What to Expect When You Join Our Virtual Retreat: The Thriving Experience

By now you might have heard about our legendary virtual retreat, The Thriving Experience, that’s coming up August 14th through the 16th. The virtual room is filling up, so if you want to learn more about it, please go to thethrivingexperience.com.

In this blog post, I’m going to do some Q&A and speak about what to expect from this virtual retreat. 

The first frequently asked question is…

How Much Does It Cost? 

And the answer is: it’s FREE. 

Zero dollars. 

You don’t have to pay anything to be there. You only need to register at thethrivingexperience.com and answer a few questions so that you and we know that you’re in the right place to benefit from the experience.

What We Will Teach You

1. How to get off the grid of collective anger, grief and anxiety, and 

2. How to move these energies out of your system so that you can restore your authentic presence and your body. 

What You Will Learn

You will learn to restore your capacity.

So much of your capacity is taken up by the collective grief, anger, and anxiety that is up right now. 

In addition to that, we pay close attention to how the experience is set up to ensure that a safe and sacred space is created. The feedback that we’ve been receiving about our previous event that we held in May, is that women did not expect to experience such intimacy, such deep transformation, and to be in a room of such amazing women. 

Women have said, 

“This is the most amazing group of women I’ve ever been a part of and in a room with.”

Creating This Safe and Sacred Space

We have our ways of creating it. Part of it is attracting a community of women who are ready to wake up from intergenerational collective traumas that have been keeping us imprisoned for thousands of years. 

That I have termed Patriarchy Stress Disorder®. 

• These women are ready to wake up and to call things what they are 

• These women are ready to see that it’s not their fault 

• These women are ready to know deep in their bodies and minds that they’re not broken; there is nothing wrong with them

• These women are ready to go beyond these patriarchal mandates of how we’re supposed to look, sound, and show up. How much we get to shine and express our brilliance, our sexuality. How much money we get to have!

Ready to Dive Into Their Authentic Presence 

Showing up in that authentic presence is so refreshing, and that’s what makes this group so amazing. 

Women are truly amazing, underneath the layers of patriarchy-induced prohibitions. 

Prohibition on shining too brightly. 

Prohibition on vulnerability. 

Prohibition on being ourselves and being in our brilliance.

Another big prohibition is the prohibition on our own time. This prohibition is something that comes up for women who are considering coming to the experience. They ask themselves, 

“I’m not sure if I can set aside this time for myself.”

This question speaks to the WHY behind this retreat.

And your answer to this question defines the trajectory of your entire life: 

Is your answer driven by the PSD induced prohibition on owning your time, energy, and money?

Remember women didn’t have ownership of their own bodies throughout patriarchy. This is a very new thing still.

Women didn’t have ownership of their own bodies, let alone their time and money. 

Women not owning their time is the other side of the coin of women not owning their money.

Like I mentioned in this post, it wasn’t until 1960 that a woman could open her own bank account and it wasn’t until 1988 that a woman could take out a business loan without a male relative cosigner. Same goes for not being able to own property in her name and not being able to get a divorce. 

This Is What We Are Healing 

This lack of ownership shows up in much more subtle and insidious ways these days. Such as this question, “I don’t know if I can take this time for myself?” 

It shows up in how you set up your schedule and in how much money you’re “allowed to make”. Yes, allowed to make.

And do you know who decides this allowance?

If you answered you, well, yes, but it’s actually your subconscious.

We know from neuroscience, that our actions are decided in our subconscious and what resides in our subconscious is thousands of years of the trauma of oppression. 

This is the filter through which these actions are decided. 

If we’re making decisions that are showing up as self-sabotage and that are not aligned with our deep authentic desires, well, chances are, there is trauma to be uncovered and healed!

This Is Why We’re Gathering!

We’re gathering to uncover exactly how our subconscious is calling the shots when it comes to MONEY. 

The topic of this virtual event, The Thriving Experience, is reclaiming and healing our relationship with money, in the larger context of uncovering and healing layers of PSD and other aspects of intergenerational and collective traumas. 

