I sometimes think that my story with Shalom began long before I knew what to call it.

Lawrence and Joy are my aunt and uncle, and I was a teenager when I first touched that world, going to some teen retreats at the London Schoolhouse. Back then, I didn’t fully understand it. It was just… there. Something connected to family. Something I could feel, but didn’t yet have language for.

When they moved to Shalom in 1992, it became part of our family rhythm. We would go there for family events, especially Thanksgiving and weddings. I remember being in that space and feeling like it was sort of mysterious. There were always people coming and going, conversations unfolding, connections forming. Something alive was happening there, but I didn’t quite know what it was.

I stayed on the edges.

Curious.
And not ready.

I had already made up my mind about the work. It felt too intense. Too exposing. I told myself I would never go to a Shalom retreat.

And then life shifted everything.

I lost my first son right before the American Thanksgiving in 1999. My Aunt Joy encouraged me to come for the Holiday to be in my grief with family around. Shalom had already become a place we returned to for Thanksgiving. It was somewhere to land, even if I wasn’t fully stepping into the work yet. And then, in 2006, I lost my second son.

There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. That was one of them.

I was in deep grief. The kind that takes the air out of your body. The kind that makes it hard to imagine how to keep going. And my aunt Joy said, “There’s a women’s theme retreat. Why don’t you come?”

I didn’t go there with a plan to heal. I don’t even know if I believed healing was possible.

And even then, I told myself I wasn’t going to do a Shalom retreat. Those felt too big. Too scary. So I stayed in women’s theme retreats… until the moment I didn’t.

I signed up for something I thought was one thing, and on the first night, I heard, “Welcome to the best Shalom retreat ever.”

I remember sitting straight up.

This is a Shalom retreat?

There was nowhere to hide.

But the truth is, I didn’t have the capacity to hide anymore anyway.

Something in me was ready.

That experience didn’t just shift me. It blew my life open.

At the time, it felt like everything was unraveling. My relationship was already fractured, and the grief we shared revealed something that couldn’t be put back the same way. My ex blamed Shalom for the end of our relationship, but if I’m honest, it wasn’t Shalom.

It was me.

It was me beginning to find my voice.
Me beginning to breathe.

I didn’t even realize how much I wasn’t breathing until I started doing the work. I thought I was. But I wasn’t. I was living braced. Tight. Contained.

It took years for me to actually breathe. Years to make a real sound. Years to recognize that what I had to say had value.

That I had value.

Finding my voice wasn’t a moment. It was an unfolding.

Before that, my anger came out as tears. That was what was allowed. But at Shalom, I learned something different. I learned that I could feel anger without collapsing. That anger could be clean. Honest. Alive.

That I could be angry and not fall apart.

That changed everything.

And something else was happening too, something I didn’t fully understand at the time.

I grew up in a deeply religious family. My father was a Baptist minister, as were other members of my family. And when I was eleven, my dad came out as gay. That moment shattered everything. We lost our community. And with it, I lost my connection to what I understood as God.

For a long time, that part of me was just gone.

What I didn’t realize when I first came to Shalom was that something was being restored.

Not religion.
Not structure.

Connection.

Connection to myself.
To others.
To something I can only describe as the divine.

Now I feel that most when I’m doing the work. When I’m at Shalom, there’s a way I feel connected to something greater, and to people, in a way I don’t find anywhere else.

Over time, I didn’t just keep coming back. I became part of it.

What began in grief became a path. And along that path were people who became part of the fabric of my life.

Sandie was one of them. I worked with her for years. She would ask me over and over, “Are you looking at your tail?” At the time, I didn’t understand. I do now.

And Kim… Kim was there all along.

She was cooking on the retreats, quietly present, woven into every experience I was having. And then one day it clicked.

Oh. You’re my person.

From there, everything deepened. Our connection moved off the mountain. We began walking this path together, eventually leading together. There was even a moment where I told her I was going to sign up for CORE, and she said, “You are? Not without me!” And that moment brought her back in, too.

And others are just as deeply woven into me. Jen is one of them. A true soul sister.

I didn’t know her as long as I’ve known Kim and Sandie, but in another way, it feels like I have known her for lifetimes. Her presence in my life has forever altered my understanding of generosity and love.

Our connection, the trust between us, the love we shared. It gave me the sacred privilege of walking with her at the end of her life. To be with her as she transitioned.

That experience lives in me. It changed me.

It’s part of how I understand love now. Not just as something we feel, but something we stay with. Something we show up for. Even, and maybe especially, at the end.

These relationships… they are the work. They are what have shaped me.

That’s how this work moves. We call each other forward.

I moved into leadership, but something that has always felt essential to me is this:

I am still a retreatant. I still need the work. I still need to show up honestly. If anything, being in leadership makes that even more important.

Because the depth of connection I can have with others is directly tied to how honest I’m willing to be with myself.

People can feel that. They can feel when you’re in it with them.

And at the same time, there’s something else I’ve had to face.

Being part of this, even sharing my story like this, is an edge for me.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t always like to be seen, which is interesting, because I’m so woven into Shalom now. I’m a leader. I stand in front of people. I hold space.

And still, there’s a part of me that wants to stay hidden.

When I said yes to sharing this story, I remember thinking, ” What if I push this edge?”

Even now, I can feel the discomfort talking about it.

There’s something vulnerable about being seen in this way. About letting people really know.

And I notice it around the 50th, too.

I don’t even know what the expectations are for leaders, but there’s a part of me that wants to go… and another part that doesn’t.

A part that leans in.
And a part that pulls back.

And I’m learning to stay with both.

Because that’s part of the work too.

And connection? That’s the thread that runs through everything.

Shalom has given me relationships that have shaped my life. And still, if I’m honest, I wrestle with feeling disconnected from community at times.

I’ve helped create community in different places, such as Kentucky, Seattle, and Maine. I’ve built community in different ways. And yet there’s still a part of me that feels like I’m not fully home when I’m away from Shalom.

Like I’m connected but at a distance.

That longing is still there.

But Shalom is the place I return to where my heart feels the most open.

It’s where I feel connected to people in a way that goes beyond the surface. Where I get to see into someone’s heart and soul, and they see into mine.

That kind of connection doesn’t happen easily in the outside world.

It’s something intentional here.

That’s really what Shalom is to me.

An intentional loving practice.

And the principles and skills are so woven into that. 

It’s not accidental. It’s not casual. It’s something that has been cultivated, held, and sustained for 50 years.

And when I really let that in, I feel so much gratitude.

Gratitude for what was created.
Grateful that it’s still alive.
Grateful that I get to be part of carrying it forward.

This work hasn’t made me perfect. I still struggle. I still notice my patterns, like falling into self-judgment or negative body image.

But something has shifted.

I can see myself differently now. Sometimes even through the eyes of others. With more compassion.

It’s also softened my experience of others. I’m humbled by the willingness of people to share their most vulnerable stories and to trust me to walk with them through whatever appears. Their fears, anger, grief, shame and their joy. Their humanness. Especially in such a new and different container. And, I find the more I’m around others willing to push their edges it invites me into doing that for myself. 

And maybe the most important thing I carry from this work is a practice. 

A practice of curiosity. A practice of choosing to love people intentionally.

Not because it’s easy. But because it matters.

When I’m at Shalom, I feel most like myself. The most open. The most connected to others, and to something greater than all of us.

And that, to me, is everything.