We Cannot Heal Alone: My Latest Reflections After Leading a Retreat

What happens when women come together with openness, vulnerability, and a willingness to be seen?

In this solo episode of SHE Asked: Tools for Practical Hope, Anna McBride reflects on the powerful lessons and transformations that emerged from the recent Medicine of Spring women's retreat in the Catskill Mountains. Through stories of courage, connection, healing, and personal growth, Anna explores why so many women struggle to ask for help, the cost of carrying everything alone, and the profound healing that becomes possible when we allow ourselves to be supported.

Anna shares reflections on the importance of community, the transformative power of ritual, and the life-changing impact of releasing old narratives that no longer serve us. From witnessing women put down their armor and embrace vulnerability to participating in a moving fire ceremony centered on letting go and beginning again, this episode is an invitation to consider what you may be carrying—and what you're finally ready to release.

If you're navigating a life transition, healing from grief, rebuilding your confidence, or simply feeling called to something more, this conversation will remind you that healing is not meant to happen alone.

✨ In this episode:
• Why strong women often struggle to ask for help
• The healing power of community and connection
• What happens when women put down their armor
• How vulnerability creates transformation
• The role of rituals in personal growth and healing
• Why releasing old stories creates space for new possibilities
• Lessons from the Medicine of Spring retreat
• How to begin rewriting the narratives that keep you stuck

💛 Ready to take the next step in your own healing journey?

Schedule a complimentary consultation with Anna

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Transcript

A Different Kind Of Solo Talk

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome back to She Asked, Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I'm glad you're here today. Today's episode's different. It's just me. I'm recording this a few days after returning from a retreat that I led up in the Catskills of New York. The medicine of spring, we called it. And I'm still integrating everything I gain from that experience. Whenever I host a retreat, I think I'm going there to teach. And every single time I leave, learning more than I think that I've imparted on others. This weekend reminded me of the incredible healing that happens when women come together with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be seen. So today I want to share a few reflections about teamwork, vulnerability, and the power

The Cost Of Doing It Alone

SPEAKER_01 1:15

of community. And why I believe healing was never meant to happen alone. For so many women, independence becomes a badge of honor. I know, because I've worn it. You become the caretaker, the fixer, the strong one, the person everyone else relies on. And while there is beauty in being capable, there is also a cost. I think back to all the hard times in my life and how I really thought I had to do it on my own. I told myself the story that nobody was going to help me. That even if they wanted to help me, they wanted to do it their way, not my way. They weren't willing to listen. And everybody was so busy. Why would they want to help me? These were several different narratives that I carried about my experience. And here's the thing about telling yourself that kind of story: all it does is keep you stuck in suffering. It really doesn't help. What helps is asking for help. Really, really asking for help. And being willing to receive it when it's offered. Because that was also a difficult thing that I had, was that there were many people, many, along the way that wanted to help me. I just had told myself the story that receiving help was a sign of weakness. Because these are the narratives I grew up with. You are the strong one, or you're the problem. You are the caretaker, or you are taking away from people who need help. You are the fixer, or you're weak. Yeah. When you're telling yourself those kinds of narratives or carrying that, it is really a tough life. So I'm grateful that I've learned to chip away from that armor so that I could let people in. I also noticed that the women that I coached that were like me or are like me show up exhausted. It is exhausting doing everything yourself, carrying the heavy load, not asking for help, thinking you have to figure it out on your own. It's exhausting. So women show up generally waving that white flag because they're tired and they don't know what to do. And I'm really grateful when they think of me because I wanted to be able to help women know that's not the way life's supposed to work. We're not supposed to heal on our own. We need to connect with others that can help us. And I know that receiving help can feel uncomfortable. And I know that asking for help can be more uncomfortable. Yet the beauty of going to a retreat is that it's really designed to create such a safe space that you can do both. You can

