Living the Questions, Embracing the Unknown is an invitation into the sacred in-between — the space where clarity fades and deeper wisdom begins to stir.
In a world that prizes answers and direction, this retreat offers something different: space to be with your questions, to welcome mystery, and to trust what is emerging beneath the surface. Through reflective practice, creative expression, soul dialogue, and embodied ritual, we’ll explore what it means to live from the unknown, listening deeply to the quiet invitations that arise when we release the need for certainty and allow the soul to speak.
Whether you are navigating a life transition, tending to grief, or simply longing for a deeper connection with your inner wisdom, this retreat offers a safe and sacred container to listen, reflect, and gently reorient toward what’s next — even if it has no name yet.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Do not now seek the answers... Live the questions now.”
Together, we will explore:
How to recognize and honor the thresholds in our lives
The spiritual gifts hidden in darkness, doubt, and unknowing
Practices for surrender, trust, and inner listening
Creative rituals to help us integrate the invisible and the intuitive
The courage to step forward without needing the whole path revealed
Held in a sacred, supportive container, this retreat welcomes all who are navigating change—grief, aging, initiation, vocation shifts, spiritual questioning, or the simple mystery of being human.
Come as you are. The unknown is not something to fear—but a doorway into a deeper becoming.
“To step into the unknown is to agree to be remade.”
YOUR GUIDES
You will be accompanied by three experienced facilitators and held in a nurturing community of fellow seekers on this journey -
Mariabruna Sirabella is a lifelong explorer of mystical traditions and nature-based consciousness. Her work weaves ancestral practices, archetypal psychology, and creative ritual to heal, empower, and transform. She honors Nature as a living, sentient source of wisdom and beauty —an ancient, benevolent force that nurtures the seen and unseen, filled with Mystery. Through workshops, retreats, and international programs, she invites others to rekindle their “original mind”, engage in dialogue with the Intelligences of life and walk in kinship with the sacred web of creation. She is the SoulCollage® Lead Trainer; the founder of The School of the Origins; and a poetic, stirring voice in the growing movement of consciousness activism. Find out more about Mariabruna here on her website.
Kiala Givehand, Life Alchemist, published poet, bookbinder, teacher, fountain pen collector, and lover of travel, among other things. Find out more about Kiala here on her website.
Catherine Anderson, weaves her love of imagery, collage, photography and the labyrinth into the retreats and workshops she offers around the world, and seeks to live each day as a sacred expression of the creative life. Find out more about Catherine here.
LeeAnn Foltz, will be hosting the evening Open Studio space. LeeAnn trained as a SoulCollage® Facilitator in March 2020 with Catherine Anderson and also serves the SoulCollage® community as a Community Outreach Coordinator. A life-long creative spirit, she came to the practice of SoulCollage® through her certification as a Spiritual Companion at the Haden Institute in Asheville, NC. She also holds a master’s degree in art history and a Law Degree from the University of South Carolina. An avid learner and mystic, her encounter with the works of Wassily Kandinsky in high school sparked an unending passion for the wordless way that color, form, and energy speak to us and through us with images, symbols and archetypes. When not working in her corporate role as a Director of Compliance for a vision company, LeeAnn loves to travel far and wide to new places, to take long walks with her labs and husband on the beach, and to play with her watercolors, sketch pad and markers on her porch. Find out more about LeeAnn here on her website.
RETREAT FORMAT
Each participant will have the opportunity to spend a full day in an intimate group of 12 with each of our three workshop facilitators. The rest of our time will be for integrating the experiences and being in community — gathering for ritual, reflection, walking the labyrinth, with optional evening sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the Open Studio space hosted by LeeAnn Foltz where you can make SoulCollage® cards, create in your journals, or continue with your stitching..
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
YOUR WORKSHOP WITH MARIABRUNA:
MYSTERY AS MIRROR OF THE SELF
Mystery — call it the Divine, the Great Unknown, or the ineffable force underlying reality — transcends all boundaries. Accessible only through direct experience, it unites us beyond interpretations, doctrines, or beliefs. It invites us to acknowledge the limits of the mind and dwell in simplicity, humbleness and wonder.
Across time and cultures, mystics have spoken of encounters with something beyond words — an ultimate reality that cannot be fully grasped by the intellect, only touched by the soul’s own revelations. And how marvelous those luminous moments are when they come!
We can choose to approach the threshold of Mystery at any moment, and in this daylong gathering, we will do so together — with the help of soul-tools designed to open inner doorways.
Through simple movements, sacred sounds, ceremony, visioning, and DrumJourneys we will seek Mystery’s presence in the crevices of creation, where its resounding silence reverberates endlessly. As we meet it, honor it, and love it, we may glimpse our own Self mirrored in its magic.
We will journal, create, reflect, and share — finding in Mystery a source of grounding, strength, grace, and inner peace.
Please bring:
A few colored pens or pencils
A journal
A small mirror
An optional item or image that conveys to you the feeling of Mystery
An eye cover (optional mask or scarf, anything that may dim the light)
Comfortable clothing
YOUR WORKSHOP WITH KIALA:
THREADING THE UNKNOWN: RITUALS OF STITCH, SYMBOL AND SOUL
What if the unknown could be held and gently gathered in your hands?
