Discover the Journey Back to Yourself |
Dear Empowered Reader,
I read about a woman named Stella Photi this week; I related to many parts of her story, and I think you will too. She spent years building a high-flying career before burnout caught up with her, not gradually, but the kind that stops you cold. Instead of pushing through it and calling that resilience, she built something out of it. She founded Wellbeing Escapes, a wellness travel company designed around exactly what she'd needed and hadn't had. She's watched the same pattern play out in her clients ever since. In a survey her company ran, more than half named burnout as the reason they booked a trip in the first place. She calls it a modern-day epidemic, the cost of normalizing chronic stress until the body finally forces the issue.
She's not alone in that. Wellness tourism is heading toward a $1.4 trillion industry by 2029. Over half the people in Hilton's 2026 Trends Report said "rest and recharge" is now their number one reason to travel. A third are traveling specifically for their mental health. And two-thirds of Gen Z and millennial travelers told KAYAK that relaxation and a mental reset beat sightseeing and bucket lists, hands down.
I think we're finally catching up to what our nervous systems have been telling us all along: rest isn't the reward you get after the work is done. Rest is the work. She's not alone in that. A personal story from my travels relates to this: it was a hike up to an old fire lookout on the North Cascades Loop this July. It was a tough, long hike, full of switchbacks, with an elevation gain of 4500 ft. Once I got to the top. I sat down. I didn't journal. I didn't plan anything. I just watched the ridgeline for several minutes, soaking in the view and catching my breath. That's the part many of us skip, isn't it? We're great at pushing through the climb. We're terrible at sitting at the summit and actually letting it land. William Bridges called this in-between space the "neutral zone"; you've let go of the old thing, but you haven't quite landed in the new one yet. Most of us try to sprint through it. But the neutral zone isn't dead time. It's where the real reorientation happens, if you let it. Wellness travel, at its best, is a deliberate trip into that neutral zone. You're not there to perform. You're there to notice. |
The fire tower. Lookout Mountain. Washington State. |
This part matters to me; the rest is the work, because I know some of you are wondering if this is all just a nice thing to say. It isn't just something I say; it is something supported by research. A 2022 review in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that even small doses of green space- one tree, a pocket park, your own garden bed- measurably lower stress. You don't need a mountain range for this. Ten unhurried minutes will do plenty. Research from Japan found that time spent in forests lowers heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol levels, and the benefits show up even when people are just looking at natural scenes, not hiking through them. And a 2026 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that green space affects brain regions involved in emotion regulation, easing both stress and depressive symptoms. So no, the people at that wellness resort weren't imagining the shift after a beach walk or a quiet afternoon outside. Their nervous systems were doing exactly what the research says they'd do. The detail that stuck with me longest, though. It wasn't about kale or step counts. It was Enzo Caiazzo, who first showed up trying to lose weight back in 2015 and has returned every year since, not for the program, but for the people. "It's a community," he said. "You are on the same path, searching for something." That's the piece a lot of change frameworks miss. We talk endlessly about individual resilience. We talk a lot less about how much easier transitions get and how much better they stick when you're not going through it alone.
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View from the fire tower. |
This shows up in my own work too.
I don't think anyone can do the practice below well alone, squeezed into the margins of an already-full week. It takes space. It takes distance from the noise that makes doubt so loud in the first place. That's exactly the space I'm building into the Wisdom of Winter Retreat, February 25–28, 2027, at True North Resort in Nisswa, Minnesota, with Rachel Gilbertson of Art of Presence and Taylor Tix and Cris Bickman Otte of Taylor & Co. It's a women's retreat built on the same thing Maren stumbled into: sometimes the most important move you can make is to stop and let yourself hear what you already know. Three nights lakeside. No packed agenda, no rigid resolutions. Sauna and hot tub time built in on purpose, not squeezed in around everything else. And at the center of it, I'll be guiding the Mountain 10 experience, a walk through four areas of human change: awareness, letting go, vision, and realization. It's really the seasonal practice below, stretched out over several days instead of four minutes. You'll have room to actually find your last real marker, to untangle doubt from direction with people who won't rush you past either one, and to say out loud, not just write down, the tower you're still climbing toward. It's the same framework I use with executive teams navigating organizational change. Just adapted for the quieter transitions we're all carrying too. There's wisdom in winter.
The season isn't asking you to produce. It's asking you to rest, so the next one has something to grow from. |
View from the fire tower while resting. |
Affirmation
"I am allowed to rest before I'm finished. Rest is not the interruption of my growth; it is the ground it grows from."
A Seasonal Practice
Name the last real marker. When did you last get clear confirmation you were headed the right way a result, a yes, a moment where things clicked? Write it down. It's closer than the doubt makes it feel. Separate the doubt from the direction. Ask yourself: is this "am I even on the right path" feeling about the path, or is it just discomfort about not being able to see yet? They get tangled together. They're not the same question.
Look for the grade, not the view. You might not get the clearing this week. But is the ground still rising? Is there still forward motion, even without proof? Rising terrain, even with no view, is still information.
Keep the destination named, even unseen. Write one sentence describing the tower you're climbing toward, the outcome you can't see yet but are still moving toward. Keep it somewhere you'll actually see it. It doesn't have to be certain to be worth naming.
Reflection Questions When was the last time you rested before you were depleted, instead of after?
Where are you right now in Bridges' "neutral zone", no longer who you were, not yet who you're becoming?
What would it look like to stop rushing through it?
Who's on your same path right now, "searching for something," that you could reach out to instead of doing this stretch alone?
Until next time, take care, dear reader,
Julie
Sources:
https://www.wellbeingescapes.com/about-us, Global Wellness Institute / PhocusWright & Web in Travel wellness tourism projections; Hilton 2026 Trends Report; KAYAK 2026 Travel Trends; Gu, Liu & Lu, "Can Even a Small Amount of Greenery Be Helpful in Reducing Stress? A Systematic Review," International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022; Anxiety and Depression
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Wild Geese by Mary Oliver |
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on..... Read the rest at https://www.poetry.com/poem/123017/wild-geese
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