🤎✨ Spiritual Girls Retreat: DMV Edition ✨🤎

D.C. · Maryland · Virgina, Metropolitian Area | July 15–18, 2027
Thursday through Sunday
4-Day In-Person Spiritual Retreat
Limited to 20 Participants

What the Women Knew

There are things women have always known.

How to pray. How to cleanse. How to make something out of nothing. How to tend Spirit, tend a home, tend one another, and tend themselves. How to gather, create, protect, adorn, feed, teach, and pass knowledge from one set of hands to another.

What the Women Knew is a four-day spiritual retreat centered around the knowledge women carry, the practices that have sustained us, and the wisdom that continues to live within our communities today.

For four days, we will gather in the DMV for spiritual work, traditional handcrafts, cleansing, communal learning, fellowship, rest, and joy.

Some experiences will be planned in advance. Others will be shaped by the spiritual needs of the women who gather with us.

Because the women in the room know things too.

The Retreat Itinerary 📋

🪭 Day One: What We Remember

Thursday, July 15

Gathering • Prayer • Rhythm • Spirit

We begin by gathering ourselves, our spirits, and our intentions into one space.

Our first day centers the ways women have gathered together to create, pray, teach, sing, move, and call Spirit.

Hand Fan Making Workshop 🤲🏾

We begin with our hands.

Each woman will create and adorn her own hand fan while we explore the place of the hand fan within Black gathering spaces, church, praise, movement, and women's lives.

The fan won't simply be something beautiful to take home. What we create during the day will become part of our spiritual work later that evening.

Community Spiritual Circle 🌀

Not every lesson can be planned before the women arrive.

Before the retreat, we will ask our participants what they need help with spiritually. Their answers will help shape an intimate teaching and practice circle led by Janay and Dora.

Maybe the women need help with divination. Maybe they need to talk about prayer, ancestors, spiritual hygiene, discernment, or something entirely different.

The women gathered will help tell us what this circle needs to become.

Communal Altar Building & Opening 🛐

Together, we will establish the spiritual center of our retreat.

Our communal altar will be built, tended, worked, and respected throughout our four days together.

Ring Shout 💃🏾

Our evening culminates in the Ring Shout.

Before we begin, we will learn about its history and spiritual significance. Then through rhythm, movement, song, prayer, and community, we gather around the altar and call Spirit into the space.

Welcome Dinner 🥘

After opening our spiritual container, we gather around the table for our Welcome Dinner, the one meal provided as part of the retreat experience.

We eat. We fellowship. We settle into the space and into one another.

We remember what happens when women gather.

🕊 Day Two: What Cleanses Us

Friday, July 16

Cleansing • Release • Restoration

Women have always known that sometimes you need to get something off of you.

Day Two is dedicated to spiritual cleansing.

There is no pressure to rush from workshop to workshop. Cleansing is the work of the day, and we intentionally create enough space for the work itself, as well as the care that needs to happen afterward.

Experiences Include:

• Individual and communal spiritual cleansing
• Spiritual hygiene and maintenance
• Prayer and altar work
• Grounding and intentional aftercare
• Journaling and reflection
• Rest and quiet integration
• Fellowship between spiritual work

This is a day to slow down, tend to yourself, and allow your body and spirit time to process what is being released.

We remember how to clean ourselves up spiritually and how to tend ourselves afterward.

🧵 Day Three: What Our Hands Know

Saturday, July 17

Creation • Adornment • Women's Work • Joy

There is knowledge stored in the hands.

Women have sewn, mended, cooked, planted, cleaned, healed, prayed, created, adorned, protected, and provided with their hands for generations.

Day Three is dedicated to the things women know how to make and the knowledge that lives inside the making.

Headwrap Making & Adornment 👳🏾‍♀️

We begin with the head.

Each woman will create and adorn her own headwrap using fabric, stitching, beads, shells, trims, meaningful pieces of cloth, and other embellishments.

As we work, we will explore head covering, adornment, intention, identity, and the significance of intentionally preparing something that will be worn upon the body.

Your finished piece is yours to wear, work with, and carry home.

Spiritual Apron Making 🧹

Then we move into women's work.

