Over the weekend in late June, The Uplands hosted an Intergenerational Caregiver retreat comprised of two partnering service groups: She Wins, a nonprofit leadership and social action organization for teens and young women of Newark, and an informal alliance of lawyers and social service advocates serving young women in New York City. Both groups share the mission of weaving a robust community web of supportive care, mentorship, and self-empowerment for young women who are impacted by trauma, inner city violence, and adverse life and systemic experiences.
The retreat guests ranged widely in age, but shared the lived experience of having assumed significant caregiving, advocacy and leadership responsibilities in their families and communities: e.g. being oldest siblings in families who had lost both parents; or foster parents of children wrenched from their parents’ care and custody; or sole caregivers for aging parents or grandparents while balancing work and school. The common bond among all attendees was that they had spent much of their lives and energies caring for others, while rarely having opportunities to be cared for in kind by others, or indeed by themselves.
Multiple goals for the retreat attendees included: releasing themselves from the ceaseless pressures of their overburdened lives; steeping themselves in the serenity and nurturance of all of Uplands’ natural, recreational and culinary offerings; reconnecting with themselves to secure the restorative experiences they needed; forging new caring connections within the retreat community; and rekindling an inner spark within themselves of self-exploration and zeal for life.
These retreat aspirations were richly achieved through several special Uplands offerings. The art room became a hive of buzzing, bonding and transporting creativity, animated by a guided group art project of creating distinctive self-reflective dolls from a colorful mosaic of materials. The art room also offered a rich, multi-medium creative project buffet, open 24/7, of enthralling self-directed art activities. Creative juices freely flowed like honey in the art room hive, nurturing self-discovery, inner joy and, in the process, new mutually supportive interconnections.
Additional offerings included a deeply informative garden tour about the sequences and nuances of planting and composting, a s’mores-enhanced bonfire, a soothing sound-bath, many late-night stargazing gatherings from the outdoor hot-tub, an ambitious hike to and immersion in a cold-water creek, and many property-wide exhilarating rides on the Uplands “mule” ATV. (Squeals of thrilled glee were audible across the fields from far away!) The retreat schedule was flexibly designed to enable opportunities for silence, solitude, and self-reflection to lend attendees the spaciousness to discern and attune to their own needs, to have a flowing freedom of choice “to opt in or out,” and to set aside, however briefly, the expectation that they must always be the strong one for everyone else. As the retreat drew to a close, attendees were invited to integrate their self-care retreat gleanings into a more sustainable self-care practice as they returned to their overextended lives of work, school, family and community responsibility and service.
We thank She Wins and partnering caregivers and advocates for your powerful work in the community and beyond, and for joining us at the Uplands!
