If you have to choose 1 holiday, let it be this one

That feeling that sings around you when you just returned from vacation. Your skin loved by the sun, your mind nourished with at least three books read, and shoulders that for a change move towards the floor instead of your ears. That feeling lasts… exactly one day. Then life catapults you back into the daily race. Group chats gallop in a frenzy, your agenda explodes, and all you have left are those 400 photos telling you that life was good then.
And it can be different. There are vacations where you also return with that glow on your cheeks and your hair has become a few shades lighter from sun and sea, but where something else has happened. Something that remains. Insights, wisdoms, and life lessons.

Who is Susan Smit?

Susan Smit, you probably know her, novelist, columnist for Happinez, and expert in nature religions is – you wouldn’t say it, but it is so – inow fifty years in this world. And where we often think that life in every respect starts to tumble down at that moment in Max Verstappen speed, it only gets better for Susan. Richer and calmer.
She wrote a book about it: The Second Half of Your Life and she will talk about it during a number of retreats.

What is a retreat à la Susan?

“I have been giving lectures for 20 years, but becoming part of a retreat will also be the first time for me,” Susan tells me when I speak to her on a Tuesday morning.
“I was asked by yoga teacher and breath coach Miranda Bruinzeel who, together with Leslie Stoel, will take care of the physical part through yoga classes and breath sessions. I will share my insights and the wisdoms I have gained from my studies into nature religions. I am not a guru, not a therapist, but from the perspective of nature religion, I can tell and help women over 40 to see the peri- and menopausal period as something good, something that brings change.”

I almost choke on my star mint tea. Because the menopause – sleepless nights, less desire, a disappearing waist – seeing it as something good? How do we do that?

The menopause as a new beginning

“In pre-patriarchal times, the post-menopausal woman plays a very important role. They are called the Crone and they are the ones you go to when you need advice and peace. Of course, menopause, and the peri-menopause that often starts around your forties, has its discomforts. But it is a natural movement, driven by hormonal changes. In the peri-meno, care hormones decrease. The ‘nice lady’ hormones you lose a bit and that will be time. You no longer think first of ten others before you think of yourself. Nature helps you to start that new chapter. It is not easy, but it brings you to a beautiful place.”
I realize that in our time we often think that if you as a woman are no longer fertile, you may no longer be interesting. And that is also strange. Because we are more than breeding machines, it seems to me.

Susan: “I have done a lot of research into how women lived in the past. Everything that has been told to us lately, I want to rid us of. Those images are often very patriarchally restrictive, filled with an emphasis on fertility and youthful beauty as the highest attainable. In the sixties, it was even claimed that you would no longer be a woman if you were in menopause.”

Saying goodbye and welcoming something new

“The peri-menopause is a period in which you focus on what you can say goodbye to and make room for what you can welcome. You take a last look at your youth and come to terms with it and look at what it has brought you. Your attitude towards the physical changes, you live more from the inside out. How others see you is much less important than whether you live in a way that feels good for you.”
I listen and nod, because that wisdom and peace is something I also experience enormously with the years.

The Crone phase: a new life phase

“Getting there, in a calmer water where you align with yourself and where you will use your knowledge and wisdom in daily life, that is the new phase.” Susan can talk about it for hours and I can listen for at least that long.
“The connection with the mystical becomes stronger, that is in the old religion a role for the old wise woman; the Crone. She was the one who was consulted on major issues and had a connection with the divine.”

What can you expect during the retreat?

“With meditations, visualizations, private conversations, and storytelling, I try to convey everything I write about in The Second Half of Your Life so that women can use those beautiful, deep qualities. All the knowledge, wisdom, and joy that you have inside you is just waiting to be claimed.”
“The intention is that we do it together as sisters, about fifteen of us, in a beautiful place with good, organic food and where there is also time and space to enjoy. We will be there with all individuals, of course, of different ages. But I hope that we can go through that gate together. It is a transition that we all go through and in which you can support each other as sisters. I hope to achieve that there is laughter and tears, comfort and celebration.”

The best is yet to come

And Susan firmly believes in that.
“There are three phases in a woman's life, symbolized by the phases of the moon. The Maiden phase belongs to the waxing moon, then follows the Mother phase at the full moon, this is the period of creating, starting a career, maybe having children, and then there is the Crone phase that belongs to the waning moon. And in that phase, you harvest everything you have gathered in those other years.”

Practical info about the retreat

The next retreat is from October 18 to 22 in Malaga, Spain. In addition to the program with Susan Smit, there are daily yoga classes, breath sessions, and meditations. Three times a day, a delicious vegetarian meal is served (made with fruits and vegetables from the area), there is a spa with a hammam, sauna, and scrub sauna, an outdoor pool, and oh yes, housekeeping – because it remains primarily a vacation.
More information: download the brochure here  or email to retreat@bureaubruinzeel.nl