JOie de vivre

the art of living life to your fullest

‘Mas Edem’ farmhouse and vineyard, Luberon, Provence, France

May 16-22, 2027

14 women. Six days. A private farmhouse in the French Countryside.

This retreat sold out in 2026. Registration opens July 31st, 2026

I opened my closet the other day and pulled out a favourite pair of jeans. They were beautiful once. Still are, in their way. But they are the style of another time — another version of me. Twenty years ago, they were exactly right. Now they belong to a woman I no longer quite am.

And I thought: so do my dreams. So do my assumptions about what I’m worth, what I’m allowed to want, what counts as a life well lived.

I know where to go to update my wardrobe. But where do I go to update how I feel about my life?

The answer, I’ve discovered, is Provence. Specifically: six days at a private vineyard in the Luberon, in a circle of fourteen women who are standing at exactly the same threshold you are. And the moment you step onto the crunchy gravel at Mas Edem — the smell of lavender and rosemary in the air, the light that inspired French painters falling across the stone in a way you understand even if you know nothing about painting — you notice a blush and a smile creeping up your face that you simply cannot control.

This is six days in Provence to let it.

We don’t usually run the same retreat in consecutive years. Joie de Vivre 2026 changed that.

What happened in that circle — the discoveries, the laughter, the closing night when no one wanted the week to end — made it impossible to wait. The women who were there asked us not to. And the women on the waiting list, who didn’t get a place, have been asking since September when it was coming back.

It’s coming back May 16–22, 2027.

Registration opens July 31st. Add yourself to the Priority Interest list now, and you’ll have 48 hours to decide before anyone else.

I need to confirm our group with Mas Edem by October 31st. After that date, I cannot hold your place or guarantee the property — so if you’re ready, that is the date that matters.

PROVENCE IS OUR CLASSROOM

The French don’t talk about joie de vivre. They live it. And for six days, so will you. The two-hour lunch is not an indulgence — it is a boundary and a practice. The morning baguette is a lesson in protecting what is imperative and savouring with all your senses. Bonjour — said to every person you pass, is the discipline of acknowledging the human in front of you. Se balader — to take oneself for a walk — is the grammar of self-companionship. The French way of showing love rather than declaring it — through the perfectly chosen dish, the unhurried welcome, the glass refilled before you thought to ask — is a way of living we will practice all week.

Everything here is curriculum. We will read it together. I fell in love with Provence thirty years ago, enchanted immediately by a different pace of living — where people greeted strangers on the street, where a long meandering walk over cobblestones could stop you cold, where a market farmer’s warm welcome gave me a sudden, unexpected sense of belonging. Amidst the explosion of colour — vibrant lavender, the dark green of the olive grove that surrounds us in the morning sun, blue shutters against cream stone, the delicate pink of a glass of rosé — I learned that the French are incomparable romantics because they flirt with life itself. No rushing, no hurrying, but the commitment to experience, to see, to taste, to enjoy.

This is where I come to remember that life is for enjoyment. That it is to be shared. That it is meant to be sumptuous.

THIS RETREAT IS FOR YOU IF...

You are at a threshold. Post-career, post-caregiving, post-divorce, post-“who I was for the past twenty years” — or simply standing at the edge of a chapter you haven’t named yet, knowing the old story no longer fits.

You are not lost. You are in transition. And you are ready — not for another productivity framework or a spa week that fades by Tuesday — but for a designed week that helps you stop rehearsing the old story and start authoring the next one.

If you were at The Cherished Self this autumn — or you wish you had been — this is what comes next.

Come if you’re ready to ask: who do I dare to be now?

Every woman in this circle has been personally invited. Your place isn’t first-come-first-served — it’s chosen.

WHY I CREATED THIS RETREAT

I’m no longer willing to leave the pursuit of my fullest life to chance, to society’s whim, or other people’s rules.

From this vantage point of midlife, I know it is time to grab hold of the reins and dream for myself what the next decades will look like and feel like. What my definitions of meaning, purpose, and joy actually are.

I want to squeeze every last drop out of this exquisite life. I am craving a full-bodied experience. All my senses alive. As vibrant as the warm Provençal sun, the olive-soaked breezes on my skin, the juice of wine-worthy grapes, the peals of carefree laughter, the smell of lavender — playing as the soundtrack to the most important question I know how to ask: How do I want to live?

