How We Live Our Values
At The Retreat Space, we practice what we preach. Here are our core values, and how we put them into action.
We embrace the range of human experiences.
When we learn that it’s possible to be our own messy, beautiful, wild, most authentic selves and be unconditionally accepted in community, that’s when the magic happens. In this space, we don’t presume to know where you’re coming from or try to change you. We celebrate, support, and hold space for you—exactly as you are.
Unlike the toxic wellness spaces of yesteryear, we celebrate diverse bodies, races, backgrounds, abilities, ages, genders, capacities, and snack preferences.
Come as you are. It’s OK to not be OK. Your full self is welcome here. Especially when you feel like total crap.
We each have a voice and a choice.
You won’t find any gurus or love + light bypassing here. We strive to hire healers and facilitators who are trauma-informed, actively anti-racist, and radically compassionate. We don’t know what’s best for you and will always point you back to your own inner wisdom.
Our community events are warm and welcoming. We provide a range of options intended to help you feel comfortable. In Zoom events, you can opt out of sharing, turn your camera off, and leave early or take breaks. In this space, you know what’s best for you and your body. If something doesn’t work for you, we encourage you to skip it.
We lift each other up.
We believe that access to healing and growth opportunities is a basic human right, not a privilege of the elite few.
Thanks to our community’s generous donations, we offer a ton of free content—including our monthly email care packages, our blog, and our self-care resource library. The rest of our events and offerings are priced on a shame-free sliding scale.
We empower healer-entrepreneurs, teachers, writers, and event facilitators by providing a platform and collaborative community to share their gifts. Because we are a smaller platform, we are able to offer support and payment to emerging teachers. (If you’re interested, learn more here.)
We love to support our community. Our monthly email care packages share community shout-outs and community care requests. At events, we celebrate each other’s wins—big and small—and lovingly witness each other through hard times.
We are helping to dismantle white supremacy.
We pay 20% more to collaborators who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and/or live with disability.
A portion of all our income goes to mutual aid organizations that prioritize the care of marginalized communities. (In 2020, we made a collective donation to the Loveland Foundation’s Therapy Fund to support the healing of Black women and girls who need financial aid for therapy.)
We have a column on our blog for white allies called Anti Racism & Collective Care, where we discuss issues of race and oppression in wellness spaces.
We strive for cultural appreciation rather than cultural appropriation, and aim to acknowledge the teaching lineages of the modalities we teach.
We acknowledge and pay respect to the indigenous people whose stolen land we gather and live on.
We don’t take ourselves too seriously.
We aim to provide a brave space where people can come together to get vulnerable and try things out. With humor and a light touch, we offer low-risk ways to dip your toe into a range of self-care modalities, perspectives, and experiences from the comfort of your home.
We believe in exploration and curiosity. Sometimes we offer virtual playdates to practice healing through creative play.
Our events are very chill—we laugh a lot.
We always make room to grow.
As we learn and grow as a community, this space will continue to evolve. Change is a sign of growth and aliveness.
Our Founder (Quinn) and the majority of our facilitators (so far) identify as white, cisgender women. We are actively working on deepening and widening our circle, with a focus on expanding our community of healers and participants who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and/or live with disability (click here if you’re interested in collaborating).
Because we are divesting from perfectionism, we are also actively working on making more mistakes and allowing more space for messy humanity. When we make mistakes, we want to acknowledge them and course correct. Please reach out if you have feedback for us.