take your seat
What will be different because you were here?
You have practiced, created, nurtured, and contributed. There is experience behind you and plenty of life still ahead, but the questions you are asking of it are changing.
The Legacy retreat is a space to step out of the momentum of everyday life so you can remember what you stand for, understand where your energy truly belongs, and clarify the offerings that are yours to make in a world asking something different of all.
What's in the way of your legacy?
The journey begins before we arrive at Florence House together. Through an online gathering and personal enquiry, we’ll uncover what’s already shifting; a way of being that has become too small, a responsibility that has grown heavy, fears you're ready to release.
Then, in-person, in deeply held circle, we’ll listen to the wisdom of our bodies to clarify the ground we’re standing on before reaching towards what comes next.
Every threshold asks us to leave something behind. Often the obstacle isn’t that we have no idea where to go, it’s everything we’re still carrying; fear, shame, grief, exhaustion, self doubt, unsustainable ways of working, inherited beliefs that never belonged to you.
Grief can live here too; for paths not taken, for what your choices have cost you, for younger dreams that didn’t come to fruition, for the world many of us imagined we would grow older in.
Through fire ritual we’ll give these experiences a space to be acknowledged, because some things don’t need fixing, they need honouring, so that we can then put them down.
Why are we gathering now?
The soul of your work
The Mother Tree
The Mother Tree gives us another image of power, and guides us into a matriarchal form of leadership
A forest offers a radically different picture from the individualism we have inherited, and guides us into a matriarchal form of leadership.
Beneath the ground, trees exist within vast networks of roots, fungi, soil and exchange. What appears separate is held within an intricate living system.
The Mother tree is the central hub that moves resources where they are needed. Communicating, connecting and nourishing life beyond herself. She doesn’t stand outside the ecosystem she influences, she belongs within it.
Together, feet planted firmly on the earth, we’ll remember the Mother tree within and that our lives and work exist within relationships, communities, histories and ecologies. We’ll listen for our unique way of living into ancient, timeless, matriarchal ways of living and leading.
The Return
Claiming your next step as matriarchal leader
During our closing time together, we will begin to harvest what has emerged into the choices that follow. This might look like a bold decision, clarity of direction, releasing what has run its course or a map for the next chapter of your life.
You’ll leave connected to a Circle of women committed to their calling, their legacy. And a month later, we will meet online to deepen our connection and support what is beginning to take root.
None of us knows exactly what the coming decade will ask of us, but we can become women capable of meeting it with greater discernment, courage, imagination and togetherness.
A cosy retreat set within six acres of serene grounds.
Inside, you’ll find a snug lounge with hideaway corners and a wood-burning stove for warming up after practice.
A gentle, healing presence; a sanctuary where you can exhale, soften, and remember what it feels like to be deeply held by the natural world. Space to breathe.
Known for its fresh, homely and creative food, much is sourced from the garden. Our retreat menu reflects what we value most, nourishing, restorative, and delicious.
Here we gather in Circle to find our truth, connection, rest and nourishment.
The beach is a few minutes walk from Florence House. Sweeping views of the Seven Sisters.
Unique and restful. Some with sweeping views of the sea, others overlook the rolling South Downs or the private gardens, where nature’s quiet beauty invites deep rest and reflection.
Your Guides
Held by experience, relationship and care
Tanya is devoted to the revival of community, ritual and the human capacity to love. For three decades, her work has taken her from humanitarian settings and community spaces into trauma-informed circle work, embodied healing and the training of women who hold others.
She is the founder of Devoted, her six-month initiation in Circle holding, and her work is shaped by grief tending, belonging, social justice and the wisdom of the body.
Rooted in Ubuntu, I am because we are, Tanya’s work is a call to reclaim rest, reverence and community as birthrights.
Sophie Jane Hardy
Practical details
investment