392: Sisterhood in the Azores: How 16 Women Redefined Midlife Health Together

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:01
What happens when you gather 16 of your clients on a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic for a week? Well, magic transformation and a lot of redefining of what it means to age powerfully on this week’s episode of the grace and grit podcast, I am going to debrief the most recent Grace and Grit Retreat, which we held in the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal, and I am joined by my dear friend Laini Gray, who joined me for this amazing adventure and was also an integral part of the event. So if that sounds good to you, if it sounds like something you might be interested in hearing more about, stick around, because that is where we’re headed.

Courtney Townley 0:38
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale, health story you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:58
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley, I’m so happy you’re here. You know, I never set out, as a business owner to run retreat experiences. In fact, it was something I was incredibly resistant to. A lot of my community has heard me speak to this before, but time and time again, clients and community members were asking me to host some kind of retreat experience. So about three years ago, I dove into it.

Courtney Townley 1:32
I ran my first retreat here in Montana. We rented a 3000 acre ranch on the foot of the Blackfoot River, and it was amazing. The first year was an incredible experience, so it was really easy to say yes to it again. So last year, I ran another retreat at the same location, and had an even more magical experience. And alongside of those retreat experiences, I was also going to Portugal pretty much every year since 2018 I love Portugal.

Courtney Townley 2:04
It was first introduced to me by one of my dearest friends, specifically the Azores Islands. But I have since been to the mainland many times. And last summer, in August, I was in the Azores Islands with my said friend, Joana Meneses, and we ended up staying at a newly built retreat center, and immediately hit it off with the owner of this retreat center, and I was telling her about my previous retreats, and she said to me, why aren’t you doing them here? And I thought, why am I not doing them here? This makes a lot of sense, so I cast a net out to my community about running a retreat in Portugal.

Courtney Townley 2:47
And I didn’t just want to run a retreat, I wanted to make sure that it was a treat built for people who were really committed to the coaching process that I help clients work through. So last November, I made an offer to coach with me for a year, and a part of the coaching experience would be a week in the Azores Islands for this retreat. And it turned out to be so amazing. I mean, the quality of the participants, the depth of the conversation, the fact that I had two of my best friends with me to support me through the event and kind of co-facilitate.

Courtney Townley 3:26
Everything about it was just incredibly awesome.

Courtney Townley 3:30
So today, I invited Laini Gray, who is one of my dear friends that joined me for this event, to debrief a little bit about the event and why it was so special, and really what it was about, and highlighting some of the most magical moments. So if you are interested, I hope you’ll enjoy this episode. If you’ve ever considered doing coaching with me or doing a retreat experience with me, this will probably give you a great overview of the type of event I run.

Courtney Townley 4:01
So without further ado, let’s get into it. Hello, my friend. How are ya? I’m doing well. How about you? I’m good. You’re a little tired though, right? We’ve only been home like what, 10 days, and you traveled as soon as we got back from the Azores. You went to a football game in Oregon.

Laini Gray 4:19
Yes indeed, yes, indeed. So, yes, indeed.

Courtney Townley 4:22
So feeling a little fatigued, yeah, all right. So do you have some vacation energy lingering, or do you feel like you just got thrown back into the the chaos of life?

Laini Gray 4:35
No, I’m just not really ready to get back into

Courtney Townley 4:38
you’re dragging your feet. Yeah?

Laini Gray 4:40
I’m like, when are we gonna go to the beach? What day lunch? When are we gonna do this? Oh, I have to sit here for eight hours.

Courtney Townley 4:48
Yeah, yeah, I’m with you. Like, I It’s very confronting having, like, a month off, because I basically took the month of August off. I know you were traveling with me for three weeks and coming back. And being in front of a computer screen for one and then also, like, all of a sudden, being back into, like, this rigorous schedule and the routine of school and other people’s schedules. It’s just, it’s a lot, it’s a lot, lot, I know.

Courtney Townley 5:13
Okay, so you came with me to the Azores Islands to help facilitate this retreat, which was so amazing. And the first thing I want to just maybe open up, because I it was your first big international trip, like you’ve done Mexico, but it was your first time going to Europe, which we didn’t even quite make it to Europe, like we were, we were in the Azores Islands, which wasn’t quite to the mainland. But what was your experience like? Did it? Was it a good first international trip,

Laini Gray 5:41
wow. Yeah, it was easy. It was great. It was travel. Was fine. And then, yeah, it was a beautiful place to go. And it was just really nice to see different cultures and people and experience that. And that was really fun. And, yeah, it was really nice. I liked everything about it.

