7 Valleys, 3 Companions & 4 Birds.
Weaving Our Stories Retreat, November 2025
Join us for Weaving Our Stories: An Interfaith Women’s Retreat on November 21-23, 2025 at Five Oaks Retreat Centre in Paris, Ontario.
Embark on a transformative journey where the vibrant tapestry of diversity comes alive! Join us for a soul-enriching experience that transcends boundaries, embracing the beauty of shared stories and fostering connections between cultures and faith traditions.
This year’s Weaving Our Stories women’s retreat will be another Call for Adventure. Whether you are new or a returning adventurer, you are welcome!
Embark on a transformative journey where the vibrant tapestry of diversity comes alive! Join us for a soul-enriching experience that transcends boundaries, embracing the beauty of shared stories and fostering connections between cultures and faith traditions.
This year’s Weaving Our Stories women’s retreat will be another Call for Adventure. Whether you are new or a returning adventurer, you are welcome!
By accepting this Call for Adventure, you will be delving into your inner world unraveling layers of stories & meaning; integrating and expressing through art and healing all aspects of your life: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Stories create the fabric of our life.
In Weaving Our Stories women’s retreat, we’ll venture together on an exploration journey - a journey that takes us deep inside our souls. We’ll dig into our memories and summon up stories that we have been told and stories we told ourselves … Stories we embodied and carried along with us and other we forgot or dropped along the way.
From those warp and weft, we’ll weave new stories.
And, like a fabric that becomes more valuable, stronger, and softer, the more thread count it holds - our life becomes richer, more resilient and smoother the more stories we weave…
The right stories of course!
The wrong color in a dyeing vat turns the mix into a muddy mess, and a foreign thread in an even weave increases tension, breaks the alignment, and disrupt the pattern. The same goes for stories. Distorted narratives muddy our life, increase the tension, break the alignment and disrupt our journey.
We’ll dive deep into our stories. We’ll be brave, we won’t settle for boring, uninspiring narrative nor borrowed cliché talk that doesn’t speak to our heart and soul.
Stories create the fabric of our life.
In Weaving Our Stories women’s retreat, we’ll venture together on an exploration journey - a journey that takes us deep inside our souls. We’ll dig into our memories and summon up stories that we have been told and stories we told ourselves … Stories we embodied and carried along with us and other we forgot or dropped along the way.
From those warp and weft, we’ll weave new stories.
And, like a fabric that becomes more valuable, stronger, and softer, the more thread count it holds - our life becomes richer, more resilient and smoother the more stories we weave…
The right stories of course!
The wrong color in a dyeing vat turns the mix into a muddy mess, and a foreign thread in an even weave increases tension, breaks the alignment, and disrupt the pattern. The same goes for stories. Distorted narratives muddy our life, increase the tension, break the alignment and disrupt our journey.
We’ll dive deep into our stories. We’ll be brave, we won’t settle for boring, uninspiring narrative nor borrowed cliché talk that doesn’t speak to our heart and soul.
This year we’ll focus on the first Valley. The Valley of Quest:
What is your Call for Adventure at this stage of your journey?
We’ll pause and listen… Decipher and Discern.
We will listen to our Body Whispers before they turn into screams.
We’ll learn to slow down, make peace with ambiguity, embrace the not-knowing, trust the Divine guidance and engage the Sacred in every day life.
We’ll enrich the fabric of our life with new thread… more colors, more patterns, more beauty, more love.
We’ll honour each others’ roots, culture, and tradition. We’ll learn from one another and grow together. We’ll acknowledge our vulnerability, embrace our whole experience: weaving the sorrow with the joy, the pain with the blessings…
We will hold a sacred space for reflecting on questions such as:
We’ll let the Divine grace lead the way
We’ll learn to TRUST.
What is your Call for Adventure at this stage of your journey?
We’ll pause and listen… Decipher and Discern.
We will listen to our Body Whispers before they turn into screams.
We’ll learn to slow down, make peace with ambiguity, embrace the not-knowing, trust the Divine guidance and engage the Sacred in every day life.
We’ll enrich the fabric of our life with new thread… more colors, more patterns, more beauty, more love.
We’ll honour each others’ roots, culture, and tradition. We’ll learn from one another and grow together. We’ll acknowledge our vulnerability, embrace our whole experience: weaving the sorrow with the joy, the pain with the blessings…
We will hold a sacred space for reflecting on questions such as:
- What is my Call for Adventure at this point of my journey?
