Avondale Retreat provides an amazing space to unwind, get away and attune to your true nature. This wonderful article (which appeared in our Winter 2019/20 issue) by founder Helen Holt offers a beautiful description of the driving force behind the Retreat’s offerings: helping people to feel Alive, feel Loved, and to Belong. Read on to learn all about it.
Calling in Change
Uprooting and re-rooting into a connected life
by Helen Holt
What is the one thing you would do if it could change the course of your life, in 2020, the next decade or beyond?
People open up to their deepest yearnings and will tell you what they are seeking when they let go of the daily routines that take up nearly all of their productive and analytical minds.
After years of hosting, leading, and co-creating retreats, we have discovered that what most people want is:
- To feel Alive (alive as in really wanting to get out of bed in the morning).
- To feel Loved (get regular hugs/touch/affection and be vulnerable and real with)
- To Belong (have a community of support that has our back, love and protect us).
When life goes awry, we have dived unconsciously or unwillingly into the underbelly. Perhaps we lose our security, our home, our job, our partner or something comes crashing around us. It is inevitable that these circumstances provoke pain, insurmountable grief or heartache or longer-lasting trauma.
As a society, we are waking up and uprooting ourselves from the daily grind of seeking purely monetary success and immediate but transient gratification to looking for what lights us up, refills our cup, and gives us a sense of long-lasting accomplishment.
When the opening comes, which it always does, the transformation potential offers itself to all of us. Then we go there, with pure intention and an inquisitive, open heart.
There is no inherent knowing what your ‘calling’ is.
There are mistakes to be made and adventures to take.
Come on a journey of discovery, through Helen’s new book, ‘Connecting the Dots’, releasing in 2020 or join one of the many offerings at her retreat centre in Wicklow.
