Support for women ripening into their second bite of life.

Pre P.S. Looking forward to seeing some of you this weekend! If you’ve been considering my Tuscany retreat, but want to experience what it is like to work with me first, this is your chance—

SOFTENING THE OVERWHELM

THROUGH YOGA NIDRA, EXPRESSIVE ARTS, & COACHING

A workshop for midlife women who are exhausted by holding it together — and ready to let their whole body exhale.

Sunday, May 31 · 12–2pm ET · Live on Zoom · $24

When you register, you'll receive your Zoom link and a short supply list. The materials are simple — things most of you already have at home.

Still need a ticket?

Register here

Dear Reader,

I am not in the business of writing prescriptions. But if I were, this would be the first thing I'd write on the pad and slide across the table to every woman I know who is drowning in her own efficiency and ambition.

Take five to ten minutes where nothing is required of you.

Not meditation. Not journaling. Not a podcast playing in the background so the silence doesn't get too loud. Nothing.

Just you, a chair or the floor or a patch of grass, and the strange discomfort of your own unhurried, unproductive company.

My mentor Lianne Raymond calls this Wild Idling.

She teaches that most of us have become experts at filling time with worry, chores, email, the ambient busyness that feels productive but mostly just keeps us from knowing our true nature.

We’ve forgotten to allow space for our internal reflections. And when we spend all day directing everything outward, the inner life goes unheard.

Marion Woodman called it ignoring the soul's cry.

I think about that phrase a lot. Not the soul's whisper, or the soul's suggestion. Its cry.

Which implies it has been waiting. Calling. Perhaps for longer than we realize.

I know it sounds almost annoyingly simple in a season of overwhelm. But the art of doing nothing is a life changing practice that I know works.

Not because stillness solves the overwhelm, but because it interrupts the story that you must keep going, keep producing, keep making yourself useful to survive it.

What will you find there, in those 5-10 minutes?

You'll find surrender. The sense of belonging to yourself in new and deeper ways. A gloriously slower pace. The authentic self, no longer unconsciously performing for the benefit of others.

And that's the real irony of doing nothing: it’s not nothing. It's everything that cannot happen while you are busy proving you deserve to BE.

The overwhelm does not require your constant attention. It will be there when you return.

The soul, patient and persistent, is also there — asking, in its own way, to be heard too. I hope you’ll tend to it, even briefly.

You are allowed to stop. Even now. Especially now.

This month I'm focusing these newsletters on the theme of overwhelm. I'd love for you to try Wild Idling, even once. Five minutes. See what's there for you.

And if something surfaces — a feeling, an image, a question — I'd genuinely love to hear it.

More on Sunday!

With so much love,

Brooke

P.S. My October retreat in Tuscany sold out a few months ago, but I’ve been hearing from some of you that you really wished you had said YES.

So… I'm delighted to say we are opening up space for TWO more souls. The extraordinarily beautiful Fattoria del Colle, where we'll be staying, has made a few more rooms available for us.

This retreat is a call to step out of the exhausting loop of "not yet, not enough" and into the sacred ease of your own becoming.

Read more about the Il Dolce Far Niente: From Overdoing to Overflowing retreat here.

One of these two spots has already been scooped up, so if you feel a yes, and want to talk it over, just reply to this email.

I'm Brooke Hofsess—Midlife Midwife for women living their messy, holy second bite of life. Through coaching, creativity, and ritual, I guide women back to the parts of themselves they were taught to tamp down—their wild, their creativity, their intuition. The women I work with are hungry for depth, meaning, and the relief of not doing life alone anymore.

You'll find me in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where I live with my husband Dustin, our daughter Thea, two clever border collies, and an ever-growing collection of handmade mugs for Egyptian Licorice Mint tea.