The Three Fundamental Reasons Why Retreats are so Powerful
Behind the Scenes #2 Making time to get away might be hard but it's crucial
I met a poet on the beach. She was carrying her six-month-old baby and was on her way to a silent disco by the sea. We’d first got to know each other a few years ago when we were both living in Bristol and working for the charity, First Story, where we were writers-in-residence at inner city schools.
“Are you getting much writing done?” I asked, nodding at the baby who was showing me her first two teeth in an otherwise gummy grin.
She shook her head ruefully. “You?” I laughed and said that was why I was here, to actually do some writing.
The older I’ve got, and the more authors I’ve listened to discussing their writing practises, the clearer it is that female writers, in particular, fit their writing in around caring duties, caring for the young, the old, and everyone in between. I listened to one writer describing how, whilst looking after her elderly mother, writing a sentence a day was an achievement. That same week, I listened to a male writer describing his admirable self-care routine, how he wrote in the morning post running and meditation and a coffee in the sunshine, and then spent the afternoons chatting with other writers. I grew up on the idea that a writers’ life should be like Martin Amis’s or Ian McEwan’s, who wrote in the morning and devoted the afternoon to reading. At a recent Afternoon Tea with
, hosted by the Society of Authors, she was asked about her writing routine. She sounded angry as she said, “It’s only men who can have writing routines.”“Life -” said the poet, “- it gets in the way.” She dropped a kiss on her baby’s crown, and continued on to the silent dancing.
The more juggling I’ve had to do with work roles and writing and caring duties, the more I’ve realised the power of retreats, how necessary it is to step away from one’s daily life and responsibilities. And yet it is spectacularly difficult to do, particularly when most writers earn less than the minimum wage: a spa in Spain or a Californian yoga retreat seem unthinkable luxuries. I think there are three kinds of retreats, although they perhaps all have the same effect: those when you need to focus on one aspect of your work; those where you need time to recuperate from the attrition of daily life (
and have both talked about burnout); and those where you need to recover from illness.I’m here for the former, in a small apartment overlooking a beach in Cornwall: a few joyous, stolen days, when I can eat what I want when I want, write when I feel like, and above all, have an unerring focus. Back home there can be hangry tears if the tea is not on the table at a certain time or if I’ve forgotten to stock up on snacks; work and writing are squeezed around the school run, three hour orthodontist appointments, the Lidl run, family admin, is the school uniform clean and the endless rounds of negotiations about who is doing what and where and how and then who will look after the dog?
It feels luxurious and it is just about affordable as it is -2 degrees and December; the apartment block is eerily empty apart from me and the dog, and the bar and the shop have shut for winter. I am justifying the time and the money because I’m writing - this is work - but the other kind of retreat, one simply to rest and recover, is equally necessary, and in today’s world where we all so busy and when we are all constantly accessible, it is much harder to justify and to do - both financially and to find someone else to cover one’s daily unpaid and often unacknowledged work. I loved
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. She writes:Our lives take different shapes: we do not work in a linear progression through fixed roles like the honeybee. We are not consistently useful to the world at large. We talk about the complexity of the hive, but human societies are infinitely more complex, full of choices and mistakes, periods of glory and seasons of utter despair. Some of us make highly visible, elaborate contributions to the whole; some of us are part of the ticking mechanics of the world, the incremental wealth of small gestures.
The point she makes is that the natural world runs in cycles: “Sometimes it flourishes – lays on fat, garlands itself in leaves, makes abundant honey – and sometimes it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living. It doesn’t do this once, resentfully, assuming that one day it will get things right and everything will smooth out. It winters in cycles, again and again, forever and ever. For plants and animals, winter is part of the job. The same is true for humans.”
Every time I return from a writing retreat, or from my short annual break with an old school friend (this year we walked half the West Highland Way together), I feel restored and refreshed, but what I really need - arguably what we all need - in addition to being able to focus and see friends, is to have time to do nothing. Maybe to do a little yoga and drink mint tea in the sunshine. Read a book or two.
“The needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it. You can’t have one without the other.”
Wintering by
Recently I experienced a semblance of the third kind of retreat. I had surgery to repair damage caused by childbirth; the surgeon was vague about what recovery would look like. He warned that I wouldn’t be able to work for two weeks due to the pain, and it could take up to three months to heal. I wondered what the bit in the middle would be like, but I prepared for the two weeks. I stocked up on painkillers and pads for the bleeding, arranged for my husband to do the school runs, for a neighbour to help with the dog, filled the freezer full of ready meals, took time off from the charity I work for, the
, and bought a pile of books for my bedside table. In a strange way, I was looking forward to it: no work or cooking and lots of reading.What actually happened is that I spent part of every day lying on my bed hyperventilating as I waited for the painkillers to kick in, or for it to be time to take the next round of painkillers. I took three days off and then I went back to writing as much as I could, when I could; back to cooking, back to walking the dog (very slowly), back to light exercise, gritting my teeth and pushing through the blood and the pain. The antibiotics wiped out my immune system and I ended up with a viral rash, a bad cold, bronchitis; my bones ached, my body did not heal. As
says, “We pass through phases of good health and ill, of optimism and deep doubt, of freedom and constraint. There are times when everything seems easy, and times when it all seems impossibly hard.”
So now, on my writing retreat, with a canvas holdall bulging with all the books I will not be able to read, and a list as long as my arm of all the writing I won’t be able to do, I’m also determined to make a little time for self care. Hot baths with Olverum bath oil, John Masters Organics face masks, a scented candle from The Fox Foundry, coffee from the café by the beach, watching the waves roll in. No dancing but maybe silent contemplation.
How about you? Do you find time for self-care? Do you go on retreats?
Coming up soon! Our first Coffee House! This will be an online writing group once every two months (or more if you’d like). Ask Me Anything, discuss your projects, do a writing exercise or two, or simply use that precious hour to write. Espresso martini optional. The first one will be 5pm Sunday 25 February for paid subscribers.
Sanjida x