When heartache is the teacher, blooming takes courage.
This retreat is for Black women carrying quiet sorrow — the grief of a relationship that ended, the loss of someone you love, or the slow, unspoken exhaustion of always being the strong one. It’s for the part of you that is tired of “pushing through” and ready to be met with something gentler.
Over four days in the soft bloom of spring in Dickerson, MD, we’ll explore how to tend to your own heart with patience and reverence. You’ll be guided through practices that invite rest, emotional release, and the courage to feel again. Here, healing is not rushed. Grief is honored. And blooming is still possible, no matter how many times your heart has been broken.
What makes this retreat different?
The Compassion Collective creates culturally rooted, luxuriously restorative wellness spaces where women of color can set down their armor, rediscover joy, and return home to themselves. Blending clinical insight, communal care, and experiential luxury, we offer more than retreats—we offer sanctuary.
At The Courage to Bloom retreat, you’ll practice what it means to mother yourself: to offer the tender care, fierce protection, and unconditional presence you may not have received but deeply deserve. You’ll learn frameworks for holding grief without being consumed by it, for staying open even when heartbreak has taught you to close down.
And you’ll do it in community with women who understand that healing isn’t linear, that strength isn’t the absence of vulnerability, and that blooming after heartache is one of the most courageous things we can do.
What other women are saying about Compassion Collective Retreats
“What differentiates this retreat is the continued support even after the retreat- I love knowing I have this collective of women in my life.”
“A Compassion Collective retreat is like the exhale on a Jill Scott song- restorative, supportive, energizing.”
“My experience in one word? Peaceful. The villa and meditations allowed my busy body to be still and find pleasure in the quiet solitude.”
Meet Your Host and Guide
Esther Boykin, LMFT has spent over two decades supporting high-achieving Black women in therapy and coaching. She’s a grounded strategist, a fiercely loving friend, and the creator of Compassion Collective, designed to meet you beyond the page of a journal or a Zoom screen. Her lived experience as a therapist and founder ensures this retreat is both deeply safe and powerfully transformative.
Payment Plans are Available at Checkout
Have more questions?
Visit our FAQs or schedule a consultation call