I have been exploring Provence for thirty years. It continues to be my favourite place to remember that life is not a race to be won but a banquet to be savoured. I come here when I need to remember what I’m in it for.

I built this retreat so you can remember too. And after what happened in 2026, I couldn’t not bring it back.

— Tania

THE CIRCLE

There is something that happens when a group of women — each standing at her own threshold — agrees to meet one another without their armour on. No titles. No roles. No carefully rehearsed introductions that tell the world who you have been. Here, we meet each other in the present tense: curious, open, and unhurried. What emerges from that agreement is something rarer than insight. It is wisdom — the kind that only a life fully lived can produce.

Every woman in this room carries something that someone else in the room needs to hear. Not as advice. As witness. As the quiet recognition that your particular struggle, your particular discovery, your particular way of finding your way through, is exactly the map another woman has been searching for.

That is how wisdom works. It doesn’t announce itself. It arrives through the honest telling of a life.

This is not a support group. It is a wisdom circle. We hold one another without rescuing. We ask questions rather than offer answers. We make space for every voice — because a circle is only whole when every woman in it has been heard.

Fourteen women. Each a chapter in progress. All of us, together, proof that the most useful thing one woman can offer another is the honest truth of her own experience.

WHAT WE WILL EXPLORE TOGETHER

This is not a workshop series or a curriculum to complete. It is a six-day arc of inquiry — each day building on the last, each question deeper than the one before.

What is joy, actually, for me? Not as an aspiration. As a practice. Not the joy of a good weekend but the bone-deep, sustaining kind — the kind that changes how you walk into a room. We’ll name it, understand why it fades, and make it structural rather than occasional.

What have I been waiting for permission to want? The expectations, the roles, the “shoulds” — the ones so old you’ve stopped noticing they’re not yours. We’ll lay them out on the table like the contents of an overstuffed bag and decide, deliberately, what actually comes home with us.

What does my body know that my mind keeps overriding? You will not think your way into your next chapter. You’ll discover it in the village that stops you mid-stride, the meal that finally slows you down, the evening when you sit outside and feel, for the first time in a long time, like yourself.

What does my next chapter actually look like? Not the default version. Not the sensible version. Yours — the one you haven’t let yourself say out loud yet. We make space for that here.

What am I taking back? Not a journal full of good intentions. A practiced, embodied, lived commitment to joie de vivre — yours, specific, written down, and real enough to survive contact with Monday morning.

THE WEEK

Before You Arrive

Three months before the retreat, beautifully designed workbooks arrive — readings, videos, journaling, and exercises to begin the work before you land. A group coaching call lets you meet the other women: not as names on a list, but as the women you’ll be living alongside for six days. By the time you step onto that gravel at Mas Edem, you’re not walking toward strangers.

The Six Days — May 16–22

You arrive at a private working vineyard and farmhouse in the Luberon — one of the most beautiful valleys in France — and for six days this is home. You live here, eat here, work here, and wander here with fourteen women and a dedicated team of six who have thought of everything so that you don’t have to think of anything.

Every day has the same unhurried rhythm, which becomes its own teaching. A slow morning. A protected two-hour lunch — a discipline and a pleasure in equal measure. An afternoon that ventures out into Provence, or turns inward, or simply rests. An evening gathering. A closing ritual that, by the end of the week, has become the part no one wants to release.

The excursions are not tourism. They are curriculum. Provence has been practicing joie de vivre for centuries — we are here to read what it knows.

By Wednesday evening, something has shifted that is difficult to name. I can see it in the faces around the table — a different softness. She is leaning in to listen now, because she has learned that the next thing she needs to hear may come from anyone, at any moment. She has quietly accepted that here, she has nothing to prove. Nothing to strive for. Nothing to project.

To be in wonder. To play. To simply be as comfortable as she has always wanted to be, but rarely allowed herself. That is not a scheduled moment. That is what six days in the right container, with the right women, actually does.

