#2: The Retreat.

Waking up to my own worth.

My partner and I were never perfect. After five years, I had about one more year in me of “let’s see if we can make it work”— and so did he, I think. But something happened that catalysed the breakup, and it was an experience worth talking about.

In November 2025, I went to a surf-therapy retreat that was being hosted by Resurface in Morocco. I was going as a participant yes (we always have something to work on), but mostly I was going to see how these things worked. Since I put the bar on sale in 2022, my new dream has been to host surf therapy retreats and don’t worry— it’s still in the cards. But first I wanted to attend a retreat like this to see what the whole thing might look like.

This retreat consisted of yoga and breathwork, psychoeducation from a therapist, surfing and group therapy. Josh Dickson executes this offer extraordinarily and I recommend it to everyone, honestly. He’s not paying me. The combination was very powerful, and I got to work deeply into my issues with lack mentality, group dynamics (I was bullied as a kid), and authenticity. But the truth is, these issues all circled around one core wound involving self-worth— and my self-worth was about to learn a whole new way of being. I was about to uncover a treasure trove of beliefs and blockages that I wasn’t expecting. And not only because the therapy was great— but the group itself facilitated my transofrmation.

In our group we had ten men and three women. For those of you who know retreats, you know this is entirely unheard of. I remember sitting there on the first day as good-looking surfer men walked in and very quickly opened up about their experiences and their feelings. These men were so open, so vulnerable that it… changed me.

I had never witnessed men behaving this way. As shocking and sad as it sounds, I have never experienced men being grounded in themselves and in their emotions, crying freely in front of others and sharing their deepest plights, and holding space for other men and women to do the same. Even my brother, who is my rock, shies away from deep intimate emotion— that kind of intensity was dangerous for us growing up.

And so I had never had this model of a man. And once I’d seen it, I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t un-experience it. These men were ready to see me at my worst and respect me for it. They were ready to crack open and be seen, or at least to feel what it’s like to be seen. They made me realise that even I wasn’t comfortable being perceived in my weakness and in my truth… which is what I’m working on now— being fully seen. This blog is part of it.

And in that container of grounded and receptive men, I realised what I didn’t have in my relationship— what was missing beyond the obvious. The deeper, emotional level of the dysfunction between us.

I wonder how to say this next part. There was a connection with someone on the retreat with me— an innocent, boundaried, integrous one— but a connection none the less. And this person was the kind of person that I would never imagine might express an interest of any kind… in me. It feels really raw to share that, because it exposes a little girl in me— and during a session of breathwork, I saw her, and I saw her truth. I broke open and cried as a realised that I had always minimised my own worth, that I could in fact be interesting to the kind of person I want… and that I had settled in my relationship. In that exact moment, the one song that my partner always played on the piano came on the breathwork playlist. And I broke.

I came home, fragile and open, to a stark contrast. And in that moment, I realised just how emotionally alone I felt.

I could barely last three days before it all came out of my mouth and ended our relationship as if it was someone speaking through me.