Everything we need is already here.
Do not try to save
the 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 to this world
so worthy of rescue.
by Martha Postlethwaite
New Tools for Women Leading the Way with Inez Ponte - 6 night Retreat
November 4th to 10th, 2026
Co-Hosted by Inez Ponte, founder of Growing Good Lives and Beautiful Economies — an educator, artist and economist who has spent years helping leaders, communities and organisations ask a more honest question: what does it actually mean to thrive?
Our modern world is full of noise. Lots of opinions flying around. Every day another argument for one side against the other. 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.
Yet that quiet voice may contain the very wisdom we need to find our way through.
This retreat is an opportunity to stop and step out of the current. To listen to your own curiosity, to allow it to lead the way, to tap into an endless source of imagination, to remember a shared creative impulse.
Together we will explore what it means to experience ourselves as a living system within larger living systems, we will work with ancient stories, play and improvise. We will get comfortable with uncertainty. And we will center care — for ourselves, for each other, for the living world — as a radical act. Revaluing the quiet, everyday, faithful act of tending.
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 yours to do.
Who this is for?
People 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: people 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 people on the edge of something — who feel the pull but haven't yet found the courage, the clarity, or the community to answer it.
You don't need a plan. You just need to be willing to slow down long enough to listen.
The thread of the week
The body first. 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.
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.
What is mine to do? 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.
The felt sense of belonging to something vast and unknowable.
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 Ponte
1:00 – 2:30 pm: Lunch
3:00 – 6:00 pm: Local Cultural Activity
Evening: Free time — rest, explore, exhale
What you will take away
A story about yourself that fits better than the one you arrived with. Embodied practices for daily life and work. Ways of being together and working with difference that you can bring back to your own contexts. A small group of people who have seen you fully, and whom you have seen in return.
And the knowledge that caring for yourself and showing up for the world are not two different projects. That the quiet, faithful act of tending is its own form of heroism. That you have more to give than you thought — and that giving it need not cost you everything.
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
€2,600 - Save €300 on the full price
Standard price
€2,900 (After 1 August 2026)
Shared room — come with a friend
€2,200 per person - Available when booking with someone you know
INCLUDED
Private room accommodation
Workshops with Inez Ponte
Sicilian cultural experiences
All breakfasts & lunches
Group transfer to Cummari
NOT INCLUDED
Dinners — evenings are yours to cook together at Cummari or explore award winning restaurants in the village
Optional extras: in-room massage, spa, yoga & more
Limited to 8 persons who identify as women
To reserve your place: a refundable €300 deposit holds your spot. Fully refundable up to 60 days before the retreat begins.
Meet Inez Ponte
Inez Ponte is the founder of Growing Good Lives and Beautiful Economies. She is an educator, artist and economist who has spent years helping leaders, communities and organisations ask a more honest question: what does it actually mean to thrive? Drawing on the framework of Barefoot Economics, Inez works at the intersection of human wellbeing, ecology, and creativity. Her work is warm, rigorous, and genuinely transformative. Being in her presence for a week, in a group this intimate, is rare.
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.