Courtney Townley 5:59
And I think the thing to really highlight here is that you and I traveled together for three weeks, and we’re still really good friends, yeah? Like, we were shared a room together for three weeks. Like, I don’t know that I’ve done that with I don’t think I’ve I mean, yes, I live with my husband, but I don’t think we’ve even traveled together for that period of time. Yeah, same, yeah. I know we did great. I’m proud of us. I am really proud of us too.

Courtney Townley 6:20
Yeah, well, now that you’re on the call, I wanted to start by really giving you a public Thank you, because you You did so many things that I think can so easily go unnoticed on this trip, like just supporting me as a friend, certainly, and like talking me down when my luggage got lost and Our flights got canceled, and all of those things. But then also bringing your your gifts to the retreat, which, number one, obviously, as a teacher and a facilitator yourself, like there was so much magic that you brought to the the event. But also, and I’ve always said this to you, but you’re such a connector. You’re so good at bringing people together and really getting people to feel like a part of the community and engage with everybody who’s there. And of course, you brought that to the event as well, and that just that special Laini-ness that I don’t think anyone else could replace, like it’s just really awesome.

Laini Gray 7:16
Thank you. It was my honor to be a part of this group, because it’s such an amazing group of women, you really have put together this amazing, amazing safe container for these women to really grow and thrive. And so to be invited into that circle was just my privilege, and that was just so much fun to be with the women and to be alongside you as well,

Courtney Townley 7:38
And to be fair, you’re already an integrated part of that circle, because you already teach inside of Rumble & Rise true and you know, and a lot of these people you work with too, right? Because a lot of my clients will work with you to do some urine tests and blood tests and gut health tests to get everything up and running. So I think that you are already very much an integral part of this community.

Courtney Townley 8:01
So the purpose of the retreat, I just want to tell listeners like we always Well, historically, I’ve only run two retreats prior to this one, and I really opened the retreat to the membership. First and foremost, the rumble and rise membership. And then my plan has always been that if we don’t sell out, I will open it to the public. But we’ve never gotten that far. So we’ve only had rumble and rise members come to our retreats. The first two years were held in Montana. They were three days at a really amazing, 3000 acre ranch, and they went beautifully well. But I wasn’t working on a private level with all of these clients. They They mostly were just a part of the rumble and rise community. So I knew that they had a common language. I knew that they had kind of a common pursuit in terms of the way they were going after health, right? And I think that makes an event really special when people already kind of have that common vernacular and kind of ambition in their process.

Courtney Townley 9:00
But this year, I did something very different, which I kind of did almost as a saving grace, because last fall, my dad had brain surgery, and I was kind of spinning out, because it’s usually a time that I’m kind of prepping for my launches the next year and getting business ready. And I was feeling very overwhelmed, because elder care is a whole layer of responsibility that I no one prepares you for it, right? No one prepares you for that part of life.

Courtney Townley 9:29
And I was trying to think like, How can I simplify my offerings and really just kind of throw one major offer out there that includes the membership and includes private coaching for the year and includes the retreat. And if no one bites, we’ll just separate them out. I’ll sell them separately. But, man, if I could sell them all together, that would just save me so much work. So anyone listening to this podcast, I really just want to emphasize to you, like a big theme in my life right now is like, how can I make things easier and simpler? You. And this was very much a part of that, yeah, so I cast the net, I threw out this offer, and we sold out in five days, which was fabulous, because I didn’t have to hustle all year for business, right?

Courtney Townley 10:12
It was just kind of organically came to being, which was really wonderful and took a tremendous amount of pressure off of me. But the retreat piece of this is, yes, to retreat to give yourself an opportunity to decompress. But more than that, it’s really kind of a week of being able to practice integrating so many of the things that we talk about inside of rumble and rise. So we move together, we explore together, we play together. We have a lot of deep conversations. And this year, what I loved so much is we decided to make the theme surging into your full expression.

Courtney Townley 10:49
And so we asked all the participants to come with something to express, and we didn’t give them a lot of information around that. We just basically kind of left it open ended. And I told them, Look, it could be a passage from a book, it could be an idea, an opinion, it could be a piece of art. And I was so blown away by what people shared. And I think it just brought such an incredible energy to the event that probably wouldn’t have been there any other way experience with it.

Laini Gray 11:19
I thought it was really I thought it was brilliant. Number one, it was a brilliant idea. And first of all, these women are used to seeing you express and share your genius, sure. And so they’re always participating, you know, in a conversation that you’ve already started. Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about this. And so to have these women stand up and teach us something or share a song or read a book that they wrote, or share a poem that they wrote, or bring us something they made with their hands, was amazing. Just to see them shining in their brilliance, their zone of genius, was awesome.

