2023 WIlderness Retreat for
Mothers & Children
About the Retreat's Herstory
Gigi Wickwire, RN, MSW, LICSW While driving into a beautiful canyon in southern Colorado, Gigi had a vision to guide Mothers and Children in a soulful way in deep communion with the land.
In working with Mothers for over twenty years, she knows the deep well of wisdom residing within Mothers and the capacity for them to move mountains. She believes that Mothers and the Mother - Child bond - are key elements of hope for the current challenges of the times we live in - a piece in the puzzle to our collective awakening, remembering, healing and wholing that is needed to tend this amazing planet and all of our relations.
Gigi believes there is also a reclaiming that needs to happen with Women and Children being out together in the natural world, creating vibrant community and soulfully inhabiting our inherent wildness. In bringing her vision forward, Gigi has woven together her deep love and courtship of the wild-natural world with her lifetime of staffing camps, Council training at The Ojai Founation, birth doula and hospice work, mindfulness training/practice and an abundance of Animas Valley Institute (AVI) programs (http://www.animas.org), including certified as a nature-based guide of human development with AVI. She has a Masters in Clinical Social Work (MSW/LICSW) and has a private counseling and mentoring practice.
Gigi is committed to creating spaces and dialogues that are open and accessible to all folks in their journey to Soul. All are welcome here in this Circle.
Kassey Baker Kassey has worked with Gigi since 2012. Her love affair with the outdoors was sparked during a month-long science field trip in the Colorado Rockies when she was sixteen. The trip opened her eyes to the way her emergent adult self was mirrored in the wild world. Working in her early twenties on a small-scale organic farm, she became a student of the wild. She is a trained council practitioner in The Ojai Foundation lineage and has fasted with Wilderness Reflections.
These experiences informed Kassey's vision of running a preschool that combines the nature connection of farming, the nurture connection of mothering, and an ability to see nature as a reflection for the soul’s work. Kassey has stepped into guiding because of her passion for witnessing how mothers are nourished when their children give themselves over to playing in nature and when nature comes courting the soul of the mother.
Staff The seed of this special retreat has been nourished by a collective of beautiful, wild Souls who have circled up in support and in witness of the Mothers and Children. The Staff are in service to the retreat community. Each Staff member brings her/his own strengths and is invited to step in using her/his natural gifts of leading and serving. We are so fortunate have these fun folks co-creating magic each year for the children!
If you are interested in being on the Staff (i.e., you love children, wild places, being in service and camp!), please contact Gigi to talk at gigiwickwireatrelationalwildness.com
Gratitude. Thank you to Shonie, Chris, Jenna and the Ekone community, Sacred Earth Board and the unwavering embrace and wisdom of the golden land known as Ekone and all the sacred beings who call it home for receiving us each year. We have tremendous love for Ekone Ranch! Also, to all the beautiful Staff who have served past retreats! You are always in our ♥!
With special note from Gigi: i send out a big gratitude prayer and offering to my dear friend and colleague, Carrie Kenner who served alongside me as i birthed this retreat into being.