Recover Before, Not After: Why I’m On Holidays Three Weeks Before Launching Another Retreat
I’m on holiday at my own retreat three weeks before launching another one.
Most people would think I’m a little insane.
But there’s a method to my madness so bear with me…
The Lesson I Learned About Recovery
I learned something in my early days of building Escape Haven.
It came from necessity. Watching women arrive at my retreat completely absolutely depleted, looking like they’d been through a hardship (because they had).
It came from my own experience of pushing so hard for so long that I ended up in a hospital bed in Bali, separated from my eight-week-old daughter, not knowing if I was going to survive.
So I learned it the hard way. With my whole body.
Recovery isn’t what you do when you burn out.
It’s not what you do after the ‘big thing’. It’s not what you do after you’ve completed something, finally earned your rest, or reached the finish line. It’s not something you get when you’ve pushed hard enough or worked enough hours or proven yourself enough.
Recovery is something you build before you actually need it.
That lesson changed everything for me (and it took me a while to really get it – like, years of getting it and then forgetting it and then remembering it again, over and over).
Eighteen years later, I’ve watched this play out thousands of times. Women arrive at Escape Haven six months after launching something big – a business, a rebrand, a move, a massive project that consumed everything they had. They’re depleted. They’re wondering why the thing they built doesn’t feel like they thought it would. They’re wondering why they don’t feel like they thought they would.
And I recognized myself in every single one of them.
Especially from those early years (which I know so well now, which is exactly why I built Mana).
What It Costs When You Don't Prioritise Recovery (Spoiler: Everything)
The cost isn’t just exhaustion. It’s not even the burnout (though that’s there too).
It’s the numbness that comes after. When you’ve pushed so hard for so long that you get a bit de-sensitised. When you stop noticing things – good things, hard things, things that matter – because you’re just in survival mode. When the thing you built stops filling you and starts consuming you instead.
It’s the realisation that the decisions you’re making, the people you’re leading, the energy you’re bringing to your business – it’s all coming from that depleted place. And a depleted version of you isn’t making brilliant decisions. She’s making surviving decisions. She’s making “get through the day” decisions. She’s making decisions from a place of terror that it’s all going to collapse if she stops (which, spoiler alert, it won’t).
And it compounds. Because if you’re already running on empty, the next big thing feels impossible. The next launch feels like climbing a mountain when you’re already exhausted at the base. So you push harder. You cut more corners. You skip more sleep (as if that’s an option at this point anyway).
I watched myself do this for years (like, genuinely, years of knowing better and doing it anyway).
So when I’m building something as big as Mana – a recovery retreat for high performers, built on the belief that prevention is better than crisis – I’m not going to wait until after to remember that lesson. I’m not going to push until I fall in a heap over the finish line.
Heck no.
The Marathon Metaphor That Everyone Uses But Doesn't Actually Work
Here’s the thing about marathons: you can’t pause at the 40-kilometre mark and jump back in fresh.
Once you’re in a marathon, you’re committed. You push through. Your lactic acid builds up. Your body fatigues. You cross that finish line depleted because that’s what marathons do to you.
But business isn’t a marathon (which is wild, because we often treat it like one).
We treat launches like marathons. We treat building like a marathon. We treat “making it” like the finish line, when actually the finish line is just the beginning of running the thing. The actual work. The actual leadership. The actual presence you need to bring.
And that’s the whole problem right there.
You can pause before the finish. You can step back before you hit the wall. You can recover – actually recover, not just “take a weekend” kind of recover – refill your cup, come back clear, and then run the actual race from a place of strength rather than desperation.
So here’s what I actually know (and I mean this, deeply, from eighteen years of learning it):
Recovery isn’t what I do because the work is finished.
Recovery is part of the work.
Two Weeks Ago I Had a Virus and Everything Got Very Real Very Fast
Two weeks ago I had a virus that absolutely wrecked me.
The kind that flattens you on some idle Tuesday inconveniently catching you off guard when you have a busy week of to do’s to achieve. The kind where you realise your body isn’t the reliable machine you thought it was (turns out it never was, I just didn’t notice until recently).
Perimenopause is doing what perimenopause does – disrupting my sleep in new ways, shifting my energy, reminding me that the rules have changed and nobody told me the new rules (thanks, hormones).
And Mana launches in three weeks.
So what’s the logical move here? Push harder. Stay closer. White-knuckle through the final stretch and dig in deeper when my body is saying chill out? Make sure everything is perfect before launch day. Show up depleted but committed. That’s how you prove you care about something, right (spoiler: it’s not).
Instead, Trent looked at me one morning and said: you’re checking into Escape Haven in his slightly bossy, well meaning husband way.
It wasn’t a question or a suggestion. It wasn’t even framed as gentle advice that I could consider and probably ignore (which is what I do, usually).
It was an intervention masked as a sentence – the kind that only comes from someone who’s watched you do this exact thing multiple times and finally decided to step in.
He said: the version of you that opens Mana needs to be rested.
Not rested as in “well-rested” or “had a good night’s sleep.”
Rested as in: clear and present. Capable of making the decisions that actually need to be made. Able to hold the energy that a retreat full of guests is going to need from you. The version that can actually see what’s happening instead of just reacting to it.
Because if she’s already depleted, if she’s already running on fumes and caffeine and the particular kind of stress that masquerades as commitment – then everything she brings to opening those doors is compromised. Everything she builds from that foundation is built on shaky ground.
Turns out my husband was right (which, if I’m being honest, is annoyingly becoming a bit of a pattern).
(Shhh don’t tell him – he’ll absolutely never let me live it down.)
The Wild Part Is: I've Been Teaching This the Whole Time
I’ve been teaching this for eighteen years.
Recovery before, not after. Build the infrastructure before you need it. Don’t wait until you’re in crisis to remember what matters. Come to a women’s retreat before you burn out, not after.
And I know this. Deeply. From every angle.
I’ve watched it happen a thousand times. I’ve seen the difference between the women who come before and the women who come after (the ones who come after are broken open in a way that takes weeks to undo).
I’ve built my entire life philosophy around it.
And I’ve also spent most of my life not actually doing it (which is its own special kind of ironic).
Which is wild, because here I am, checking into a retreat three weeks before a launch, living what I’ve been preaching.
For You: The Woman Who's Probably Doing What I Did For Years
So here’s what I want you to know:
Don’t wait until after.
You don’t have to push until you’re depleted and then try to recover from crisis. You don’t have to treat your launch, your project, your big thing like a marathon where collapse at the finish line is inevitable and somehow noble.
You can build recovery before you need it. Not as a reward or as something you’ve earned by suffering enough. Not as something you do when you finally have time (because you never will).
As infrastructure. As part of how you actually show up.
As the thing that makes the work possible, not the thing that comes after the work is done.
The version of you that does the big thing – the one who launches, who leads, who builds, who shows up – she deserves to be rested first.
Not exhausted and committed.
Just rested.
