Welcome to my new email newsletter. I’m glad you’re here, and I’m excited to begin my journey into this wide new world with a commentary about something very important to me: the upcoming ACT Retreat on Zanzibar.

Please settle in and enjoy, and as always, I’d love to hear any feedback you have. Simply reply to this email and let me know what you think.

-Dr. Darrah

Next January, Robyn Walser and I are co-leading an ACT retreat in Zanzibar. We are excited to explore connection, feeling in our bones this topic will resonate with others as it does for us. It is an apt focus for our retreat, as both this and the retreat we did in 2024 arose from Morten Hedegaard’s desire to raise funds for a program he encountered in Zanzibar called Rising Hope. This program offers free substance abuse treatment for women with addiction issues.

This is a big deal, for in Zanzibar, women who struggle with addiction are often cast out and left to fare on their own in the streets. Rising Hope offers connection in other words, providing these women with community, a safe place to stay, substance abuse treatment, even work training. Our 2024 retreat raised enough money to support the program for a year.

As you can imagine, I’ve been thinking about the coming retreat quite a bit. At one point I found myself wondering why we refer to this sort of activity as a “retreat.”  “Retreat” comes from the Latin verb retrahere, which means “to pull back” or “to draw back.”

That’s not my experience of retreats and it certainly doesn’t describe what we will be doing in Zanzibar.

In fact, we will be moving towards, intentionally reconnecting and exploring what it means to be human in challenging times. This includes moving towards ourselves, creating space for reflection and self-discovery. This can be exciting, surprising and even difficult work. One of the more challenging experiences in my life was attending a 6-day silent retreat at Spirit Rock in Northern CA. (Tip: do not go on a silent retreat with a dear friend you haven’t seen or spoken to in months. That’s like going on a diet and rolling around in potato chips.)

I suppose it can be argued that some folks attend a retreat to get away from it all, but for me, even in those cases “retreat” doesn’t capture the power of making such a move. You are choosing to halt your everyday life. You are essentially saying to yourself, I matter enough to give myself this experience. Whether your purpose is to learn, to relax, to cleanse or nourish your body – it matters enough to you to make it happen. That doesn’t sound like retreating.

And yes, we could say we pull back from our everyday life to make space for a retreat. Still, that only sets the stage.  It’s not about jumping off the hamster wheel, but what happens next. What shows up when we’re not so busy running? More importantly, what will we choose to do with that?

When our intention is to advance on a retreat, we discover just how deeply rewarding the experience can be. The distractions – laptop, phone, work and family responsibilities – have been put aside and there is now room for something else. When our attention is available, when we bring curiosity and openness to the experience, something important is sure to be waiting.

There is a reason so many retreats, like ours, are held in unusual, even exotic locations. Again, to perceive such retreats as a way to check out misses the point: We open ourselves up to learning when we open to new experiences. There is nothing faint about getting off our comfy couches, or out of our coffee shops, or away from our offices and heading across the world to experience something entirely new. We encounter ourselves in interesting ways when we intentionally step out of our comfort zones.

Heading to Zanzibar with Morten and Robyn in 2024 was definitely a step in for me. I had just lost my beloved older brother Dave, due to a double pulmonary embolism that struck him down from out of nowhere. I didn’t feel like moving, much less going halfway across the world. But I felt committed, and my dear friends would be supporting me, so I got on the plane. What a gift that choice turned out to be. There is nothing like the restorative connection that can occur between human beings who have come together to learn, to experience, to grow together. When every bone in my body wanted to retreat, it was opening up and making myself available to others that helped me begin to heal.

I would love to share this profound experience with you. Our 2026 Zanzibar retreat is geared for mental health providers with some familiarity with ACT (though we have played around with offering one for the general public in the future – stay tuned). If this adventure speaks to you, I hope you will advance with us. Let’s connect in Zanzibar!

👉 Learn more about the ACT Retreat on Zanzibar

👉 Learn more about Rising Hope