After You Return

Finding the desire to change is rarely the hard part. The hard part is finding the stamina to live it once you’re back — the inbox, the calendar, the people who need you, the patterns that were waiting. A group coaching call after we part is built for exactly that: not another dose of inspiration, but real support for integrating what shifted in Provence into the life you’re actually going home to.

IN THEIR WORDS

In the final circle, when asked what they were carrying home, these women didn’t need to think. They said, unprompted:

“I can be me, just as I am.”

“I choose for myself.”

“Only I can say what brings me joy.”

“Be okay with not being okay.”

— Women from the Joie de Vivre 2026 circle

Weeks after returning home, one participant keeps her retreat lotion on her desk. She uses it a drop at a time to make it last. The daily ritual, still alive months later.

your investment in YOU

A week at a Luberon boutique hotel — without the transformation, the private chef, the curated excursions, or the circle of women who will change how you see yourself — will cost you more than this. I know what this investment asks of you. I also know what it gives back.

The women who have been in this circle will tell you the same thing: it is worth every dollar — and then some.

Accommodation — booked by you, separately upon registration: Once you've registered for the retreat, the next step is to choose and book your accommodation at Mas Edem. You'll reserve your room (either single or shared) for the full six nights and be billed separately.

Shared Room: USD $1,200 · Private Room: USD $1,950

Your retreat includes:

• All gourmet meals and snacks prepared fresh daily by a private chef

• Pre-retreat workbooks (×3) and group coaching call

• 25+ hours of experiential workshops

• All curated Provençal excursions

• Post-retreat integration coaching call

• A private online community

• On-site gifts and surprises

• A self-addressed gratitude letter mailed to you weeks after you return

Because this gathering is held for you specifically, your place is reserved in your name the moment your deposit is received. If life shifts and you can no longer come, I’ll always do everything in my power to help you find a way forward — transferring your place to a future gathering whenever possible.

I need to confirm our group with Mas Edem by October 31st 2026. After that date, I cannot hold your place or guarantee the property, so if you’re ready, that is the date that matters.

WHERE WE STAY

Mas Edem — a private farmhouse and vineyard, Luberon, Provence, located between Gordes and Ménerbes in the heart of

The Luberon, Mas Edem is a working vineyard enclosed by an olive grove, with exceptional views over surrounding villages and the distant peak of Mont Ventoux.

The estate is made up of several stone buildings with original Louis XIII–XV period fireplaces, French ceilings, and fountains in the courtyard. When we’re not off exploring, we’re gathered around the large heated pool, playing boules on the pitch, or dining and lounging inside and out.

Get up early one morning — just once — before anyone else stirs. Step outside with your coffee. The olive grove is still in the early light. The air is cool and already smells of rosemary. Somewhere, a bird. The vineyard rows stretch out in perfect quiet lines, and you stand there, cup in both hands, thinking: I am actually here.

That moment is not an accident. It is what we designed this place around.

Minutes from the nearest village. A quick drive to Provence’s finest market. Hidden enough that the world cannot follow you here.

A note on accessibility: ground-level rooms are available. If you have mobility considerations, please let us know when you register and we will ensure you are accommodated comfortably

GETTING HERE

Mas Edem is in the Luberon countryside, east of Avignon, north of Aix-en-Provence.

By air: International flights land in Paris (CDG or Orly) and Marseille (MRS). Marseille is 60 minutes by car; Avignon is 45 minutes.

By train: The TGV from Paris to Avignon takes 3.5 hours.

My team will provide details on the regional bus to the stop nearest the house — we’ll pick you up there.

Many participants enjoy bookending the retreat with a few days in Paris or Aix-en-Provence — highly recommended.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

ONE LAST THING

Before you close this page — ask yourself honestly: is this the year?

Not someday. Not when things settle down. Not after the next obligation clears. This year.

May 2027. The olive grove in the morning light. The two-hour lunch. The closing night when no one wants the week to end. The woman you’ll be on the flight home — softer, clearer, more yourself than you’ve been in years.

That woman is already in you. She’s been waiting for the right six days.

Registration opens July 31st 2026. Add yourself to the Priority Interest list now, and you’ll have 48 hours before anyone else.

I need confirmed numbers with Mas Edem by October 31st, 2026.

PARTICIPANTS have a lot of great things to SAY ABOUT previous RETREATS