Connect deeply with your Calling
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 Calling retreat is a space to step out of the noise of everyday life so you can remember and claim what you stand for. Together we will understand where your energy truly belongs, and support each other to step boldly into the work that is ours to offer in a world that is offering something different of us all.
The Threshold
What’s in the way of you fully CLAIMING your calling?
The journey begins before we arrive at Florence House.
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.
Through an online gathering, we’ll uncover what’s already shifting; a way of being that has become too small, a responsibility that has grown heavy, a truth you’re questing for the courage to live into.
Then, in-person, deeply held in Circle, we’ll listen to the wisdom of our bodies to clarify the ground we’re standing on before reaching towards what comes next.
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.
The Remembering
Why are we gathering now?
We’re meeting at a particular moment in time.
The climate is changing. Ecosystems are under immense pressure. Political instability, conflict and inequality are shaping lives across the world. Institutions and systems many of us were taught to trust feel increasingly fragile.
Alongside this sits a profound disconnection from each other, the Earth, our bodies and the communities that once helped people share responsibility and make meaning together.
These times ask something of us. The ways that brought us here cannot be the ones that carry us forward.
This is why the Calling retreat is not only an enquiry into personal fulfillment. We’re committed to understanding how we can contribute to the more beautiful future our hearts know is possible.
The land at Florence House will hold us as we explore together… a living embodiment of a different kind of leadership.
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. 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 a central hub, moving resources towards where they are needed: communicating, connecting and nourishing life beyond herself. She doesn’t stand outside the ecosystem she influences; she belongs within it.
This is the essence of matriarchal leadership: leadership rooted not in dominance, hierarchy or power over, but in relationship, reciprocity and responsibility. It recognises that our wellbeing is inseparable from the wellbeing of the whole and asks how we might use our influence to nourish the conditions in which life can thrive.
Together, with our 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 being and leading.
The Communing
The soul of your work.
We’ll turn towards the soul of what you are called to create, gestate, birth and nurture.
Through everything you've created, lived and birthed there's a sacred thread. As close as your own breath, a knowing you've been following for years without necessarily having language for it.
Through Circle, embodiment practices, soulful conversations around communing with the we'll commit to this thread. You may hear yourself speak something you have never said aloud. An idea may finally find language.
This is also where Tanya and Sophie weave their different bodies of work into the same room. Sophie brings decades of experience seeing the shape and possibility within meaningful work, helping people translate an emerging vision into something that can exist in the world. Tanya brings relational, embodied and ceremonial practices that take us beneath performance, expectation and intellectual knowing.
Together, we create the conditions for revelation: for you to find the living thread of your work and discern how it wants to be woven into the collective tapestry now. For one woman, that may mean releasing what has run it's course, or closing a chapter. For another, a fiery clarity about an offering, or a new sense of trust in a direction she has been circling for years. There is no predetermined destination. The purpose is to hear what is calling you, and to become willing to answer.
The Return
Claiming your next step as matriarchal leader
Insight matters when it changes something.
During our closing time together, we'll begin to harvest what has emerged into the choices that follow.
This might look like a bold decision, clarity of direction, or a map for the next chapter of your life. You’ll also leave connected to a Circle of women who are committed to their calling, and we’ll deepen our connection, and continue our quest through an online reunion a month after the retreat.
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.
There is easy access to unspoiled beaches for Seven Sisters coastal walks, fresh sea air, and the soothing sound of waves.
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.
About
Tanya Forgan
Tanya Forgan is a Circle Facilitator, Ritualist and Embodiment Guide devoted to the revival of community, ritual, and the human capacity to love.
For three decades she has held trauma-informed spaces, circle work and embodied healing that awaken the heart, personally and collectively.
Rooted in Ubuntu (I am because we are), her work is a call to reclaim rest, reverence and community as birthrights.
Sophie Jane Hardy
Business coach & strategist and Creative Midwife
Over the past decade Sophie’s passion has been helping women bring their Callings to life through ethical, soulful, intuitive businesses that move something meaningful into the world, whilst creating a sustainable income.
She draws on her background in environmental activism and not-for-profit communications, as well as filmmaking, and growing women’s networks, including the TreeSisters’ “Million Trees” campaign and Red School’s global menstruality movement.
Her approach is rooted in nature’s cycles and seasons and somatic processes to receive body wisdom. She weaves intuitive practices working with symbols, dreams and images with strategic, tried and tested business guidance.
Practical details
Questions & answers
Do I need to have done a retreat like this before?
What if I don’t know anyone else coming?
What should I bring?
Is this only for business owners?
What is the cancellation policy?
Is there a payment plan available?
Can I arrive early or stay on afterwards?
What if I have dietary requirements?
How do I get there?
Register your interest
12–14 February · Florence House · With Tanya Forgan & Sophie Jane Hardy