Just before the world ended,  I spent time writing and talking about writing with a group of women in Bordeaux, France.  It was the most nurturing, creativity-affirming and blissful experience my writing and coaching life has ever hit upon. And then the S%^$T hit the fan. The result was emotional and creative whiplash. 

          I bet you know exactly what I am talking about.

          The retreat group met up in Paris last October (2024) for a yum meet-and-greet dinner and then the group of us (nine in all if you count our marvelous drop in visitor, but more on that later), caught a train as a group to Bordeaux where we went on to enjoy the most memorable 7 days, 8 night retreat I have ever run. (And I have run MANY retreats in many marvelous places - from a remote Puerto Rican atoll to a family ranch in rural Jalisco, Mexico.) So, what made this Bordeaux writing retreat so great? I am asking myself this now daily. Because I want to duplicate it somehow, if possible, in the future. Or figure out what the magic formula was that I hit on. Because this is what writers need. This Kind of Magic.

Time together in beautiful and interesting places with a group leader who is truly invested in their writing. That would be me. And one other. retreat mates who I think will stay friends forever.

        1.  I could not have chosen a better destination. Bordeaux is one of those cities that has that feeling of time, settling in, gracefully, over centuries. From cobble stone streets lined with butter-colored town houses with beautiful ornamentation and colorful doors, to échoppes or maisons de maître, single story limestone cottage-like homes, to grand cathedrals, including the 13th century Cathedral Saint Andrés, which sits like a wedding cake near the town hall. We wandered around as a group or in smaller groups of twos and threes and just felt so THERE, so transported. Kind of dazzled to be honest that we were there.

         2. I could not have engineered (in any way) a better, more diverse group of participants. All talented and possessing of stories, they ranged in age from late twenties to eighties, and places of origin from France to Sweden to northern California to Connecticut and New York City to Kentucky, among other places. That was part luck, part sheer accretion of talent from all my years of coaching. Everyone was so chill and easy going. That you cannot plan on. It was luck.

        3. I didn't overplan. The group only had one planned activity, a day trip to Saint Emilion to visit the town and go to a rural winery. It was a glorious change of pace. And this way, with only one extracurricular,  we could focus on writing. Which is the point, right? 

        4. I had the world's best co-director. An old friend, Monique Antonette Lewis, who lives in Versailles, helped me out SO MUCH. She is so organized and such a good planner (not my superpower), she made everything go smoothly. Having a planner on board is essential. (She is also very fun.)

        What I did not do:
        Rent a castle. Try to cook for the group. Overbook "experiences" and activities. Try to do too much or be too fancy. I let group-think and group energy rule the daily schedule after morning writing prompts and exercises. That was such a good move. Everyone loved each other so much they wanted to just hang out and do their own stuff. I need to remember that. People like freedom to roam and just be,they crave  writing time.

       After we got back, my head was still rushing for days, spinning with ideas, my heart fluttering. The Bordeaux retreat was such a high.

       The came the low, what I referred to above as the end of the world. Because it was. A month later, I took a vacation trip with two buddies to Mexico and on our second night there, Kamala did not win. (Notice I did not mention who won the election.) I want to confess here that I had happily drunk the Kamala kool-aid. I was a huge supporter; I thought she had it in the bag. It was a belly punch moment for me and then, three days later, my husband, from whom I was separated, but close to, died. I won't go into details here, even though I could (for pages). I just want to say the one-two punch of these was shattering.

            Now, it is April, and the world feels damaged and distraught, but my writing life and my retreat-mates are going strong. I will end this missive by saying there is nothing more nourishing than a writing retreat in a new place, if you can ever pull it off. Everything would be so much worse right now if I didn't have that to look back on. It is the warm coal I sit beside daily, feeling it's pulsing, ruby heart of fire heating my heart. It keeps me going.

        I will conclude her by talking about the surprise. When a retreat offers up such a thing, I say to my fellow retreat-coaches, grab it. On day three of our Bordeaux retreat ,an old friend dropped in. Jennifer Steil. She is a writer momma like me, who lives not far from Bordeaux and asked if she could just come and hang with us. If you know her you know how damn lucky that was. If you follow her substack Liminal, you also know she has been very sick. She told me she just wanted to "be around writers". So she came. And she ran the best workshop on ekphrastic writing I can imagine. She was like light on water, shiny, full of verve, kind and instinctual about writing. That sort of serendipity and luck, friends, one cannot plan on when planning a retreat. But if such a lucky breeze blows your way, latch onto it.

​

Bordeaux was beautiful. Just look at these writers. (This is not everyone, btw.)
Can you feel it? The joy and bliss of our group. I will certainly run more retreats in the future. But this one would be hard to top.
                                                                            - Elizabeth 

        

           

​