Each woman will create and personalize her own working apron while we explore women's labor, household spirituality, creativity, service, protection, and the knowledge carried through women's hands.

Pockets, patches, stitching, fabric, symbols, and adornments will transform an ordinary working garment into something personal to the woman who made it.

And when the work is finished, we put the work down.

An Evening in the DMV 🌃

Saturday evening is for enjoying ourselves.

After our workshops, everyone will have time to rest, shower, get dressed, style their handmade headwrap, and prepare for an evening out.

We will leave the retreat house together for dinner, conversation, laughter, and fellowship in the DMV.

Because women also knew how to adorn themselves, gather together, celebrate, laugh, and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

We honor what our hands know and give those hands permission to rest.

🖤 Day Four: What We Pass Down

Sunday, July 18

Community • Knowledge • Continuation

Not everything worth knowing comes from a book.

Some things survive because one woman teaches another.

Our final day centers the knowledge already present within our own retreat community.

Helping Hands Community Workshops 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏿

Our Helping Hands will each bring something they know into the circle.

It may be a skill, spiritual practice, craft, tradition, creative practice, piece of family knowledge, or something practical they've learned through their own lives.

These intimate workshops will be announced closer to the retreat.

The purpose is simple:

One woman knows something another woman doesn't, so she teaches her.

Knowledge moves.

Closing Our Spiritual Container 👋🏾

After our community workshops, we gather together one final time.

We reflect on what we experienced, what we learned, what we created, and what we want to continue after leaving the retreat.

Our final experiences include:

• Community reflection and integration
• Final prayers and offerings
• Final time at our communal altar
• Closing spiritual work
• Respectful breakdown of the communal altar
• Closing of our spiritual container
• Final circle

What was shared with us does not have to end with us.

What's Included 📝

Your retreat registration includes:

• Four days of retreat programming
• All scheduled workshops and spiritual experiences
• Hand Fan Making Workshop
• Community Spiritual Circle
• Ring Shout experience
• Communal altar work
• Day Two cleansing experiences
• Headwrap Making & Adornment Workshop
• Spiritual Apron Making Workshop
• Helping Hands community workshops
• Workshop materials and spiritual supplies provided for scheduled activities
• Day One Welcome Dinner
• Saturday group outing in the DMV
• Closing spiritual work and final circle

🍽️ Meals

One meal is included with your registration: our Day One Welcome Dinner.

Participants are responsible for their own meals, snacks, and beverages for the remainder of the retreat.

On Day Three, we will enjoy a group dinner out in the DMV. The outing is part of our retreat itinerary, however, each participant is responsible for purchasing their own meal.

Participants will receive additional information about food and meal planning closer to the retreat.

🏠 Lodging & Transportation

Lodging is NOT included in your retreat registration.

Participants are responsible for securing and paying for their own accommodations in the DMV.

Transportation is also NOT included.

Participants are responsible for transportation to the DMV, transportation to and from the retreat location each day, airport or train transportation, parking, rideshares, rental cars, and any other transportation expenses associated with attending.

The exact retreat location and additional travel information will be shared with registered participants as we move closer to the retreat.

Investment

Participant Registration: $888

Pay in Full: $888

or

Payment Plan

$222 deposit
6 monthly payments of $111

Total Investment: $888

Your deposit secures your space in the retreat.

Participation is limited to 20 women so that we can maintain the intimate, hands-on nature of the Spiritual Girls Retreat while allowing our community to grow.

Before You Arrive

Registered participants will receive additional preparation information leading up to the retreat, including:

• Exact retreat location
• Daily arrival and departure information
• Spiritual preparation guidance
• What to bring
• Attire information
• Travel recommendations
• Any personal supplies needed
• Community expectations
• Updates to the itinerary

We encourage participants to register early so there is plenty of time to financially, spiritually, and logistically prepare for our four days together.

What the Women Knew

This isn't only about looking backward.

It is about recognizing the knowledge that survived.

The knowledge carried through our homes.
The knowledge carried through our hands.
The knowledge carried through our spiritual practices.
The knowledge passed between women.

And the knowledge sitting in the room with us right now.

For four days, we gather to remember it, practice it, share it, and make sure something valuable continues with us.

What did the women know?

Come sit with us and find out.