At Montserrat, there is a semi-outdoor hallway full of candles called Cami de l'Ave Maria.
Pilgrims light them as offerings after visiting the Black Madonna statue: for intentions, for grief, for gratitude, for the things we carry that don't have words yet. The walkway is flanked by old stones, flickering and alive with people's prayers. My heart swelled with warmth and my eyes filled with tears seeing the thousands of candles lit every single day.
One day, the wind found its way through the entrance and into the interior of the walkway. I watched as it kept blowing the candles out. One by one, quietly, without drama, a flame would simply disappear. Some of the candles I had just lit blew out.
And then I noticed a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old, moving slowly through the hallway with a long candle. She was there relighting the candles that had gone out. Methodically, tenderly, one by one.
I couldn't stop watching her.
It takes more energy to relight a candle that's gone out than to tend one that's still burning. The wick needs time. It needs proximity to another flame. It needs patience.
We are not so different.
When we let ourselves burn out — through too much output, too little rest, too many demands met before our own — relighting takes more. More time. More support. More intention. The return to ourselves isn't impossible, but it isn't instant either.
This is why tending your own inner light isn't indulgence. It's maintenance. It's the quiet, unglamorous work of staying lit so that when life asks something of you, and it will, you have something to give from.
I also want to mention: not everyone has equal access to rest, space, and the conditions that make self-tending possible. If you have that access, even imperfectly, even partially, it's worth taking seriously. Not as guilt, but as responsibility.
We were never meant to do this alone
As humans we are designed to be in communities that make self-tending and connection with others possible.
The little girl wasn't relighting the candles alone. She was moving through a hallway full of candles, some lit, some not, and it was precisely the ones still burning that made her work possible. She held her candle to a flame that was already alive, and carried it to the ones that weren't.
We need each other for this. Not in a way that makes us dependent, but in the way that fire needs fire. One steady flame can relight a hundred others. A room full of people tending their own light creates something that no single candle could: a warmth, a visibility, a collective glow that makes it harder for any one flame to go out unnoticed.
Why I run retreats
This is what a retreat is for.
The people who come are not broken. They are bright, capable, deeply feeling humans who have been giving a lot: to their work, their families, their transitions. Some are moving through loss. Some have been traveling or relocating and haven't had ground beneath them in a while. Some are simply tired in the way that only comes from working a lot, or caring deeply about too many things at once.
They are not burned out beyond recognition. But for many, their flame has dimmed, or they've recently found themselves in uncharted territory. And they know it.
Away from the pace and the noise and the accumulated weight of daily life, there is space to come back to yourself. To rest without guilt. To move in ways that restore rather than deplete. To be witnessed and held by a small group of people doing the same thing: each tending their own flame, each making it easier for the others to stay lit.
My hope is that everyone returns home feeling more connected with a version of themselves that knows what they need, trusts what they feel, and moves into their next chapter not from depletion, but from fullness and vitality. And that each person leaves with their own inner light reignited, in a way that lets them be like the girl at Montserrat within their own communities.
Wherever you are in the world, I hope you get time, space and support to tend to your own inner flame. Whether that's a week in the mountains, a day together, or simply the next small act of tending yourself wherever you are.
Be well,
ElizaBeth