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We welcome you to read through this page for a whole-picture perspective on the Rewilding Women’s Weekend Retreat. If you’re looking for specific information, you can use the following links to skip around:
Why is Rewilding for Women Important?
We believe that confident, grounded, Earth-centered women are an essential part of a healthy world. Yet it can be hard to embody these qualities with the pressures of daily life, especially if we feel isolated or alone.
Rewilding for women is a way to listen to that untamed voice. Through this process, we can reclaim the innate strength we need to show up with integrity in our own lives, our communities, and the wider world.
Rewilding is about integration, not about going back in time. It’s about making space for the ancient, undomesticated parts of ourselves to come forward, even in the modern world.
What Our Women’s Rewilding Retreat Students Say
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Jayme
Washington, D.C.
“The Women’s Rewilding Retreat felt as close to real life magic as anything I’ve ever experienced. I could tell you in detail about the classes, nature walks, guided meditations, fire circles, inside jokes, and howling as a group and then actual coyotes answering back, but I’d never be able to give Wild Abundance and Emileigh the props they deserve. They are doing such important work.”
Lindsay
Asheville, NC
Group Facilitator & Coach
“This women’s weekend retreat will change your life. It’ll change your heart. I came here feeling incredibly disconnected from myself, from my relationships, and from the earth. Coming out, I feel totally refreshed and zesty for life—I feel connected to myself, to the other women here, to the land, and to all my retreat teachers. If you’re feeling the slightest call to come, just trust yourself and say yes.”
Aileen
North Carolina
Birth Doula and Massage Therapist
“I highly recommend this workshop, and all of the classes offered at Wild Abundance, to anyone with that deep ache, that unrelenting longing for something different, something old, something wild, something once lost that can be found.”
Mickey
North Carolina
Teacher & Caretaker
“This was the most transformative weekend for me mentally, spiritually, and physically. Being this close with other women was a new experience for me and it was truly a gift.”
Kate
South Carolina
High School Spanish Teacher
“My heart yearns for the freedom and empathy I experienced at Wild Abundance, and it is this women’s retreat that continues to fuel my quest for healing, compassion, and wonder.”
Stephanie
North Carolina
Homesteader
“I would recommend the Women’s Rewilding Retreat to any woman looking for deeper connection to herself, her community, her heritage, her spirit, and the natural world.”
Reconnect & Remember: A Rewilding Women’s Weekend Retreat
Join a supportive group of women for a long weekend rewilding retreat that centers reconnection and rejuvenation by engaging your hands and heart in traditional earth skills.
As women, we have a deep body-based and spiritual connection with creation. Rewilding is a way to nurture and animate that relationship.
No matter our backgrounds, we all have female ancestors who lived with the rhythms of Earth’s patterns and cycles. Indeed, women’s relationships with plants, animals, and spirits have been foundational to human culture for millennia.
Our women’s weekend retreat offers an opportunity to revitalize these connections and to reclaim the power and grace of womanhood.
This women’s retreat is open to ALL women.
At our women’s weekend retreat in North Carolina, we co-create a supportive and inclusive environment.
In this rewilding retreat, we focus on cultivating a safe, inclusive, supportive, relaxed, and fun learning environment, in which students of all crafting abilities can thrive.
While we will be doing hands-on projects, this is not an outcome-oriented class; you won’t be pressured to work more quickly than is comfortable for you and we’ll move at a pace that supports every woman.
Learning together with our hands and hearts.
During this special women’s weekend retreat, you’ll learn and practice some of the essential, beautiful skills and ceremonies that have woven women together for millennia. We’ll gather around altars and fires to share stories, rituals, and our hopes for our lives. Together, we’ll explore traditional crafts, nourishing self-care, wild foraging, herbal medicine making, and more.
With the loving guidance of wise women from diverse backgrounds, you’ll learn to nurture the feminine strength within you. As we practice ancient lifeways and explore timeless ideas, we’ll connect with each other and with the nature of womanhood, throughout the ages and across all walks of life.
What is Rewilding?
Rewilding is a term that was first used in wildlife conservation, referring to the restoration of landscapes to wild, uncultivated states. Human rewilding is a process of restoring our inner landscapes and lifestyles to more primal and natural states.
In this women’s retreat, we’re welcoming home our instincts and innate connections with the natural world. We engage with rewilding as a process to reawaken the essential nature that lives within each of us.
When we rewild as women, we connect with our truest selves and our roots in the living world.
As a result, we’re able to access a much-needed inner compass to help navigate our busy, modern lives. We all have deep wells of creativity, healing, and wisdom within us, but many of us need a reminder about how to retrieve these resources. Rewilding is a path toward that remembering.
Now more than ever, it’s vital for us to come together to reconnect and to remember what it means to be human and female, in order to nurture a thriving future.
What to Expect at the Rewilding Women’s Weekend Retreat
Over the course of four days, we’ll gather for morning, afternoon, and sometimes evening sessions with a group of women of all ages and from all walks of life.
We’ll create a container together during this time that allows for depth and integration. There will be invitations to lean into vulnerable spaces, providing fertile ground for new growth. There will be moments for learning new skills, for coming together as a group, for one-on-one connection with each other, and for quiet contemplation with ourselves and our greatest teacher: the living Earth.
This women’s weekend retreat will change you if you allow it to. You can expect to walk away with a seed planted, a spark ignited, a prayer answered.