Courtney Townley 12:01
Yeah, it truly was. And I, I really felt inspired to kind of throw that piece in this year, because, you know, with the book coming out, and even just the premise of the book, like so often I get asked the question like, What is health to you? What is wellness to you? And the thing that I always circle back to is, it’s our capacity to be fully expressed, right? Whatever that means for you, like, what are your gifts?

Courtney Townley 12:26
What are the things that you are here to inspire and contribute to, and the communities you’re meant to serve in? And so that expression piece was really meant to kind of Ignite that like, your health isn’t just about muscle tone or blood profiles or looking good in your genes, right? It allows you to show up and be a fully expressed human. And I think you’re so spot on when you see someone in their full expression, there’s such a light to it. There’s such a energy to it. And gosh, I mean, as a coach, if I could get more women self expressed in that way, I just feel like I’ve done my job.

Laini Gray 13:06
Yeah, it’s, it’s really that piece of what brings you joy, right? Wearing a size four pants doesn’t necessarily bring anybody joy, right? Dancing brings somebody joy. Painting brings somebody joy. Making something is for arts or crafts. You know, that’s what brings people joy. And so to see these women in this pure state of joy, sharing something that means so much to them with all of us, and for some of them, they had to be very vulnerable about it. Yeah, it was beautiful. It was such a bonding experience, such as this vulnerability and sharing something of yourself that was just really, really special, absolutely.

Courtney Townley 13:48
And I love, I love that you mentioned that piece of it, like the expression was so beautiful to see. But what it took for some people to get up and express, like some people, we didn’t think we’re going to express, and then on the last day, or the last couple of days, they decided to get up there and do it, because watching other women do it kind of gave them that permission and that courage. But I love just the emphasis that expression. It gives us so much, but it also requires taking risk and getting uncomfortable and being vulnerable, those are all hard truths of expression. Yeah, so is there anything that surprised you about the event, like as a whole the retreat?

Laini Gray 14:35
I don’t know about surprise. No, I don’t know what surprised you?

Courtney Townley 14:43
What surprised me? I think my mom surprised me, you know, a little bit, just because I like, especially like that last night, her getting up and giving a toast, like, I’ve never seen her do that, like, put herself, yeah, kind of in a position of, I have something to say in front of a room of people. I. Um, so that that surprised me, and that, I think that was my mom’s expression, right? Like she had something really, you know, meaningful that she wanted to share with everybody, and she got really courageous and stood up and did it.

Courtney Townley 15:13
One thing I know, I heard from a lot of the facilitators, like the owner of the facility, I know my mom had made this comment, and some other people who were kind of outsiders, just saying that it’s so interesting to see such a smart group of women who are so incredibly different, like completely creating the sisterhood, right? Like there was such an energy, and everybody was so respectful and kind and encouraging, and we had so many deep conversations, and there may not have been an opportunity at any in any other way, to bring this community of women together. Yeah, and yet again, because everyone was dedicated to kind of the same level of work. It worked. It just made it really special.

Laini Gray 16:00
That’s the part like I wasn’t surprised, because this is something you’ve been doing for a long time, and I’ve seen it at your previous retreats, that these women from different walks of life can sit down and they know a little bit about each other already. But I remember the first time I came in to hear the depth of the conversations they were having. I was like, what these people know each other from an online community? Yeah, I was blown away.

Laini Gray 16:26
And so then to step it up this year and have these people have all been private coached by you, so they’re definitely, they’re committed to becoming the best version of themselves, whatever that may be, whether that’s career focused, health focused, family focused, whatever that is, they were just all on that same path of encouraging each other in their growth, whatever growth that was for each individual,

Courtney Townley 16:50
yeah, yeah. It’s so true, yeah.

Laini Gray 16:53
So to listen to the conversations, to see the vulnerability, to see how easy it was to cry or not easy to cry, right? To just be open and honest and feel safe. Knowing that these other women understand the journey, even if it’s not the same. Journey was just powerful.

Courtney Townley 17:13
It’s really interesting, because I’ve had so many people ask me, but before the retreat and in the aftermath of it too, you know, are you going to run another retreat in Portugal? Well, probably absolutely, I would go back 100 100 times over, like I loved, I know it surprises you, right? Like, yeah, of course, I’m going to go back. That being said, I also I feel the need to explain to people that I have no interest in becoming like an international retreat business that is not my business.

Courtney Townley 17:47
My business is cultivating community around health and wellbeing and helping women to change the conversation and deepen the conversation. And I look at these retreats as an incubator for that. And so I think I expressed this to you that I think the retreat would have been a different experience. Had it been a random group of 16 women that I really had no connection with who were just coming to retreat, right? Totally.

