Everything we need is already here.
Do not try to save he whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself this world so worthy of rescue.
by Martha Postlethwaite
The Call - New Tools for Women Leading the Way with Inez Aponte - 6 night Retreat
November 4th to 10th, 2026
Co-Hosted by Inez Aponte, founder of Growing Good Lives and Beautiful Economies — an educator and artist who has spent years helping leaders, communities and organisations ask a more honest question: what does it actually mean to thrive?
Your Invitation
Our modern world is full of noise. Every day a deluge of reels, stories, threads, tweets, posts, and 24-hour news fills up our senses and pulls us towards the urgent, the outraged, the dramatic, the heroic.
Amidst all of that noise, it can be hard to feel what you feel deep down. Hard to listen to the quiet voice, the deeper knowing within, the one that is beyond words. To remember the dreams we once had, for ourselves and for the world around us.
This retreat is a chance to find your way back to them. To stop and step out of the current, to allow your own curiosity to lead the way, and to tap into an endless source of imagination: within you, between us, and in your relationship with the living world. To remember a shared creative impulse.
We will work with ancient stories, play and improvisation.Together we will explore what it means to experience ourselves as a living system within larger living systems. We will get comfortable with uncertainty and allow it to become a source of inspiration and creativity.
As we deepen our inquiry we will begin to question the single metric of success that shapes so much of how we see ourselves and others. And we will shift our attention to what has been undervalued and made invisible in our current economic system: the acts of care - for ourselves, for each other, for the living world - that hold everything together.
By the end of the week you will not have become someone new. Instead, you will have remembered the self that was buried under shoulds and oughts. And you will know, more clearly than before, what is genuinely yours to do.
The Thread of the Week
The body
Before story, before ideas, before the mind's habitual reaching for answers, we turn to the body. Through movement, breath, and somatic practice, we feel our way back into ourselves as living systems within larger living systems: breath, body, earth, community. The felt sense of belonging to something vast and unknowable.
Story
We carry stories about who we are, many absorbed before we were old enough to question them. Ancient myths and folk tales are surprisingly useful tools for examining these, because they've distilled something true about the patterns that run through human lives. When you hold your own experience up against one of these old stories, the ending starts to feel less fixed. We remember that we have the power to shape the narrative.
Play
Improvisational theatre and creative games allow us to think with our whole bodies. We surprise ourselves. We discover what wants to happen rather than planning it. We rediscover our innate capacity for joy and freedom.
Care
What do we actually need in order to thrive? What have we been substituting in place of it? We explore what changes when care moves from the margins to the centre — of our own lives, our relationships, our communities. We learn tools and practices to remain resourced while doing the work that calls us.
Purpose
Grounded in the body, freed from stories that no longer fit, reconnected with playful intelligence, reoriented around care — we turn toward the question of contribution. Not the contribution the world says you should make, but the one that is genuinely yours.
Teachers, therapists, social workers, community organisers, people leaders, activists, parents, academics: women who give a great deal and need space to resource, restore, and re-story themselves.
Who is this for?
Women who feel, in their bones, that something is amiss and who want to find their way toward contributing rather than just enduring.
Teachers, therapists, social workers, community organisers, people leaders, activists, parents, academics: women who give a great deal and need space to resource, restore, and re-story themselves. Those already leading who need to sustain themselves without hardening. And women on the edge of something — who feel the pull but haven't yet found the courage, the clarity, or the community to answer it.
This is also for the creative changemaker who suspects that the tools she has been given don't quite fit the problems she is trying to solve. Who senses that what's needed now is not more analysis or more output, but a different quality of attention. A willingness to see what's already present, within herself and in the communities around her.
The felt sense of belonging to something vast and unknowable.
Our Time Together
Each morning we gather for a workshop session of two to three hours. The afternoons are free for rest, walking, swimming, exploring, or simply sitting with what has arisen. Some evenings we come together for lighter, more playful gatherings, or to meet people from the local community.
The week moves through three phases.
Days 1 : Arriving Who am I, really?
Days 2 and 3: Going Deeper What stories am I living inside?
Days 4 and 5: Emerging What is mine to do?
A Day Might Look Like This:
8:00 – 9:30 am Breakfast
9:30 am: Morning circle & check-in
10:00 am – 1:00pm: Workshop with Inez
1:00 – 2:30 pm: Lunch
3:00 – 6:00 pm: Local Cultural Activity
Evening: Free time — rest, explore, exhale
What you will come away with
A story about yourself that fits better than the one you arrived with, and the tools to keep rewriting it
Embodied practices you can return to daily, in your work, your relationships, and your own company
New ways of being together and working with difference that you can bring directly back to your own context
A clearer sense of what is genuinely yours to give, and how to give it without it costing you everything
The embodied knowledge that caring for yourself and showing up for the world are not two different projects
Options to build further on the support of a small group of dedicated women
A certificate of attendance and full documentation of the week's curriculum are available for professional development records.