Please note: this weekend of rewilding for women involves spiritual practices such as prayer and ritual, but it is not a religious class. Animism, or the belief that there is spirit/aliveness in all things, was the first “religion” of humanity everywhere, and is infused into this retreat. Let us rewild our own spirits by working with the powerful, wild energies of the Earth.
When women gather, beauty is made and profound change is possible.
Ready to Join?
All are welcome at our women’s retreat, regardless of your personal beliefs and practices.
Students are invited to participate as they feel moved, and nobody is ever pressured to do anything that doesn’t feel right for them.
Most class sessions will include a hands-on project or craft, along with an in-depth discussion of its personal and cultural significance. Part of the magic of rewilding is the weaving together of our physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual bodies. For this reason, we’ll be working on projects that embody and explore essential aspects of our womanhood.
We’ll explore skills and subjects in a relaxed atmosphere that honors both ambition and repose.
You’ll be treated to an abundant variety of activities:
- Traditional crafts
- Reconnecting with our wild women within
- Honoring the stages of women’s lives through seasons and cycles
- Wildcrafting and plant medicine
- Wild foods
- Earth-centered self-care
- Altar building and tending
Frequently Asked Questions about Our Women’s Rewilding Weekend Retreat
While the Women’s Rewilding Retreat involves spiritual practices such as ritual and prayer, it is not a religious gathering. Instead, we infuse animism, or the belief that there is spirit/aliveness in all things, into this retreat. We’ll rewild our own spirits by working with the wild, powerful energies of the earth.
Connection and community with other women is one of the greatest resources we have. Many of us grew up instilled with the belief that other women are our competitors in life, rather than our allies. In this retreat, we focus on cultivating an inclusive, allied, supportive, safe, and relaxed environment where genuine connections can grow. We also make sure the pace of our time together honors every woman—you will never be pressured to move more quickly than is comfortable for you in the realms of connection or vulnerability. Likewise, our classes and crafts will embrace this easy-going rhythm. The rewilding retreat is about liberating our minds and hearts to express themselves creatively, not about measurable accomplishments.
Women’s retreats and gatherings happen all over the country throughout the year, ranging from herbal- and skills-based gatherings to spiritual retreats. In fact, there are so many it’s hard to make a list! An internet search will help you find retreats local to you. You can also browse our offerings on our Classes for Women page—we have women join us from every corner of the country!
Instructors
Emileigh Zola
Nancy Basket
Kearsley Tate Schweller
Evanye Lawson
Mary Morgaine Squire
Greya Virago
Stephanie Hein
Yonah
Callan Burton-Shore
The Women’s Rewilding Retreat, NC is held at the Wild Abundance Sanford Way Campus
Wild Abundance’s original home campus is on Sanford Way in Barnardsville, NC. It boasts many gorgeous and functional features, like a leaf-shaped organic permaculture garden, a food forest, a hand built log cabin, an open-air classroom topped with solar panels, and a stunning wattle and daub outdoor kitchen.
Please note: our campuses are all unconventional, with rustic amenities and uneven ground. Read more about Planning your trip and about our campuses. It takes about 25 minutes to get here from Asheville.
You’ve got several options of where to stay during your class. Some students camp, some locals commute, and others choose to rent accommodations with more creature comforts.
Onsite camping (with your own warm bedding and rainproof tent or hammock) is available for free to all students (including locals) during class. Some set-up-for-you tents are available with cots and cozy bedding for a flat fee.
Campers and all students have access to a lovely outdoor kitchen equipped with a stove and hot and cold water, plus pots and pans, knives and cutting boards, bowls, plates, and utensils, along with an outdoor shower with hot and cold running water and outhouse. If you’d rather rent a hotel, house or cottage, there are many available. We’ll share a curated list of nearby options once you’ve registered.
So you can better plan your trip to come learn with us, here’s some info on accommodations we offer, or that we link to in the student handbook you’ll receive upon registration. Below it you’ll find info on transportation.
- Camping with your own gear: free
- Staying in a large tent with a cozy cot and bedding that we set up for you: $200 flat fee; you can stay there anytime from 5pm before the first day of your class, to 12pm the day after your class ends.
- Hyper-local off-campus single rentals: $40-$2000/night + fees
- Hyper-local off-campus couples rentals: $20-100/person/night + fees
- Hyper-local off-campus group rentals: $25-$86/person/night + fees
Wild Abundance students are given awesome discounts at a local hotel, and a hyper-local inn. More information given in the student handbook upon registration.
Getting a place or renting a car with a group of fellow students and carpooling are great ways to make connections and reduce costs! We share contact info for each class so you can get in touch and make plans together. Everyone has a chance to keep their info private if they choose.
Our campus is about 25 minutes north of Asheville, 40 minutes from the Asheville Regional Airport, and 2.5 hours from the Charlotte International Airport. You’ll get detailed directions of how to get here upon registration.
You won’t need a car during your class. There’s a chance you may want to run an errand or go out to dinner with fellow students, and if this happens, it’s highly likely that another student with a car will be happy to give you a lift.
We’ve also got a list of folks who will do airport and grocery shuttle runs for $50-$80 each way. We share this information in the student handbook when you register. If you’d rather rent a car, those run anywhere from $45-$200/day. Just like with lodging, teaming up with a group of fellow students to share a car rental can help build connections and reduce costs.
Pricing for the Women’s Rewilding Retreat in Asheville, NC
Regular Pricing: $850 – $1,700
*Please pay what you can within this range. The median price helps cover the class costs. Choose the low end if you’re low income, or the maximum fee if your household earns over $115,000/year. Place yourself within this range based on your income.