Courtney Townley 18:17
I think that could still be very magical and wonderful. It would just be very different, but to have worked intimately with these women for the past eight, nine months, some of them longer, some of them been with me for a really long time, for you to have had many conversations with them, to kind of have that shared experience and curriculum that they’ve been working on, I think it just puts something into the event that made it just really outstanding. And so that is the event I’m interested in recreating, is people who want to do a deep dive for a year and then want to gather with other women who have also committed to that kind of deep dive.

Laini Gray 18:57
Yeah, yeah. That’s what was really powerful and exciting about the retreat is that these women are all working on working through different things. Some are really hard, right? That they are working through absolutely this retreat, especially because they all kind of signed up for this package last November, December, right? So they’ve been working all year on their goals, on their dreams, and so this was an opportunity for them to really share what’s going well, where am I shifting and where am I going to how am I going to finish the rest of the year? Yes, exactly. Really kind of it was really magical. It was really cool. I think

Courtney Townley 19:34
the timing was good too. I think August is a good month. Usually, we do the Montana retreat in October, which is also great. And I do, we do the Montana retreat in October, because we know we’re past fire season. Like, if people want to know why I do it, that’s usually why. But I do like that people came home from Portugal, and they still have a little more than a quarter of the year, you know, to to make the most of it and finish strong. Because I definitely. Saw a lot of epiphanies and even just being on phone calls with people the last few days, I think people are definitely re energized and refocused and in a different place than they were before they left for the retreat, which is really great. Yeah, myself included. Yeah, me too. I me too.

Courtney Townley 20:15
I definitely feel the same like I kind of to your point when you said you were kind of dragging your feet on getting back into routine. I think for me coming home, it’s like, how can I just savor this? How can I remember this feeling and not lose it, right? And that it’s really I mean this first week, call me out on this in a couple of weeks, because I hope it doesn’t change, but it probably will, but I live my day a little differently because I’m not willing to, like, sit in front of the computer for so long, or not do my workout or go for my walk, or, like, those things. I want to do them, because that’s my effort to cling to that feeling. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 20:54
And then, of course, you know, as life gets busier and the fall gets more packed and all the things, it’ll get more challenging, and I’m up for it. We’ll see how it goes. It’ll be great. It’ll be great. It’ll be great. So I wanted to speak a little bit to I hate to call it a curriculum, because a retreat isn’t about I say this on the very first day. These retreats are never about education. They’re about integration. I educate all year, like we do master classes and workshops and all the things. There’s plenty of education in this community. But really the event itself is about integration. That being said, you and I co taught workshops every day, one workshop at least, every day. And really I just kind of wanted to go through that for the listener, so if someone was interested maybe in next year, they kind of had kind of an idea of how not that, not that next year would be exactly the same, right?

Courtney Townley 21:48
But so they had some sense that there was definitely a theme that we carried through. So the very first day, we basically just did kind of the opening circle and introductions and setting some intentions for the retreat. But the second day, we really started to kind of do what we call untethering, where we started to challenge participants to kind of disconnect from their life in order to reconnect with themselves. And a part of that was really challenged, challenging them to consider the masks that they were wearing in terms of like, where in their life are they showing up in authentically, and what might their life look like if they kind of took those masks off and showed up a little more authentically? Yeah, is there anything about that workshop that stood out to you that you wanted to mention here?

Laini Gray 22:38
Well, we had a great discussion, first of all about masks, about how they can help us. Sometimes we need to wear a mask so we can show up and get the things done that we need to, and other times we wear a mask when we’re not being honest with ourselves about who we are or what we want or how we want to show up. Yeah. So that was a great discussion, but then we asked them to color a mask. So they all got a mask, and they got to color the mask and have it actually represent how they wanted to show up. Yes. And what I loved about that is that coloring is just such a cool form of meditation, in my opinion. And so to see these women all get down on the floor

Courtney Townley 23:23
like little kids. That’s what it reminded me of, like a bathroom. Yes, they

Laini Gray 23:27
were they were so excited. They were picking their colors. We had these little bedazzled jewels, and they were all just focused in on the task and then to see what they created. When they were given the freedom to create who they wanted to be. Was brilliant. It was just so

Courtney Townley 23:43
fun. So it was super fun. I think you made that really fun too, like just your energy around it, and kind of the invitations that you gave them to think about, I think were were really special. And just for the listener, like to be clear, this was the end of the day, after we had done a coastal hike and we had a picnic, and we kind of had done our exploring and played for the day.

Courtney Townley 24:03
So then on day two, we rolled into an event with my dear friend Joana, who is from the island. She’s a native of the island of trecera Island, and she, of course, is the reason that I even know of the Azores Islands, because she invited me there in 2018 I’ve gone back several times since, and there’s no way that I could run a retreat there without her being in an integral part of it.

