Just before the world ended,  I spent time writing and talking about writing with a group of women in Bordeaux, France.  It was the most nurturing, creativity-affirming and blissful experience my writing and coaching life has ever hit upon. And then the S%^$T hit the fan. The result was emotional and creative whiplash. 

          I bet you know exactly what I am talking about.

          The retreat group met up in Paris last October (2024) for a yum meet-and-greet dinner and then the group of us (nine in all if you count our marvelous drop in visitor, but more on that later), caught a train as a group to Bordeaux where we went on to enjoy the most memorable 7 days, 8 night retreat I have ever run. (And I have run MANY retreats in many marvelous places - from a remote Puerto Rican atoll to a family ranch in rural Jalisco, Mexico.) So, what made this Bordeaux writing retreat so great? I am asking myself this now daily. Because I want to duplicate it somehow, if possible, in the future. Or figure out what the magic formula was that I hit on. Because this is what writers need. This Kind of Magic

Time-- together in beautiful and interesting places with retreat mates who I see will stay friends forever.

        1.  I realize I could not have chosen a better destination. Urban but intimate, walkable, easy, Bordeaux is one of those cities that has that feeling of time, settling in, gracefully, over centuries. From the cobble stone streets lined with butter-colored town houses with beautiful ornamentation and colorful doors, to échoppes or maisons de maître, single story limestone cottage-like homes, to grand cathedrals, including the 13th century Cathedral Saint Andrés, which sits like a wedding cake near the town hall. We wandered around as a group and in smaller groups of twos and threes and just felt so THERE, so transported. Kind of dazzled, to be honest, and humbled, that we were there to talk about our writing.

         2. I could not have engineered a better, more diverse group of participants. All talented and possessing of urgent and authentic stories, they ranged in age from late twenties to eighties, and places of origin from France to Sweden to northern California (and toss in Connecticut, New York City, Kentucky, and New Mexico). That was part luck, part sheer accretion of talent from my years of coaching. Everyone was so invested, yet also easy going. That you cannot plan on. It was the child of luck and intent.

        3. I didn't overplan. The group only had one planned activity, a day trip to Saint Emilion to visit the ancient town and go to a rural winery. It was a glorious change of pace. And this way, with only one extracurricular,  we could focus on writing. Which is the point, right? 

        4. I had the world's best co-director. An old friend, Monique Antonette Lewis, who lives in Versailles, helped me out SO MUCH. She is so organized and such a good planner (not my superpower), she made everything go smoothly. Having a planner on board is essential. (She is also very fun.) Watch out...she is going to run amazing retreats herself someday soon!

        What I did not do:
        Rent a castle. Try to cook for the group. Overbook "experiences" and activities. Enlist name-droppable superstar authors to zoom in. 
           What I did:

I kept it simple and did not try to do too much or be too fancy. I let group-think and group energy rule the daily schedule after breakfast, morning writing prompts and exercises. That was such a good move. Everyone loved each other so much they wanted to just hang out and do their own stuff. I need to remember that. People like freedom to roam and just be, plus what they crave the most is writing time.

       After I got home, my head was still rushing for days, spinning with ideas, my heart fluttering.The Bordeaux Writing retreat was such a high.

       The came the low, what I referred to above as "the end of the world". Because it was. A month later, I took a vacation trip with two buddies to Mexico and on our second night there, Kamala did not win. (Notice I did not mention who won.) I want to confess here that I had happily drunk the Kamala kool-aid. I was a huge supporter; I thought she had it in the bag. It was a belly punch moment for me and then, three days later, while still in Mexico, my husband, from whom I was separated, but still close to, died. I won't go into details here, even though I could (for pages). I just want to say the one-two punch of these was shattering.

            There is nothing more nourishing than a writing retreat in an historic place, if you can ever pull it off. It took me years to power up for this one. This I know: everything would be so much worse right now if I didn't have this experience to look back on. It is the warm coal I sit beside daily. It keeps me going as I see migrants and immigrants and asylum seekers deported with no due process, funding for NEA and the arts closing down, important agencies shuttered with no reason, international aid ended. (And on a personal note, my daughter's AmeriCorps term ended without warning).  

        Last year, we had a retreat "surprise". When a retreat offers up such a thing, I say to my fellow retreat-coaches, grab it. On day three of our Bordeaux retreat, an old friend dropped in to hang with us. Jennifer Steil is a writer momma like me, who lives not far from Bordeaux and quite our of the blue contacted me and asked if she could come and write with us. If you know her you at all, you know how damn lucky that was. She told me she just wanted to "be around writers"- well yay to that, I thought. So... she came to Bordeaux, and she ran the best workshop on ekphrastic writing I can imagine. She was like light on water-- reflective, shiny, full of verve, kind and deeply instinctual about writing. That sort of serendipity and luck, friends, one cannot plan on when planning a retreat. But if such a lucky breeze blows your way, I say latch onto it.

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Bordeaux was beautiful. Just look at these writers. (This is not everyone, btw.)
Can you feel it? The joy and bliss of our group. I will certainly run more retreats in the future. But this one held in October, 2024 would be hard to top. Now, it is June of 2025, and the world feels more damaged and distraught than ever, but my writing life and my retreat-mates are going strong. I am eager to take writers all over the world for helpful workshops in inspiring places. And here I am, launching a new literary press and this memoir zine which I hope you enjoy. Stay tuned!

                                                                            - your e

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