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RETREATS
SERVICES
HARVEST TABLE DINNERS
BLOG
ABOUT
CONTACT
- APPLY

RETREATS
SERVICES
HARVEST TABLE DINNERS
BLOG
ABOUT
CONTACT
- APPLY

bowl of chocolate batter

📣: Nurture retreat details are live on our webs

📣: Nurture retreat details are live on our website! Come meet our team and see what's new and exciting. ⁠
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I'll keep this uncharacteristically short here, because it's characteristically comprehensive over there ;) ⁠
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Link dans le bio!⁠
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📷️: @katieharrisonphoto

Save the date - we've waited 3 years for this!!! J

Save the date - we've waited 3 years for this!!! Join us at Nurture, November 18th-20th, 2022! ⁠
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Our waitlist is ready for you, simply DM us your name and email address to have first access to sign up for one of the 10 spots available (with shared & private accommodation options). ⁠
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Will I be grinning while emphatically waving my hands as we gather in our ice-breaker-free welcome circle while @stephpellett looks at me with a lovingly raised eyebrow and twinkle in her eye? Yes. ⁠
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Have I been planning the menu since early 2020 and do I plan to pull out ALL the stops since it's been so long since we've gathered this way? Yes. ⁠
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Do we have your back when it comes to acknowledging the impact on what these past few years have had on your relationship to yourself and your creativity? Emphatically yes. ⁠
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Have we specifically curated the workshops to address this unique time we're in, head on? Yes! Our incredible facilitators (Julia @glass.full, Talia @taliainko , & Romina @ecofriendly.events) were intentionally chosen because their creative practices lend themselves to finding a new way forward with what has been idle or brittle and longing for tender action in your life. I'll also be leading a cooking workshop! :)⁠
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Are you or your November in need of a weekend of nourishment for your heart, belly and soul in a rambling old farmhouse on the cliffs of Lake Simcoe with a crew of kindreds who believe that real connection with others is the key, alongside buttery things and a generous selection of dips? ⁠
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If you answered yes, we've got you and are already a little bit in love with you (more to come, we're an earnest bunch). ⁠
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Here if you have any questions! ⁠
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p: @katieharrisonphoto⁠

You know those hot sauces that get right to the po

You know those hot sauces that get right to the point? You take a bite and BAM, the capsaicin YELLS at your taste buds and your eyes immediately well up with tears from past traumas? ⁠
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Well, I have some spicy news, hot (sauce) off the press: I'm moving. To a new city. In a few short weeks. ⁠
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Not unlike this spicy condiment, this news is not the easiest to digest. I've been in my Toronto apartment and cooked meals for loved ones and Nurture events in this kitchen with its tiny icebox fridge and thimble sink for 14 memory-filled years. Yes, you read that correctly. Fourteen.⁠
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So many Instagram posts have seen these black and white tiles offer a backdrop to the delicacy of the day (including, for a few short years as a food blogger, a rather tasty version of ME lol @kitchen_boudoir - here's looking at you, kid). ⁠
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I've cried my heart out at the wooden cutting board as countless heartaches, dreams, endings and reunions (and the occasional strong onion) infused themselves into the various dishes I would create from scratch to feed my family, friends and lovers. ⁠
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Last week, a few of my nearest and dearest gathered to intentionally say goodbye and bless my home for its next occupant. Julia of @glass.full curated a custom ceremony that took us through each room. We started, obviously, in the kitchen. The emotion as everyone raised a glass to share a memory and toast my home was about 14 onions worth. I still can't take a breath big enough to fully let in the love of it; the love we baked, lived, ate and laughed with here. When I try, a memory montage starts playing in my head and they're so rich and delicious I can only take tiny bites at a time or I'll burst. ⁠
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If you've set foot in my Toronto kitchen, I would love to hear your stories of this place. How did you feel? What did we eat? What will you miss? ⁠
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While onioning heartily, I am also grinning. I can feel the ripeness of this time. The inner call to pursue Nurture full time again. The perfect wit of the universe because I'm moving in with my beloved to...Kitchener. KITCHENer, friends. It already feels like home.

Hello. This is a picture from the future I am buil

Hello. This is a picture from the future I am building. ⁠
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Happy me, casually wandering the garden path with the Nurture farmhouse in the background, picking some fresh cosmos to put in a little antique crock on the nightstand next to your guest bed. ⁠
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To my left are the vegetables that will make their way into the evening's shared meal. I probably speak to them out loud, asking who wants to be part of a summer ratatouille?⁠
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I see you, me, and a table full of earnest creative people from different backgrounds, sharing ideas to help the world and the kind of stories that make you weep both from laughter and solidarity. ⁠
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Despite my whimsy, this is not some surface level rural aesthetic dream ripped from the pages of some white woman's wellness magazine. It's the dream of a space where we find beauty in the breakdown, reflect honestly on interior and global realities, and use creative expression as a way through and out to the field where real life, tangible solutions grow. ⁠
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After what's felt like a two year long metaphorical Winter, this Spring has brought with it some renewed energy, commitment and excitement around my dreams and what I'm working towards, because I feel so deeply that we need a safe and fertile place to work from, together, as we're building the new world that we so desperately require. ⁠
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I want to build a home for you to work on what YOU feel called to build, surrounded by good people, excellent food, and the magic that real connection brings. ⁠
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To this end, I've been working in my internal prep kitchen, cooking up all sorts of plans, intentions and some significant life changes to support these dreams, including planning for our first Nurture retreat since pre-panini! More on this soon...⁠
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How does this dream feel to you? For me, it feels like a need. A calling I can no longer ignore. ⁠
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Gorgeous future-me photo by @creatinglight.studio

Like any good cooking fire, I'd say Nurture's been

Like any good cooking fire, I'd say Nurture's been banked embers for the last two years, waiting for the right kindling (and the right degree of social safety) to bring it back ablaze. Or, as my friend @glass.full likes to say, "Nurture has been charging." ⁠
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I like these images, the ones of imminent readiness or fruitful gestation, much more than the stories my mind likes to tell me, aka: "you have wasted two years" or, my personal favourite: "your magic has left you".⁠
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The reality is rather the opposite. Interesting, important, life-saving and spiritually potent things happen in the 'dark'. Thanks to some very challenging health issues, the state of the world and a clinical case of burnout, that dark got VERY dark. Like Lindt 90% chocolate dark - sweetness was but an echo.⁠
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I came to learn firsthand that the 'Nurture Sonja' I used to have instant access to; my creative, life-filled, sensual self, was not gone, but inaccessible. By default, not MY fault. It was a flipping global panini; the realities of which literally kept me from doing what I love most. My body hurt and sometimes wouldn't move, like a spoon in caramel when it cools. Reader, I had no spoons. ⁠
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As things start to reopen (myself included), I am contemplating my kindling choices. I am contemplating what actions and offerings Nurture is 'charging' for. I am contemplating how many mixed metaphors you will allow me. ⁠
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The truth is, I have been changed by this time away. I have not been idle, but simmering: taking stock. ⁠
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Last night, when @stephpellett and I had our first retreat planning session for our November retreat, I blurted out: "I want it to feel like a womb, not a spa!" I cannot in good conscience offer an escape when what we need is safe, nourishing spaces to explore what we've all gone through so we can find a new way through. Friends, we're about to Nurture differently. ⁠
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P: @liat.a

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