How does our subconscious trauma surrounding money show up in the actions that we take?

Leslie’s Story

In my book, Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barrier to Women’s Happiness and Fulfillment, I tell the story of a woman called Leslie.

Leslie reached out to me to talk about uncovering and healing PSD. We got on a Zoom call and she told me about where she was and where she was going. Leslie was an accomplished woman, a seasoned professional, and a very confident woman. She had clearly done a lot of work. 

Leslie told me that at one point in her life, she decided to invest a lot of money to attend a high-level mastermind with a well-known coach. Leslie went on to tell me that at one of the mastermind meetings, a fellow entrepreneur heard her share something that resonated with him and so he approached her in the break and said,

“Hey, Leslie, what you spoke about, I can really see how you could help in my business. Would you consider consulting for me on a particular project where your compensation would be in the neighborhood of $360,000+”.

When Leslie told me this I got very curious and I asked, “So what happened?” 

And she responded, “What happened?”. 

I said, “Yeah, with the project. Did you end up consulting? How did it work out?”

Leslie just gave me a blank stare and I could hear the wheels turning in her mind. 

It soon became obvious to me that Leslie had just moved on. Although her mind clearly remembered the occurrence of this event, on a deeper level, her mind did not register that it was a real offer.

She automatically dismissed it. This is a real life example of the activation of the trauma of PSD in the subconscious. In Leslie’s case it was PSD and racism as intergenerational traumas of oppression. 

Fight-Flight-Freeze

We all have complexities in our ancestry that determine how we make decisions without even realizing it. And in Leslie’s case, she didn’t even realize that she was making a decision. The decision was made by her subconscious and this decision was to run.

Flight was her reaction. She didn’t physically run out of the room. But she mentally did.

There are three, core-trauma reactions that our system engages in when trauma is triggered, fight-flight-freeze. 

Leslie checked out. She didn’t follow up with the person. She checked out of the emotional experience of actually feeling that it was an offer that was being made to her and that she was worthy of the offer. 

The huge prohibition around being recognized for her gifts, her worth, and her value was being activated in her subconscious. 

So after she told me this and we unpacked it as much as we could in a few minutes, she was able to reach out to that entrepreneur where the offer was still on the table.

However, her fight-flight-freeze reactions activated again because now it was real. So she sent me a message explaining that she did reach out, the offer was still on the table but she decided not to take it. 

Leslie also didn’t want to work on healing this PSD because it was not a good time. This is what women often say to themselves whenever they approach that next level of freedom and ownership of her time, of her energy, of her money, of her sovereignty, and of her life. 

The subconscious makes the decision: run or freeze or fight and the mind catches up later and it rationalizes it. So one of the popular rationalizations says, 

Yes, I really want to be free. I really want to make money and have an impact on the next level of my visibility. I really want to create a life I dreamed of and have an amazing relationship…

But now is not a good time.

Does this break your heart? It breaks my heart. Every. Time.

Our Subconscious and The Trauma of Oppression

The freedom, the liberation of the world hinges on your liberation. Healing oppression, systems of oppression in the world, is only possible when we do this healing work inside, so that we can show up thriving and not in fight-flight-freeze. 

Our ancestors have done their best and advanced the opportunity for us:

• to own our bodies, 

• to own our time, 

• to own our money, 

• to own our energy.

However, our subconscious hasn’t caught up to this opportunity yet. 

To our subconscious, that carries this trauma of oppression, it feels extremely unsafe and life-threatening because a woman’s power has always been a punishable offense. 

A woman’s freedom is something that deeply threatens all systems of oppression.

If we are to heal the world, we need to heal ourselves. 

It’s real. It’s not about what you say. It’s not about what you do. It’s about how you are being. Are you embodying the change you want to see in the world? 

This starts with owning your time, owning your energy, and owning your decisions. And we’re here to help you do that. 

Women’s Free Labor

Maybe you’re not in a place to take this leap for yourself because PSD is telling you,

“No, you have to take care of your family. You have to be with your kids. You have to do laundry. You have to cook. You have a lot of responsibilities.”