Courtney Townley 24:28
And as you well know now, she has a whole energy in and of it’s herself, like she’s just an incredible human. So she developed a paddle board system that she calls the daisy. She had it developed in France, and it’s basically a platform in the center. And then there’s 10 paddle boards that attach to this platform. And she has put this platform in the Atlantic Ocean. She puts it in pools at hotels, and she teaches classes on these this platform. So we went to Sarah. Just this beautiful hotel, which, I mean, you cannot beat the view. It’s so spectacular. And she set up the paddle boards with the help of her husband in the pool.

Courtney Townley 25:09
And then we had, because we had such a large group, we had 16 women total. So half the group went in to do the class, and the other group went on a tour of Angra, which is the main town on this island, and then we swapped. That was a lovely day. And I’m sharing this with you because the whole system is called body roots. And so the second day of the retreat was all about rooting like, what does it feel like when you are drifting in your life and kind of getting disoriented from the places you really want to be, and what are the things that help to anchor you and root you into the way that you want to be showing up. And we did a little workshop around that as well, and more of a discussion that day, I felt like we had a real discussion with the participants about the things that distract them and the things that root them. Is there anything that stuck out to you about

Laini Gray 26:00
that day, the class, for sure, yeah, a couple of participants that aren’t real strong swimmers, and then that felt a little bit uncomfortable to even be in the pool, yeah. But everybody got on the boards. Everybody got on the boards. And it was, it was, oh my gosh. I think everybody, once we saw the system and we saw this view, everybody wanted to be on the board. We weren’t sure what we were in for, but everybody was like, this is exciting.

Laini Gray 26:29
And then Joana was such a brilliant instructor that everyone just felt calm and connected and invited to participate at whatever level, and she was constantly queuing us to stay rooted where we needed to be rooted, yes, right? Because we all are ready to take off and grow at different times. Yes, sometimes we just need to be rooted and sit still for a moment. Anyway. That was, that was probably my favorite part of that day.

Courtney Townley 26:55
It’s such an analogy for life, right? And I remember at the end of that day, Joana saying that, you know, Joana’s taught all over the world, and she’s taught, I mean, 1000s of people like she’s been in the industry for a very long time, and specifically with the system she’s she taught in New York, and she obviously brings it to the Azores every summer. I think this was her ninth year teaching in the Azores Islands.

Courtney Townley 27:15
But my point being is, she said to me, this is the first group that is ever fully boarded, and to me, like that still gives me chills to think about, because just that, just that image of like being with a community of 16 women that were all willing to try something new, even though, like you said, some of them were nervous, some of them were not good swimmers, But everybody trusted the process enough to at least board. And there were a couple that just laid there the whole time, but they trusted the group.

Laini Gray 27:47
They trusted the group of women. Yeah, because when you’re in a place where you don’t trust the people around you, you’re not really, oh, let me try something new in front of strangers. Yes, right? And so the it was that was really special.

Courtney Townley 28:00
It makes me emotional thinking about it. It was a really beautiful thing.

Laini Gray 28:03
Yeah? I mean, nobody wanted to get off the boards at the end.

Courtney Townley 28:08
I know it’s true. Yeah. So that was beautiful. And then we rolled into the third day, no, the fifth. I think this. We’re rolling into day five. Now, I know I’ve kind of like, maybe not done them all justice, but correct me, if I’m wrong, maybe I’m skipping a day here because I’m not looking at the itinerary. At the itinerary. But on day five, we decided to teach a workshop called we did generate. We haven’t generated. Oh, we did generate. Yeah, so things that help us to remind me what we taught that day. What did we take that remember either Oh, my God, I know I was gonna pull up the curriculum. Let me, let me. I have it right here. Let me, let me, let me see really quick, what did we teach? I’m like, okay, so we had that was day four, yes, generate, Oh, we did impossible goals and next level vision.

Courtney Townley 28:53
Okay, yes, yeah, so, and this is great, because this has actually come up in a couple coaching calls today where participants were talking about how that conversation around impossible goals really got them thinking about what they want to commit to for the rest of the year and maybe even going into next year. So just for listeners, if you’ve never heard that concept of an impossible goal, an impossible goal is not a goal that you will necessarily attain, but it is something that you are willing to go after because of who you will become in the process. So it could be like if you’re let’s just say that you’re working right now for somebody else, and you’ve been in that job for 30 years. Your impossible goal might be that you’re gonna have a successful business that is completely run by you someday, right?

Courtney Townley 29:42
That feels big and scary and really impossible because you’re so far from it right now. Now we can talk about strategy, and obviously we can take micro movements to move in that direction, but the objective of pursuing it is not necessarily to reach the goal. It’s to. To try a lot of new things and learn about yourself and be willing to fail and all of the things. So anyway, that was a beautiful discussion. A lot of people kind of shared things that they had been working on or had done in the past for that mission. So that was lovely. And then the next day, go ahead, sorry,

Laini Gray 30:20
that night. That night, we did a sound bath in the pool. So we floated on blow up mattresses in the pool with our blanket at sunset, stars coming out, sound bath on the side of the pool. Another magical experience.