- Where is my path leading me?
- What is my heart telling me?
- What am I ready or not ready to let go of?
- What restores my energy?
- What is joy? What is freedom?
We’ll let the Divine grace lead the way
We’ll learn to TRUST.
Date: Friday, November 21st - Sunday, November 23rd 2025
Time: 3:00pm Arrival Friday through until 1:30pm Sunday
Cost: $374 per person Single Accommodation
$320 per person Shared Accommodation
Registration Closes on Friday, November 7th at Noon
Time: 3:00pm Arrival Friday through until 1:30pm Sunday
Cost: $374 per person Single Accommodation
$320 per person Shared Accommodation
Registration Closes on Friday, November 7th at Noon
What is Included?
- Full Retreat - Ceremony, sessions, sharing circles and more...
- Stitched Stories Expressive art workshop - see details below.
- Single or double room accommodation.
- Delicious and nutritious meals and snacks for the full time of your stay.
- Enjoying FiveOaks beautiful nature, trails, and labyrinth...
Stitched Stories Fabric Art Workshop |
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Awaken your Creative imagination and learn to transform personal experience into powerful visual storytelling. This workshop is an exploration of visual symbolism - incorporating elements of your own life and experience… Integrating text and visual elements with emotional self-expression and personal identity.
Don’t worry. You do not need any previous art experience!
In the beginning, every participant will receive a closed package that contains a blank fabric journal. Everyone’s journal will be different: some plain and might seem boring, some colorful, some too colorful, some chaotic and busy, some simple and serene, some sharp & clean, yet others might be run-down and torn… Like life, we don’t get to choose the initial package we are given - we don’t choose our skin color, ethnicity, parents, family, genetics… - but we can choose how we handle the package we receive, how to transform it, beautify it, embellish it, make it our own.
As you will be reflecting on your Soul’s Journey, you’ll be choosing and gathering ephemera and words, making your marks and choosing your color palette, painting, doodling, collaging, stamping, stenciling, and stitching… whatever you fancy! Your journal will tell your story and most importantly it will help you deeply Listen… Listen to your soul and Body Whispers.
Join me in this fun and playful workshop, where you’ll be calling your soul home. This workshop is the perfect opportunity to slow down and look inward to connect with yourself and others. It is a way to notice and reflect on your little conscious and unconscious choices, feelings, pre-judgements, imaginations and inclinations.
You’ll be gathering bits and pieces of your scattered life and creating a unique unexpected fabric journal that tells your story and hopefully guide the way to where you are called to be/do in the next step of your journey.
Bring along any photos, memorabilia or scrap fabric, lace, beads, buttons or charms that you would like to add to personalize your journal. Old T-shirts or broken jewellery… Anything goes. And, if you don’t have any, that’s ok, I’ll provide plenty of options to choose from.
And, no artistic background is required. There is a room for everyone - for novice and experienced
Don’t worry. You do not need any previous art experience!
In the beginning, every participant will receive a closed package that contains a blank fabric journal. Everyone’s journal will be different: some plain and might seem boring, some colorful, some too colorful, some chaotic and busy, some simple and serene, some sharp & clean, yet others might be run-down and torn… Like life, we don’t get to choose the initial package we are given - we don’t choose our skin color, ethnicity, parents, family, genetics… - but we can choose how we handle the package we receive, how to transform it, beautify it, embellish it, make it our own.
As you will be reflecting on your Soul’s Journey, you’ll be choosing and gathering ephemera and words, making your marks and choosing your color palette, painting, doodling, collaging, stamping, stenciling, and stitching… whatever you fancy! Your journal will tell your story and most importantly it will help you deeply Listen… Listen to your soul and Body Whispers.
Join me in this fun and playful workshop, where you’ll be calling your soul home. This workshop is the perfect opportunity to slow down and look inward to connect with yourself and others. It is a way to notice and reflect on your little conscious and unconscious choices, feelings, pre-judgements, imaginations and inclinations.
You’ll be gathering bits and pieces of your scattered life and creating a unique unexpected fabric journal that tells your story and hopefully guide the way to where you are called to be/do in the next step of your journey.
Bring along any photos, memorabilia or scrap fabric, lace, beads, buttons or charms that you would like to add to personalize your journal. Old T-shirts or broken jewellery… Anything goes. And, if you don’t have any, that’s ok, I’ll provide plenty of options to choose from.
And, no artistic background is required. There is a room for everyone - for novice and experienced