2nd Annual Strength of Moms Retreat

A year and a half ago, my friend Dawn and I lamented that it's a shame that given how much fun our group of friends has together, that we don't actually travel somewhere together, just us moms. Wouldn't it be nice to hang out without being interrupted by our children or planning our day around their needs? The more we talked about it, the more we realized that if this is something we wanted to do, why wouldn't we try to make it happen?  Maybe we were intimidated by the word "travel," which makes us think of a longer trip involving a plane; i.e., time and money, which are in short supply for those of us with young children and exorbitant daycare costs.  So we started small, because honestly, it's not about where we go or for how long, it's about spending time with our friends.  I suggested that all we needed was a cabin in the woods and a free weekend.

Out of that conversation came what was to become known as the annual "Strength of Moms Retreat."  We purposefully called it a "retreat," because we know moms have trouble taking time for themselves, but might feel like they could justify leaving town for a "retreat". And we refer to it as an annual retreat because we knew it would be so awesome that we'd want to do it again. And we did.  Even though it poured on us last year and a tornado warning interrupted our dinner and sent us seeking cover in the basement, we still had a fabulous time and came back for our second annual retreat last weekend.

So what do a group of women do on a girls weekend? My friend's husband (who will remain nameless) thinks this is what happened.

Our weekend actually looked more like this. 

A little wine and a game of cards. Okay, Cards of Humanity did get a little raunchy, but once 11:00 p.m. rolled around, we lamented how late it was and crawled into our beds to enjoy a night of sleep with no children to wake us up.

Much of the weekend was pretty chill, which is how we hoped it would be. We went for walks, took naps, sunbathed on the pontoon in the middle of the lake and ate well.  And we did a lot of talking.  Connecting with other moms is the most important and meaningful part of the weekend for me. We've celebrated a lot of joys over the years, but the group that came together last weekend has also endured many challenges from divorces to illnesses to diagnoses that suddenly pose an unknown future for our children.  Amidst a lot of laughter, there were also some tears.  Some of the moms are new friends and others have been with me since the early weeks of my parenting journey, but we were a camaraderie of moms all in the same stage of life and to be together for a weekend was pretty darn special.