Courtney Townley 30:39
Yeah, there was an amazing gentleman who had salvaged some bowls from some like Tibetan monastery, like, like, 100 years ago or something, yeah, set up the bowls on the edge of the pool. And then again, because our group, you know, we had 16 people, so half the group got in the pool on these mattresses, fully clothed with blankets and eye pillows and all the things. It was lovely. And the other half laid on lounge chairs. And it was about a half an hour, right? And then we swapped groups. I was in the second group. And that was really interesting, because when I got on the mattress, were you in the second group? Yeah, yeah.

Courtney Townley 31:10
So when we got on the mattresses, it was light outside, right, right? And then we, you know, went through the sound bath experience. And when we took the masks off, it was pitch black totally, and the pool was all lit up. It was beautiful. It was really, really spectacular. And I can’t even possibly describe to listeners what exhale is really like, which is the facility where we hosted this event, but it’s on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s on its own piece of private property. We we we literally rented the entire facility for this retreat, so we’re the only people staying there. All of the meals, everything was there. There’s a beach that you can walk to next door.

Courtney Townley 31:51
Keep in mind, beaches in the Azores Islands are volcanic rock, so it’s more like platforms that you walk down into the water on. But it’s just a lovely, lovely place. So yeah, people got to experience that, which was lovely, yeah. So the day that I think touched me the most was the fifth day, which was we had six days of this retreat. So on the fifth day, we did a tour of caves. We went on a cave tour with Teresa. But then we also challenged the community to break up into three groups, and we asked one group to create a letter to the younger generation about what they would like them to know about women’s health, women’s wellness, what it takes to be a well woman in the world.

Courtney Townley 32:42
The second group, we asked them to create a midlife war cry. And the third group, we asked them to write a letter to basically humanity, or women, I think we said specifically women about what it means to age powerfully. So they all had different tasks. And then that evening, we took them to a really incredible restaurant. It was this old mill. It was very cool. We were the only people in there, and they all shared what they wrote. And oh my word, it was so powerful. It was so beautiful. And I want to close out the episode today, when we get there with I’m gonna read one of them. I’m not gonna read all three of them, because it was just so poignant, what they wrote, and I should probably post them all somewhere, because they’re so worth

Laini Gray 33:26
reading. They were, yeah, they were beautiful, and just the work that they put into them, yeah, right. It’s something we all think about. We wish we would have known this when we were younger. So to have all of the, you know, a group of women come together and share their collective experience about what I want my daughter, or these younger girls to know, and then these women to talk about midlife, about how powerful it can be, and who says we have to live a certain way. It was brilliant. It was so good.

Laini Gray 33:53
You know, they just had this dramatic thing that we was so a performance was great, which is where we’re all. We all are in life, and we are. It’s our time to be on stage and do what we want, right, and then to talk about aging powerfully, and to recognize that even when we talk about midlife being a new chapter, it’s not like it fizzles out, either, like we still have all of these opportunities to grow into and expand into. And it was just beautiful. Just beautiful to celebrate womanhood at every age and stage.

Courtney Townley 34:23
Well. And it’s funny because you and I gave the task, and we broke them up into groups, and then we’re thinking, like, Are they just going to, like, you know, kind of blow past this and just go take free time or whatever. But we gave them, I think, an hour, yeah, and we, you know, we were looking out the window at, like, an hour and 15 minutes, and they’re still out there, right? And then I had so many people come up to me telling me about the discussions they had and the things that came up because of the prompts that we gave them. They got so into it.

Courtney Townley 34:51
And then, like you said, what they created on the other side was just so beautiful. So that was really special. Because ultimately what we were trying to get across is that, of course. Health is for us, taking care of ourselves gives us an advantage as a person, but it also allows us to be in community in a more powerful way, right? It allows us to create with other people and live with other people and serve other people without reactivity and without a lot of unnecessary stress. And so we’re kind of giving them that opportunity to create as a community,

Laini Gray 35:25
yeah, and to really give back to women as a whole, right? Because if you are on your path and you’re growing into this wonderful version of you, the next part of that is has some responsibility, of, how are you going to share that? Yeah, right, we don’t all just get to be rock stars and then not help anybody. Right? Really, we should really work on ourselves and then help others do the same. And so I think that’s what was really cool for me to watch, is that these women were so excited, yeah, to help someone else,

Courtney Townley 35:56
absolutely on their on their journey. And I think what they wrote was such a testament to the work that they’ve been doing for so long in this community, not just this retreat. It was like such a testament to the redefining of health that they’ve been doing for themselves, which was, which was pretty amazing. Yeah, and then the final day, like we, I mean, people checked out by 11, so it was a pretty short day, and we just kind of talked about leading from the front as you go home, like be an example of what you want to see in the world.

