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, you hope, 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 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.
The Threshold
What's in the way of you fully living your calling?
The journey begins before we arrive at Florence House.
Through an online gathering, personal enquiry and rest in nature, 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, 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.
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.
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 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 Listening
The soul of your work.
Once some of the usual noise has quietened, we'll turn towards the soul of what you are called to create, gestate, birth and nurture.
Beneath the business, career, projects, plans and accumulated experience, there is a thread. As close as your own breath, a knowing you have been following for years without necessarily having language for it.
Across the three days, through circle embodiment practices, conversations around the fire and time on the land we will connect 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 bring 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 you to find your thread and listen for how you can weave it into the collective tapestry now.
For one woman, that may mean simplifying, 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 your own.
The Return
What comes after?
Insight matters when it changes something. During our closing time together, we will begin to translate what has emerged into the choices that follow.
You may leave with a decision. A direction. A commitment. A map. 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 for clarity and direction 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 people capable of meeting them with greater discernment, courage, imagination and care.
The Calling retreat is the space between what we inherit and what we choose to pass on.
Between the world that shaped us and the one we are helping to shape.
Between the life we have already lived and the life still asking to be lived.
Florence House is 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. There is easy access to unspoiled beaches for coastal walks, fresh sea air, and the soothing sound of waves.
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.
Nestled with breathtaking views of the South Downs, our gathering space offers a sanctuary for rest, reflection, and connection.
Here, we gather in Circle, breathing deeply, sharing from the heart, and allowing our own wisdom to guide us inward.
In this space we will create cosy 'Rest Nests' to enjoy the nourishment of Yoga Nidra, restorative breathwork and gentle movement.
Every bedroom at Florence House is unique, designed to offer a restful and nurturing space.
Some rooms offer 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.
Both single and shared accommodation are available, with rooms allocated on a first-booked basis. If you’re attending with a friend and would like to share a room, please let us know in advance.
Florence House is a few minutes walk from the shoreline where you can enjoy expansive views and the rhythmic sound of the waves, the wide coastal views, and the fresh salt air invite you to breathe a little deeper, slow your pace, and let the ocean soften what’s been held.
A place where clarity returns and the simple presence of the sea becomes medicine.
Our friends at Florence House lovingly prepare wholesome, heart-warming meals that honour the land and the season. Where possible they will pick ingredients from their own kitchen garden or source from nearby local producers, every dish is fresh, flavoursome, and rooted in care.
Nourishment on every level.
Florence House rests on six acres of wild and peaceful land, held between the rolling South Downs and the open stretch of sea.
The land itself has 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.
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 over two 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.
