52 Things – Host and Attend a Retreat & Spend a Day with Nathaniel

Here’s this week’s items:

I’ve always felt like I’ve lacked solid female friends. Over the years, I’ve had several and some closer than others. Most of my local friends live hectic lives like me and we don’t often make the time to hang out as much as we should. I don’t have any friends here who do scrapbooking and/or art journaling like I do. So I’ve been itching, for quite some time, to get together with a group of women for a weekend away. A weekend full of art and soulful bonding.

This particular retreat that we had in Santa Cruz a few weeks ago was many many months in the making. The idea was formed at least eight months ago and the first email went out in October of 2009. For many, many months it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. And then it looked possible and then went back to highly unlikely. Until it really started solidifying and next thing we knew, it was actually happening.

The numbers went from over twenty to only eight back up to the teens and then back down to seven. And finally ended up with six. A plethora of handicaps, anxiety, and planning later, we finally got to meet in a beautiful house by the beach in Santa Cruz.

I had specifically setup this item on my list with the hopes that I would have the courage to accomplish it on this weekend:

But by the time the weekend rolled around, I was feeling really down, a little sick, and definitely not up for doing any driving, let alone, by myself. For those of you who don’t know (I am not sure how much I’ve mentioned it here.) I don’t drive on the freeway. I never really drove until we moved to San Diego (we lived in NYC before and there was no reason to drive) and I was almost 30 when we moved so it was considerably harder to learn at that point. Add to that the really really big (for me, scary) freeways in San Diego where the lane you come into suddenly becomes exit-only and where sometimes the exits are on the left side instead of right. I just got frazzled and freaked out really early on and over the years it became this big thing so now I don’t and can’t get on the freeway. (Thankfully, I don’t need to almost ever.) Anyway, so as amazing as he is, Jake and David drove Nathaniel and me down to Santa Cruz.

Nathaniel was coming with because I am still nursing him (I nursed David until he was two.) and I don’t pump at all. I don’t even know where my pump is. So I had no choice. I knew having Nathaniel there would take away from the feeling I was hoping to have but it was this way or no retreat at all. So off we went.

Here’s a view of where we were. We were literally one block from the beach:

Despite the small numbers there was no one who actually knew all the women. Most of us knew one or two of the others in person and one of us knew none of us. Which was one of my goals. In the end, we all really got along beautifully and I, of course, didn’t actually snap as many photos as I would have liked. Here’s one of the five of us right before we left and then one of Colleen who had to leave early to make sure her store was ok. (It was.)

All in all, it really was a wonderful weekend. Nathaniel was very well behaved during the day. Some of the nights were challenging but we made it just fine and it was odd but nice being just the two of us. I had never spent 3 nights away from David ever before and I did miss him terribly and I missed Jake a lot, too. I was really happy to be home on Sunday. I just feel a really strong sense of belonging in my home. But it was also nice to be in the company of women for a few days and to talk, talk, talk. We didn’t end up doing enough art this time but we’ll have to make up for it next time.

I learned a lot about myself through this process and a lot about putting together a gathering. I am still processing a lot of what I learned and how I feel. But I am really grateful I did it. I have been wanting to go to an art retreat for a long time but since I am still nursing and it’s really expensive and I have no friends to go with, I’ve been unable to go. I’m hoping and planning to go in 2011, once I stop nursing the little boy. And I think another soulful weekend will be a blessing, too.