant. They named perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the weight of always being the one who holds it together.
And still—they came.
The Journey We Created Together
Over seven days, we moved through a carefully designed arc that honored both structure and organic unfolding:
Day 1: Honoring the Choice to Say Yes
We began by acknowledging the courage it took just to arrive. Not just in Costa Rica, but to the edge of something new within themselves.
Day 2: Weaving Wisdom from the Past
We looked back without judgment. We named grief and pride in the same breath. We let go, not as loss, but as self-respect.
Day 3: The Woman You Are Choosing to Be
Desire emerged. They named what they wanted more of; ease, creativity, rest, intimacy, truth. And what they wanted less of; over-giving, pressure, self-abandonment, silence. They remembered that desire is not indulgent; it is information.
Day 4: Today's Choices Shape Tomorrow
Choice became the turning point. They moved from awareness into authorship. They named where they are choosing themselves…imperfectly, courageously, intentionally. Choice stopped being about control and became about alignment.
Day 5: Declaring Sacred Intentions
Under the Costa Rican sky, intentions were spoken aloud and witnessed. Not wishes, but sacred contracts with themselves, held by a community that would remember.
Day 6: Translating Intentions Into Action
Vision met reality. They mapped the small, brave moves that would carry them forward. They imagined their December 31st toast—not just for what they would do, but for who they would choose to be along the way.
Day 7: Choosing What to Carry Forward
The fire ceremony. Integration. The knowing that they weren't leaving this behind, but carrying it forward, along with the container of support from these women.
What Emerged Between Us
As the days unfolded, something subtle but powerful happened.
Belonging arrived first, not the performative kind, but the quiet safety of being met without explanation. Nervous systems softened. Armor loosened. Laughter came back online. They remembered what it feels like to be fully human in the presence of others.
Then came the deeper layers. Collective wisdom wove through everything. They discovered that their private truths were often shared ones. That listening can be as transformative as speaking. That they were never meant to do this alone.
Voice returned. Not polished. Not perfected. But real. They practiced being seen without over-editing. They trusted themselves to speak from lived truth rather than certainty.
One woman said, "I didn't know how disconnected I was until I felt connected again."
Another: "This space let me stop performing."
And another: "I don't need to become someone else, I need to trust who I am."
What They Left Carrying
This week was never about becoming someone new. It was about remembering who they are beneath the roles, expectations, and strategies that once kept them safe.
They left with:
A deeper trust in themselves
Language for what matters now
Permission to want what they want
Friendships rooted in truth, not performance
The knowledge that fear can coexist with forward movement
And a felt sense that joy is not frivolous, it is vital
They entered asking whether the opportunity for themselves still existed.
They left knowing: it does, and it always has.
They are already exactly where they need to be.
And now, they know how to choose from here.
What I'm Carrying Forward
The themes and greatest insights from our time together I will be reflecting and writing about in the coming months. In many ways they are nothing new, and yet when we quiet the noise in ourselves and our lives, there is wisdom to be heard.
Above all else, we remembered that we always have choice.
We get to choose who we are, what we want and how we will live our lives.
This is the power I witnessed in Costa Rica. Not transformation as some dramatic before-and-after. But the quiet, profound reclamation of choice. The remembering that we are the authors of our own becoming.
And in the company of women who truly see us, we find the courage to write that next chapter.
"In the space between what is and what could be, magic lives."
We stepped into that space together. And what we found there was exactly what we needed.
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