The Location
Cummari is a boutique retreat space in Riposto, a seaside town on Sicily's east coast — nestled between the Ionian Sea, Mount Etna, and the beautiful stretch of coast between Catania and Taormina. It is a place with real soul: volcanic beaches, local markets, food grown in the shadow of a volcano, and a true Sicilian village culture undisturbed by time.
Founded by former international correspondent Michelle Titus, Cummari was built from a simple conviction — that women deserve spaces designed with intention, warmth, and no performance required. It has been called one of the most interesting projects in Sicily by Lonely Planet, and featured in Harper's Bazaar and Citizen Femme. Women arrive as strangers and leave as cummari — the Sicilian word for a bond of female friendship that feels like family.
Travelling To The Retreat
Reaching Riposto is easier — and greener — than you might think.
By train: Direct trains run to Giarre-Riposto station, including an overnight service from Rome — wake up in Sicily, no flight required.
By ferry: Sail overnight from the Italian mainland to Palermo, then travel across the island by train. One of the most scenic and unhurried ways to arrive.
By plane: Catania Fontanarossa airport is the closest, just 30 minutes away — well connected from across Europe, making it easy to combine with onward travel.
BOOKING DETAILS
Early booking
Before 1 August 2026
1750 shared room (with 1 other person)
2050 private room
Standard price
1950 shared room (with 1 other person)
2250 private room
Supporter price (to help offset the cost for others):
2500 private room
INCLUDED
6 nights accommodation (30 sec. walk to the sea)
Daily Workshops with Inez Aponte
Daily Local cultural experiences
All breakfasts & lunches & welcome dinner
Group transfer to Cummari from Catania International Airport
NOT INCLUDED
Dinner (after Welcome dinner) — evenings are yours to cook together at Cummari or explore award winning restaurants in the village
Optional extras: in-room massage, spa, yoga, pilates & more
Limited to 12 persons
To reserve your place: a refundable €300 deposit holds your spot. Refundable up to 60 days before the retreat begins.
Testimonials
“Already I feel more free, more inspired to trust my natural instincts, and more courageous. I’m so glad I said yes to the inner call.”
Claire Mackinnon, Womens Leadership Guide
“The world is in such turmoil that we are in dire need of spaces like this. Once discovered, we are going to feel very orphaned without it.”
Irene Gil, Brand Consultant and Professor
“It was wonderful, from start to finish. You helped me to feel comfortable and at ease with myself and the other participants, enough to share parts of myself in a different and creative way. I feel a shift — more aligned with those parts of me that were dormant or forgotten.”
Trisha White, Retired
“Inez is a master storyteller and has a host of games up her sleeve. I never thought I’d leave a day unpacking economics and social change feeling so nourished.”
Madelanne Rust-D’Eye, RISE Consulting
“A thought-provoking, caring, intentional and beautifully-held space, that allowed us to range between embodied exercises, emotional and reflective discussions, creative practice and cognitive learning. I loved the use of storytelling and creative visioning... this course felt like a gift of fertile compost!”
Rachel Tuckett — Zero Carbon Britain Innovation Lab Manager
“Incredibly impactful and meaningful. Inez's calm, soothing approach to facilitating a complex and at times confronting topic in an intimate and very personal way was one of my favourite aspects.
The barefoot economics model speaks to the reality we all find ourselves in: how can we value what often is not in the metrics? What is it we need for a good life? It was like a breath of fresh air to feel connected and invigorated.”
Megan Christie — Financial Educator & Money Coach
Meet Inez Aponte
Inez Aponte is a performance storyteller, community builder, and barefoot economist. For thirty years she has worked with a wide range of people, from community halls to corporate boardrooms, from intergenerational projects to intimate retreats, bringing them together to explore the deeper layers of culture that drive our choices.
She is the founder of Growing Good Lives and Beautiful Economies, and has worked with organisations including WWF, the Centre for Alternative Technology, and Schumacher College.
Her work draws on storytelling, improvisation, somatic practice, and systems thinking to examine the stories that shape how we see ourselves, others, and the world around us. She invites people to question the dominant measure of success and to start valuing what is actually holding life together: care, creativity, and belonging, the things that never make it onto any balance sheet.
Warm, rigorous, and genuinely transformative. Being in her presence for a week, in a group this size, is rare. Learn more about Inez’s work
Want to get a feel for Inez before you commit? Listen to her conversation with Manda Scott on the Accidental Gods podcast https://accidentalgods.life/barefoot-economics-in-a-world-of-hobnailed-boots-with-storyteller-inze-aponte/
Meet Michelle Titus
Michelle Titus is a feminine anthropologist, community builder and keeper of place. She has made her life in Sicily since 2019, not as an observer, but as a participant. Her work is rooted in matriarchal studies, with a particular focus on Sicilian culture, its indigenous peoples, and the living practice of matriarchy and community in the modern world. She is the founder of Cummari, a women's space in Sicily where she hosts retreats, international gatherings, and the kind of everyday life that reminds women what it feels like to be held by place and by each other. She also co-founded Zingarelle di Sicilia, a women's community spanning the island, and co-hosts a biannual international festival bringing together local entrepreneurs and creatives. Her background is in international reporting and publishing — she has lived and worked in over 15 countries since 2006.