Episode 7: Create Your Own Retreat

Description: In this episode, Dr.  Boogren shares her excitement about planning a reading retreat—a weekend getaway devoted entirely to rest, reflection, and the joy of getting lost in good books. Listeners are invited to consider creating their own kind of retreat—whether it’s for reading, writing, hiking, crafting, or simply being still—to rediscover the power of having something peaceful and meaningful to look forward to.

Resources: Article by Gretchen Rubin: How to Plan a Reading Retreat. Happier Podcast: Planning Themed Retreats. Use the code Wellness20 to get 20% off Tina's book 180 Day of Physical Wellness for Busy Educators.

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Transcription:  Hi everyone, and welcome to episode seven of season six of Self-Care for Educators. I am your host, Dr. Tina Boogren. I hope that you are doing well. I just sincerely hope that you're doing well. And that you are taking care of yourselves. And you are making time for quiet and stillness and finding things that bring you joy.

I know it's just, it's hard right now out in the world and in the news and on social media, and so I just really hope that you are taking exquisite care of yourself. And along those same lines, what I have for you this week is a really fun invitation for some of you. For some of you, this may not appeal to you as much, but I want to share something that I am looking forward to with my very best friend, and it is a reading retreat.

I could not be more excited. So here's the deal. I have been seeing all of these reading retreats on social media. So there's actual like travel tours that you can sign up for where you go either by yourself or with a friend. You join this group in this like lovely, beautiful location and you have all this reading time on your own, and then you come together for like dinner or excursions and they just look amazing.

And because my algorithm, I have liked a lot of those, I'm getting a lot of those posts. And I, as many of you know, listen every single week to Gretchen Rubin's podcast, happier and she and her sister took a reading retreat together, and recently they talked about that. And I just got really excited about this idea.

And at first I thought that I would take myself on a reading retreat. You know, I think we've talked about it before. I love to do a solo vacation, and I thought, man, that sounds delightful. But then I was thinking about my very best friend. And we like to plan little trips together. So I live in Denver and she lives in Fort Collins. And every few weeks we meet about halfway and we take a walk together and it's one of my favorite things. We found this like great location. We get to walk around this beautiful lake. We can see the mountains in the background and we walk and talk and walk and talk. And usually we go two loops, which is seven miles. And we head to lunch and it is fantastic. And just this past weekend I went and met her and on our walk I mentioned the idea of a reading retreat and her eyes lit up exactly like I wanted them to. And so we started planning and we have it on the books. 

We're gonna go in early December. And what we decided is we wanted to keep it as simple as possible. So we wanted to drive, so we wanted to make it easy. And for us, driving to Estes Park is not very far. I feel very lucky and fortunate to live in Colorado. And we've both been to Estes Park numerous times. And so this balance of being somewhere that appeals to us, but that isn't a total distraction, if that makes sense. Because we were like, we can't go somewhere where we're gonna feel like we're missing out on all the stuff that's in the place. So we decided Estes Park and we are really looking forward to this mix of reading and a little bit of activity. So I just said we like to take these long walks together and you know, it's hard to just read all day, and that was one of the tips that Gretchen Rubin had provided when she was reflecting on their retreat.

So we thought, okay, Estes Park is a really great place where we can walk either around the town or head into Rocky Mountain National Park, take a little hike, but the majority of our time then we’d spend reading. 

So I got super excited after we talked about this. I found an Airbnb for us that I think looked so gorgeous. It was really important for us, we're going in December, so we wanted to have a fireplace. We both said if we were going somewhere in the summer, which I hope that we do, we would want to be close to water. But for this one, we were like, okay, we want a fireplace and we want to see the mountains. So we found this great Airbnb. It's got lots of space because as I was looking at pictures, I was trying to find all of these places in the house that we're renting that would be good reading spots. And it's got like a full kitchen. It's got an outdoor kind of patio area. We have no idea what the weather will be like in early December. It could be really cold. It could be snowing, it could be gorgeous. I don't know, but at least we can kind of get that fresh mountain air step outside. I would love if we could read outside. We will see what Mother Nature has in store for us. 

And now we get to do the fun part of like putting books in a pile that we want to tackle during our reading retreat. We have played with the idea of both reading a book before we get to that weekend, so then we can talk about that particular book, but then read our own books. We both had this fear that if we started a book together on the reading retreat, one of us would be slower and it would be this like, ah. Feel all this pressure. So we thought it might be fun to read a book beforehand so we can have that discussion. But then both dig into our own separate books and I think we're just gonna make a pile and then we can read what we brought. We can look at each other's piles. I really want to bring a book that I think that I would be able to read in one day. I think that would be really fun to like start a book and finish a book while I am there. 

And then I went down the rabbit hole of like Googling and asking ChatGPT other ideas and had these great ideas of like in the evening we might be able to like watch a movie adaptation of a book we both read and loved. My brain immediately went to Eat, Pray, Love but there's tons of them out there. Or we could do like a book-themed craft, like make bookmarks or do a jigsaw puzzle with a  book motif, something. I don't know. It's really, it just makes me so happy. 

Melissa, that's her name, and I were laughing because I was like, “Isn't it so great to be at an age where we can just lean into our nerdiest selves?” And I mean that in the very best way. When I came home and told my husband about this, he was like, “I love that for you.” That is not something he would be interested in. So it's really great that I get to go do this with Melissa. 

So it's on the calendar. We've talked before about having something to look forward to, which I think is essential. And now we have this like kind of three months where we can decide and plan what we really want that to look like. Like I'm thinking we would have one meal out, but then bring food with us. This place has a full kitchen. Neither one of us are big cooks. But you know, we could have some things where we don't have to venture out for every meal that, um, you know, what are we gonna bring with us? What are some excursions we wanna do? How much time are we gonna devote? I'm thinking like little two hour chunks. Melissa had a great idea. She's like, and then we need to have a notebook so that we don't interrupt each other. So if we think of something we wanna say to the other person, write it down. And then we will, you know, set our timers for two two hours, go read on our own and then come back together, say all the things that we wanted to say, you know, take a little break, maybe a little walk, stretch our legs, whatever, and then resume reading. 

I just think this sounds dreamy and my guess is there's some of you that would find this dreamy as well, and so I'm offering that up as something for consideration. And if it's not reading, like whatever your thing is. So we're taking a reading retreat, but maybe you wanna take a knitting retreat or a painting retreat, or a writing retreat, or a hiking retreat. I mean, the possibilities are endless. Movies. Like go somewhere with a friend or on your own and watch all the movies or the shows that you haven't been able to watch. I don't know, there's just endless possibilities. There's something about a theme that I think feels really fun and special and so I just wanted to share that because it's bringing me so much joy thinking about it, planning for it, looking forward to it. And I thought, boy, in this time where things feel hard, it feels really good to have that on the side. 

So I offer that up to you as something for consideration, and I'd love to hear if you've done that, if you're doing this, if you have tips, if you have ideas, what you're thinking about. Oh, I would love, love, love to hear. So with that, I'm going to wish you a wonderful week and remind you as always, to take really good care of yourself this week and maybe plan a retreat. And I love the word retreat, by the way. It's not a reading getaway or a reading weekend, it's a reading retreat that feels really good. 

Ah, as always, I'm so grateful to Adrienne, oh my goodness, for making this happen and for bringing me so much joy in my life. Thank you to Marzano Resources and Solution Tree for this job I get to do and to you, my incredible self-care squad. Make it a great week and maybe plan a retreat.