In times of transition and uncertainty, it can be difficult to find language for what we are truly feeling. Sometimes, the soul speaks not in words, but in textures, threads, and symbols. This workshop invites you to enter a slow, sacred space where you can engage with the unknown using your hands and heart as your guides.
Together, we will slow down and enter a conversation with memory, longing, wisdom, and intuition. Using simple printmaking techniques on fabric; intuitive mark-making; personal sigil creation; symbolic layering; slow, meditative stitching; and poetic reflection, you’ll create a visual investigation using a series of expressive cloth pages/panels crafted from fabric scraps, threads, and the remnants of your creative journey.
No sewing or art experience is required, only a willingness to sit with what’s stirring within. As we pull thread through cloth, we’ll explore what it means to surrender to process, honor the fragmentary, and give gentle form to the formless. Your (un)finished artifact will serve as a prayer, a portal, or simply as a tender reminder that not all things need answers, some just need a home.
This is a ritual of remembrance and becoming, a quiet honoring of what is unfinished, uncertain, and beautifully in-between.
All creative supplies will be provided. Participants will be encouraged to bring "remnants" of their creative journey to use in the session. Here is a list of suggestions:
Old clothing or textile scraps (natural fibers are encouraged)
Handwritten letters, journal pages, or poetry
Lace, ribbon, or trim
Photocopies of family photos or ancestral symbols
A scrap of fabric from a sacred place
Used tea bags or coffee-stained paper
Pressed leaves, flowers, or petals
Small charms or amulets
Words, phrases, or mantras with personal meaning
Old handkerchiefs or napkins
A scrap of a map or travel ticket
Thin yarn, thread, or embroidery floss in favorite colors
A personal symbol or sigil (already drawn or sketched)
A poem, quote, or spiritual text that speaks to the unknown
An item from nature
YOUR WORKSHOP WITH CATHERINE:
THRESHOLDS: WHERE CERTAINTY ENDS AND SOUL BEGINS
Thresholds are sacred spaces — liminal zones where the familiar fades, and something new begins to stir. They invite surrender, ask for trust, and hold the quiet power to transform.
In this workshop, we’ll explore what it means to release the illusion of control and soften into the mystery of not knowing. What might happen when we make space for stillness and begin to listen — not with the mind, but with the soul — to what is waiting just beyond the threshold?
Using a rich collection of evocative doorway images, you’ll be guided to choose the ones that calls to you. Through imagination, reflection, and creative process, we’ll step into the symbolic doorway that is opening within you — an invitation to possibility, emergence, and inner guidance - and look at the doorways waiting ahead of you.
This is a space for deep listening, soul inquiry through imaginative exploration and intuitive expression, and allowing what longs to unfold.
All necessary supplies will be provided, but you're welcome to bring any favorite materials or images you enjoy creating with to the workshop.
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out, and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth it would look like pure destruction.”
VENUE
This retreat will be held at the St. Francis Springs Prayer Center, 477 Grogan Road, Stoneville, NC, which is about 30 miles north of Greensboro, NC. The closest airport is Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO) which is about half an hour from the retreat center. The Center is situate on 140 acres of peaceful wooded land and has a large labyrinth based on the Chartres pattern, and a smaller labyrinth near the wooded trails.
You can arrive any time after 3pm on July 27th to check in to your room. We will officially start after dinner which is served at 6pm. We will end on Thursday at 12 noon followed by lunch at 12.30pm which is included in the cost.
COST
The cost of this five day, four night retreat includes accommodation and all meals. Choose from the following accommodation options:
Single room with private bathroom at $1,395.00 per person (14 single rooms available: 11 in the Main Lodge; 2 in the St Clare Cottage; and 1 in the St Francis Cottage)
Shared room with bathroom at $1,125.00 per person (11 shared rooms available: 6 in the Main Lodge; 2 in the St Clare Cottage, and 3 in the St Francis Cottage).Please let Catherine know the name of your roommate, otherwise we will allocate you a roommate.
Please note:
We have space for a maximum of 36 participants
Please let us know if you have mobility issues and need to be in the main lodge
Rooms will be allocated in the order in which registrations are received.
Payment is as follows:
A non-refundable admin fee of $155 is required to register for the retreat.
The balance of $1,240 for a single room and $970 for a shared room is due on or before May 15th, 2026.
CANCELLATION POLICY
Should it be necessary for you to cancel your participation in this retreat you will be refunded the retreat costs less the non-refundable deposit and any accommodation fees already due and paid to the retreat center (the retreat center requires confirmation and payment two months ahead of the start of the retreat), provided your cancellation is made more than four weeks prior to the start of the retreat. You are also welcome to find someone to take your place in the retreat. If you do not wish to self-insure, it is highly recommended that you take out a travel insurance policy to cover your cancellation due to unexpected events such as flight cancellations and illness.
Should the presenters need to cancel this retreat for any reason, you will be refunded amounts paid to Catherine for this retreat. Catherine will send registrants a full refund of all monies paid within seven days of notification of cancellation, and the presenters accept no additional liability for travel costs or any other additional costs incurred.