Three gatherings · Mexico · Ireland · Malta & Gozo
Retreats 2027
A YEAR OF SELF-MOTHERING
An invitation
A Year of Self-Mothering
What would change if you stopped looking outside yourself for permission, reassurance, or the answer to what comes next?
Three intimate retreats. Three extraordinary landscapes. Three invitations to explore what becomes possible when you learn to mother yourself differently.
Self-mothering, as I have come to understand it, is a relationship with yourself. It is learning to listen to yourself and trust what you hear. To offer yourself nourishment and compassion while also being willing to challenge yourself. To become someone you can rely on.
I believe all women mother, whether or not we have children. We mother ideas, relationships, families, careers, and dreams. And yet so many of us learned a version of mothering that placed ourselves near the bottom of that list.
What happens when we rewrite that code? That question is at the heart of every retreat I create.
In 2027, I am inviting a small group of women to explore it with me in three places that have profoundly shaped my own life: Mexico, Ireland, and Malta and Gozo. Each retreat stands complete on its own. There is no prescribed order and no expectation that you attend more than one.
Come to the one that calls you. Or follow your curiosity across the year.
The year at a glance
Three gatherings
The 2027 Retreat Journey
Mexico
Playa Blanca, Mexico
January 30 to February 6, 2027
Mexico is where we practice receiving. This sounds simple until you notice how much easier it can be to give, anticipate, and care for everyone around you than to turn that same attention toward yourself. The retreat unfolds around our family home in Playa Blanca, a small community on the Pacific coast. Guests stay nearby in beautiful villas, and much of our time together happens in and around our home. There is something about this place that helps us soften. The warmth, the ocean, the meals we linger over, the intimacy of a home rather than a conference room.
We explore what it means to receive without earning it first, and to notice where sacrifice has become so familiar we no longer recognize it as sacrifice. What if receiving is not the opposite of giving, but part of the same sacred exchange?
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Ireland
County Kerry, Ireland
June 19 to 26, 2027
Ireland invites us to trust what begins to emerge when we do. The retreat takes place in our family home on the Atlantic coast of County Kerry, surrounded by a landscape that has become one of my greatest teachers. There are places here where I have felt something true before I could explain it, an ancient stone circle, a sacred well, the ocean, asking me to trust what I felt rather than make sense of it. We explore voice, intuition, sovereignty, and the places where we have learned to make ourselves smaller than we actually are.
For me, expansion is not about becoming bigger for the sake of being bigger. It is about becoming less willing to abandon ourselves in order to remain comfortable or known. Can I trust myself enough to take up the space my life is asking of me? Ireland invites us to find out.
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Malta
Malta & Gozo
October 18 to 26, 2027
Malta and Gozo invite us into something older. These Mediterranean islands are home to some of the oldest freestanding stone structures in the world, prehistoric temple complexes built thousands of years before Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids. Their abundant feminine imagery raises fascinating questions about how the people who created them understood life, death, creation, and the sacred. We cannot know exactly what they believed, and I am interested in honoring that mystery rather than filling it with certainty. The retreat begins in Malta, moves to the quieter island of Gozo, and then returns to Malta, gathering and opening together, journeying inward, and returning carrying whatever has been revealed.
Rather than asking what we need to learn next, Malta and Gozo invite a different question. What if some of what we are seeking is already within us, waiting to be remembered? This is a retreat into ancient landscape, feminine wisdom, mystery, and the deeper knowing that can become audible when we give ourselves enough space to listen.
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Three Places. Three Doorways
These are not three versions of the same retreat in different beautiful locations. The place matters. Mexico invites receiving. Ireland invites expansion. Malta and Gozo invite remembering. Each offers a different way into the same inquiry at the heart of my work: what becomes possible when we stop abandoning ourselves and begin relating to ourselves differently? You may feel drawn to one place and have no idea why. You may know exactly what you need. Or you may simply feel curious. I’ve learned not to underestimate that curiosity.
You don’t have to understand an invitation
before you answer it.
Your guide
Dr. Gertrude Lyons
I am Dr. Gertrude Lyons, author of Rewrite the Mother Code, From Sacrifice to Stardust, A Cosmic Approach to Motherhood. For more than 30 years I have explored the transformational potential of mothering, personally, academically, and now through my work with women around the world. I came to understand that all women mother, not only our children, but our relationships, work, bodies, and ourselves.
That is the territory we enter on retreat. My job is not to tell you who to become. It is to create the conditions, ask the questions, and hold space deep enough for you to hear what is true. The women who gather become part of that space too. So does the land.
Join us for one…
or the full journey
Each gathering is intentionally limited to a small, intimate circle. If something in you is already saying yes, let’s talk.
Learn moreMexico · Jan 30 – Feb 6 | Ireland · Jun 19 – 26
Malta · Oct 18 – 26