The patriarchy is addicted to women’s free labor. 

Because women’s labor has been free for millennia, this imprint of how much our time, energy is actually worth, is imprinted deep in our subconscious.

Know that what happens to our participants after they do this work, has magnificent ripple effects – ripple effects that spread to their families, 

• their children stop acting out,

• they experience deeper intimacy with their husbands,

• They have a lot more capacity to be there for others because they learn to have that capacity for themselves.

So you showing up is the opposite of selfish. You taking that time for yourself is actually in service to the world. The change that you desire to see in the world you must embody first. 

The world is not going to just shift to being just and equitable and oppression free if we are carrying embodied oppression in us – embodied oppression that shows up in the choices that we make from how we set up our schedule to how much money we’re “allowed to make.”

Because our time and energy are in survival mode, providing for our families, we are no danger to patriarchy. We’re no danger to racism. We’re no danger to the earth being destroyed. We’re no danger to inequality. We’re no danger to any other system of oppression and we’re no danger to interrupting that trend because we don’t have energy, time, or money. 

So, What Are We Gonna Do? 

It’s not our fault. We were born into this invisible inner prison. But it is our responsibility to break free — because unless we do, nothing changes on the planet. 

Your transformation can begin this weekend at The Thriving Experience. I’d love for you to join me and this group of courageous women who are ready to change and to be the change.

Head over to thethrivingexperience.com for more details.

But How Does It All Work In a Virtual Space?

Our previous hesitation of offering our event virtually – because we would always do these events in person – was that we didn’t know what to expect at a virtual event. 

Would it be possible to create safety, healing and connection virtually? 

What we discovered, showed us a huge potential that the virtual world has for this work. There is a level of comfort and safety that we can create in a virtual space and a sense of permission to take care of ourselves, that would be a really tall order to achieve in a live event. 

In a live event you would be sitting in a hotel ballroom, versus our virtual event, The Thriving Experience, where you could: 

• take your phone or computer outside, put your feet on the ground, breathe, and be supported by nature

• sit on the floor or recline in a comfortable chair

• curl up with your favorite blanket

• drink tea out of your favorite mug 

• wear pajama pants!

You don’t have to:

• pack for the weekend 

• worry about your wardrobe 

• worry about doing your nails or your hair

• worry about disrupting others when you feel like stepping out of the room to take care of yourself. 

In addition to this, you have the ability to be heard all the time. If you have a thought or a comment, you can just put it in the chat. And if you don’t want to be a part of the side conversations, you don’t have to. But if you do, that’s awesome because in the side conversations amazing ideas and connections are generated.

We also alternate between the “big room” and “small breakout rooms”, which has been our participants’ favorite part.

They’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to be with other women from all over the world and experience that level of safety and belonging. 

So you don’t have to worry about a room temperature being uncomfortable, we have the opportunity to have the ultimate customized experience, which is so luxurious and which creates that embodied safety that sets the stage for powerful healing.

I hope I’ll get to see you there and we’ll get to play together. It will be delightful and delicious. 

I wish that we had had the opportunity to share with you the before and after pictures of our previous event, because when we saw the faces of our participants after the event, they were truly remarkable – the stress was melted, their eyes were bright, they were so alive and vibrant and gorgeous.

The Experience Is Worth 1000 Books

I’m so grateful that you’re reading or have read Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barriers to Women’s Happiness and Fulfillment. Thank you for changing the world with us, thank you for being a part of this movement.

What happens at the experience goes beyond what the book can deliver: We go from information to transformation. 

I hope you join us for this transformative experience, where we heal and reclaim our relationship with Money to liberate our bodies, our time, our energy, our desires, and our capacity so that we can show up on a whole new level of thriving. 

Joining us at The Thriving Experience? I look forward to seeing you there.

Please don’t keep this a secret and share the invitation with women you want to invite on this life-changing, world-changing journey with you.

It’s a pleasure changing the world with you!