Putting Down Armor In Community

SPEAKER_01 5:20

receive help, you can get help, and the third part of it is that you can be restored, you can rest. And that is what we were really happy to provide for the people who showed up for our retreat. One of the things I witnessed at the retreat is what happens when women finally put down their armor. I am always amazed when I see a version of myself show up at a retreat, the version of me that had it all together, that was all cleaned up, buttoned up, everything looked great on the outside, yet knowing what they were carrying, they were barely holding it together on the inside. And we had a few of those show up. And it was great to watch them to stop performing. It was great to watch them become more vulnerable, more open with the group, and let themselves be seen as human. Women among women. It was amazing. I tell my clients that healing begins, transformation begins when we're willing to tell the truth. And not just the story we think everybody wants to hear, but the real truth, not the polished version, the real version. At the retreat, we heard stories from these women that they've carried for years and haven't told many or anybody. Stories about grief, stories about betrayal, stories about self-worth challenges, regret, fear. These were things that they were carrying and that they were sharing. And what struck me was just how quickly what happens, how all of this opens up when there's a great connection, a great container where they feel safe. And it's always very humbling to me how that happens. I can do my best to create the right environment. I can do my best to create the right program, yet it really I think is almost magical how it unfolds when women come together in support of each other. One of the most meaningful moments at the retreat was when the women were sharing. We had one last exercise that where they were sharing about who they were becoming. And I asked them to draw a picture in the form of a flower garden of how they saw themselves growing into who they wanted to be. And when I saw those depictions and heard the descriptions, and we compared that to what happened Friday night, where they shared where they came from, I could see an amazing aha between the women they were on Friday and the women they became by late Saturday, early Sunday. And watching them tell the story with pride of who they plan to become was even more touching. I also got to watch women supporting women. We had an attendee who lost a family member over the weekend while she was with us. And it brought up such great grief in her, as it would. As they found out, they rallied around her. And it was beautiful. It was exactly what I would have expected. Women in support of women. Open about the challenges that they're having, this is how we really connect. We don't connect with the surface level stuff. We connect when we're willing to open up and share the deeper, harder stuff. Really be willing to be seen at that level. And I got to witness that. It is so inspiring, encouraging, and hopeful for me. That when women who don't know each other really come together and open up to the depth that they did this weekend, it's just like music to my ears to get to see that. And

Safety Creates Truth Telling

SPEAKER_01 10:45

mostly because that means that we were successful in creating the right environment for them to do that. That's the beauty of being in the mountains, being near water, being surrounded with people who want each of us to be better. It was a collective, and it was a setting that was just amazing. Not to mention, we had some incredible food. We were nourished, we were rested, we were attended by all the elements necessary to heal. And I think what's important to remember is the healing process doesn't happen because somebody gives us the right answer. It happens because we become willing to be seen. We become willing to receive help. We become willing to look at the parts of our life that aren't working. And be open-minded to maybe shifting a little bit in the way we're processing it, the way we're attending to our life, so that we can heal and grow. We're healing because we realize we're not alone. If you're listening and thinking, I wish I had a space like that, you do not have to wait until the next retreat. Whether through coaching, group work, or one of my online classes, there are ways to begin that journey today. You can visit my website to schedule a complimentary consultation and explore what support

Fire Ceremony And Letting Go

SPEAKER_01 12:40

might look like for you. One of the most powerful moments at our retreat was the fire ceremony. At the end of the day on Saturday, after we completed all the coursework, we gathered around the fire to release, symbolically release the narratives that we were committing to no longer carrying. And we added a little spice to it by calling in certain practices from cultures that were borrowed from people on our team, the Spanish culture, the Indian culture, and we had a cacao ceremony as well. And all of this to say is that we went through the release and then we invited in the news story. And the process of letting go and inviting in creates another container in which the attendees could go home with. Full of possibility, full of hope, full of a knowing that they could actually leave behind what no longer works for them and take with them only that which will. Each of the women wrote down something they wanted to release: a belief, a fear, a story, a wound. And then we watched it burn. Now, did that paper burning solve something magically? Of course not. But symbols matter, rituals matter, intentions matter. I can remember the first time I attended a fire ceremony, and I have done many over the last two decades. But the first one, I had to let go, I had to begin the letting go of fear. Fear has been such a constant in my life and has held me back from expanding. And so that first fire ceremony, I burned something about fear. We even had an ocean ceremony release where I threw fear in the water, in the ocean. And all this to say, rituals matter because they're reminders that in order for us to expand and grow, we have to keep letting go. And fires have a way, a very real way of transforming what we put into it into something else. And so the energy of fear can go into the fire and it can come out into me as courage, the courage to go on, the courage to ask for help, the courage to expand and grow. And that is what has brought me to here, to this work, because I know the role it's played in my life. To be finally free of fear is an amazing feeling. And when I get to watch and witness other women do the same thing, it just fills me. It fills me with such great

Leading While Still Healing

SPEAKER_01 16:10

gratitude that this is why I get to do this work. Every time I lead a retreat, it is really a teaching moment for me. When I watch the people who attend, when I listen to the conversations we're having, when I read their experience of what I'm sharing, that's one side of it. I think I watch myself throughout the whole retreat become more expanded. And I notice that as I become more expanded, I'm also very affected by what's going on around me. It's an interesting process because for me to help others heal, I actually have to keep healing myself. I have to keep being aware of where I'm vulnerable, where I need to be better boundried, where I have to be clearer about what I need. I also have to be aware of what I'm feeling throughout it. And there were moments where my focus was in and out of the experience, meaning I was in it present with them, and then I was affected by other things. And then I would try to get back in with it, and and it's a dance. So the more retreats I lead, and this is now my 15th one I've done. I've done them collaboratively, I've done them on my own, and this is the first one in New York. However, I feel like they're all opportunities for me to learn and grow. I'm not someone who has it all figured out. I'm someone who's done quite a bit of healing work on herself. And I'm learning that in order for me to be more effective as a retreat leader, I have to be really very self-caring, self-attending, really able to communicate what I need and see to it that I get it. So I'm learning. I'm learning how to be better at this. I think as a leader, you have to have clear boundaries. It's confusing because when you're on retreat, particularly when you're away from your home environment, there's this one idea that you're supposed to socialize with everybody. And that as a leader of the retreat, that's actually not what you're supposed to do. You need to protect yourself enough by going off and being on your own and clearing that, clearing the energy that you've absorbed so that you can be able to attend to them when you have the next group setting. And the way we formatted this retreat, it was a little difficult because one segment led to another segment, led to another segment, and there wasn't a lot of time. Yet I'm learning that there are things I could do better to protect my energy. And I will be, I'll be working on that for