Courtney Townley 36:30
We talked about integrating a lot of what they had learned back into real life, which we’re all going to rumble with, because real life just has a way of consuming us. And yeah, it was just, it was really a beautiful experience. I cannot say enough good things for me. The thing I keep telling people who ask is that I felt so rested and restored on the other side, which is highly unusual for me, right like when I’m facilitating, especially multiple day events, it’s a lot, it’s a lot of energy, it’s a lot of tracking people, it’s a lot of managing, but I think because of where we chose to have it, the help I had, including yourself, the way that we baked in free time, which we hadn’t necessarily done in previous retreats, it was just a really restorative experience for everybody, including myself, which

Laini Gray 37:21
I think that we can circle back to how you opened this session in that the reason it was so restorative is that the women have been doing the work all year long. Yeah? So when they came to this retreat, they weren’t looking to have an 8am session, a 10am session at 12am like they weren’t looking for a Self Help Workshop, yeah, for for a week, they were looking to take skills that they have been working on, yeah, and have conversations with other people. They were looking for experiences that actually resonate with the things they’re learning. And so to your point, it wasn’t just a retreat to get away from life, it was a retreat and experience to put that all to practice with others. Yeah, it was beautiful.

Courtney Townley 38:05
And one of the things that I heard a lot of people because I always send out a survey before the retreat, asking what people hope to get out of it. And one of the comments that I saw repeatedly was people just really wanted, like a moment, to reconnect with themselves, so they could get clarity and realignment for themselves for the rest of the year. And I think that absolutely provided that opportunity. Oh, go ahead.

Laini Gray 38:30
Sorry, yeah, I would say too. Just in observing them, this group is very much in the habit of journaling, yeah, and writing that thought process. So it was really interesting, not interesting. Not interesting. It was just really neat, I guess, to see women carrying their journals around with them, all by themselves. Yeah, journaling when they were together, journaling in session, and really taking note of things and setting goals and talking about experiences. It was that was really cool, too. It was, it

Courtney Townley 38:59
was, it was. It was so great. One other thing I wanted to talk to you about, because I know you and I had kind of talked about this amongst ourselves, but I think it’s so important to highlight, and we probably could do a whole separate podcast episode about this, with it being in the Azores Islands. Number one, it’s kind of like going back in time, right?

Courtney Townley 39:17
It’s very un commercialized, and you can tell that community is such an integral part of the culture that people, people don’t have a lot of property, per se, right? They don’t have backyards and things like that. So they kind of go to their community swimming holes. And you and I went to a lot of those swimming holes, and it was so awesome to see both very young and very old people in community together with all shapes of bodies, and they were there to celebrate community and to move. That’s it. Yeah, yeah. And I’m like, why don’t we have more of that here? Like, I mean, we have it, I guess it’s just, it just looks very different and it feels.

Laini Gray 40:00
Was different and and we, I mean, I’m not immune to this. How many conversations? Oh, they’re having a pool party. We’ll all go, but I’m not going to actually get in

Courtney Townley 40:07
the pool. And we’re so good, none of our bodies too, right, right? Like, we’ll

Laini Gray 40:11
all go. But do I have something like that was not that was and, you know, I said this right away. I’m like, Oh my gosh, everyone is at the swimming hole, little teeny kids, like babies and teenagers. And then the 20 somethings, 3040, 5060, set all the way up to the they’re probably 90 year olds out there. And they all came, and they got down into their swimsuits and got in the water and swam. And then all sat in the sun and visited. And it was just beautiful. It was just like everybody was there to swim, to be outside, to be in the sunshine and to connect. And then even further we would drive along, and every single park was full of people having barbecues and hanging out, and it was just so beautiful. And the restaurants people connecting and walking, and was just yeah,

Courtney Townley 41:00
that was no feeling rush to get out of there. They weren’t trying to turn tables like they wanted to sit there and talk and yeah, and the other thing with swimming too, it’s like nobody was trying to cover up, like people were just, like it was hot and it was summer, and people were just, they got out of the water and they were just in their swimsuits, and it was so beautiful. And just

Laini Gray 41:19
chatting with each other and talking to each other, and everybody talked to us, and nobody cared. And I was like, wow, this is so cool. Like, how many women here in the United States or wherever else? How do the how do we feel about that? Do we walk around our bikini and just talk to everybody? Right? It was just powerful to see that it wasn’t about who looked the bus in the bikini. They were all coming to go swimming,

Courtney Townley 41:43
yeah, and to see their friend and yeah, and I love especially seeing because again, I think I’m so sensitive to this right now, and I’m sure you are too, because we both have aging parents, and specifically our dads. And I know for my dad, he isolates, right? He isolates, and he has 1000 reasons as to why he doesn’t go out and spend more time in community, where there were 80 and 90 year olds in these swimming holes, you know, and they were just meeting up with their friends and having a good laugh. And I was, I just thought, God, this is so healthy.

Laini Gray 42:17
Totally, it’s so healthy.

Courtney Townley 42:19
And I just, I wish so much I could give that to him, you know, yeah, but he’s in his own way. So anyway, anything in closing I’m gonna, I want to read something from one of the writings before we completely close out. But is there anything else you want to share with listeners before we close the session?

Laini Gray 42:37
It was a truly remarkable week in a absolutely beautiful place. And if you are a midlife woman who really wants to step into the net making the next chapter of their life the best chapter of their life, you really need to learn more about rumble and rise and be a part of this community, because it’s all empowering. And yes, the retreat is an awesome reward, I would say a reward or an experience, but truly, just being part of the community is pretty dang cool.

Courtney Townley 43:04
It really is.

Courtney Townley 43:05
So I just will share on that note, it just reminds me to share with the listeners, like you can always go to graceandgrit.com/readytorumble, to find out about the membership. But also, if you really want to be notified of kind of this whole package experience for 2026 if you go to graceandgrit.com/surge which is the name of the program, when I have the dates and the you know, sort of the structure for next year, you will be on a wait list to be amongst the first to be notified. So the wait list gets notification first, and then I will open it up to the membership and then the public. So make sure you’re on the list. If this sounds like something that would be up your alley, yeah, and we would love to see you there.

Courtney Townley 43:50
Okay, let me read this. I just saved it before we hopped on. So this was the group who wrote the letter to women about what it means to age powerfully. And we’ll close on this note. It says,

Courtney Townley 44:02
Hey, powerhouse. I know there is noise all around. The pressure to be liked, to be perfect, to fit in, to build wealth through safe choices, to be physically appealing, to do everything for everybody. But my love, true power comes from within, in the quiet, in the stillness, where you are in touch with your own knowing you need to understand that your strength, your conviction, will all be put to the test, yes, even your love, your faith and your patience as you go through these experiences you never saw Coming, your power shift comes from being your own champion, giving yourself permission to be messy, feel all your feelings and learn to fail with grace. Learning to say, learning to stay curious, is an art. It takes time not having the answers is okay, the. Doing the effort of doing the discovery and the solutions bring the joy in difficult moments. Teach yourself how to let go, let them leave, let them judge, let others fail, let them have their own feelings. Ask for help find your people. It’s a power move, and you know what your path will look different from others. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. So my beautiful what is beauty to you right now?

Courtney Townley 45:31
Does your hair have to be perfect? Does your waist need to be a certain size? Is it all about the perfect picture? Or maybe it’s the number of reps that you complete in a workout. I get it. It’s easy to think that it will all take your pain away, but I can tell you, that’s all a distraction. It’s all a distraction from your true beauty. True beauty comes from within the energy you have when you express yourself. That’s your real beauty. That is your real power when you are faced with uncertainty, challenges and hardships, and you will be ask yourself, Who needs to be brought to the table? Is it your curious inner child or your bad ass bitch?

Courtney Townley 46:13
Know that generations of women are helping you bend and sway. You are not broken. You are not alone, your scars, your extra fat, your wrinkles, all make up the beautiful mosaic that you call your life. It is precious. Do not take it for granted. Your invitation is to know the energy you bring into the room is your beauty and your power. You have unique gifts. Let them shine. Sister, quit trying to fit in. Decide to decide. Make one decision, one tiny decision, to go in the direction of your heart.

Courtney Townley 46:51
I know I love. It so good. It’s just so good. So on that note, yeah, I hope this for listeners. I hope this was like helpful. I know a lot of people in an athlete want to hear about the Retreat. The Retreat. Some people may skip right past this, and that’s okay. There’s lots of other episodes, but like we said, if you’re interested in kind of having a deep dive experience and going to Portugal with us next year, just make sure you’re on the wait list for graceandgrit.com/surge, and you will get all the details. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 47:22
Thank you so much, my friend, I said at the beginning, but I truly mean it. It would not have been the same without you, and I just so appreciate your energy and who you are in the world.

Laini Gray 47:30
Well, thank you, Courtney,

Courtney Townley 47:32
yeah, all right. Have a great day.

Courtney Townley 47:40
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self-care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.