Integration After Coming Home

SPEAKER_01 20:00

next time. Integration to me means putting to work the things that you committed to, the ideas that you learned as a practice in your life. Yet before you can integrate, you need to really be aware of if where you are in alignment with it. So, for example, ground yourself back in your home. So that may look like clearing your space, clearing you, and clearing the space for the energy that you're bringing into the home, putting down the workshop or would retreat, whatever you concepts you you did, and make sure that you take care of yourself. You know, get to bed, get a shower, get a meal, just so that you can reclaim your home. And so if you live with other people, if you have children, if you have spouses, if you have roommates, you know, you may need some solitude before you can, you know, into you know, recongregate with everybody. And that would be normal. Because depending on what type of retreat you have, you know, coming back into a setting, you're different than when you left. So it takes some thought about how what do I want to bring in? What's the version of me that I want to share so that I don't lose what I gained through the retreat. And I also don't overwhelm myself with other people's needs and energy as I come back into the space.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

How is the medicine of spring different than other retreats seems like?

SPEAKER_01 21:58

I'm very Partial to spring. Spring is all about possibility. And what was great about this retreat, besides the hopefulness of spring itself, is the setting we had. We were in the Catskills by a river with a great view and a constant sound of rushing water, and birds and other kind of wildlife was all around us. It was an oasis of spring. And so the difference of this one compared to others is not only the time of year, this one also had an added benefit of a very particular Ayurvedic approach to the meals and the self-care. And this retreat was one of the first ones I I did for just women. And so in that way, it was different. It was special. And uh yeah, it was great.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

To describe the medicine of spraying one word, what that word healing.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Healing. And everyone, it can be different, but healing has some really specific qualities to it. It requires us to be honest, it requires us to identify what we need to heal. We need to look back at the version of ourself that was harmed by whatever we went through and attend to her. And then we need to leave space or create space for who we want to become. So healing has a process, and it's not fast, yet it's effective, and it may have to be repeated. Yet the more we do the healing process, the healing work, the easier it is for us to move through the challenges of life so that we can remain

What Healing Really Requires

SPEAKER_01 24:30

who we who we are.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Last question. What do you wish that women knew about this work? What do you wish more women knew about this work? And then repeat that answer. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Okay. What I wish women knew about this work. Is that what we're saying? What I wish women knew more about this work is it's not scary. It may seem a little intimidating, but it's not scary. This is necessary, it's essential to growth. That's what I want them to know. I want them to know that if they really want change in their life, they really need to do some healing work. And every time we lead a retreat, we create the proper safe container for them to do that. It's special, it's always going to be uh as comfortable as possible, you know, and yet it's not scary. It's not that scary. Um I think what's always amazing is that when women come together in support of each other through growth, friendships are made, connections that last a long time, if not forever, come out of that. And that is important because we really all need to remember healing isn't meant to be done alone. Together. And so I want to ask you a question. What are you carrying that no longer belongs to you? Did you pick up a belief, a limited idea about what your life is going to be? Maybe fear itself. And is it holding you in a place that's not really serving you? Maybe you're suffering quietly. Maybe there's a story that you need to stop telling. I wonder what would become possible for you if you would just let it go. These are all things that our retreat attendees came to understand about themselves, and what I think that all of us in this world need to claim what we're going to let go of and what we want to invite in. That's where growth begins. If this episode resonates with you, I want to invite you to take the next step. Visit my website, schedule a complimentary conversation. Visit my website,

What Will You Release Next

SPEAKER_01 27:50

schedule a complimentary consultation. Whether you're navigating a major life transition, healing from a relationship, rebuilding your confidence, or simply feeling called to something more. You don't have to do it alone. You can also explore my online courses, workshops, and coaching programs designed to help you rewrite the narratives that keep you stuck and create a life that feels aligned, intentional, and authentic. Thank you for spending this time with me. Thank you for being a part of this community. And thank you for reminding me again and again that healing happens when we have the courage to show up, be seen, and support one another. Until next time, keep asking the hard questions, keep telling yourself the truth, and keep rewriting your story. And until soon, be well.