(Re)treat Yourself: Do it for the plot | You deserve the break you keep postponing

Charming historic homes, with their vibrant architecture and rustic beauty, line the river in a picturesque retreat in the French countryside.

I saw myself in the bathroom mirror last Tuesday morning. Dark circles. Rigid shoulders. A woman who had forgotten how to breathe. The calendar on my phone: a battlefield of commitments. The screen itself: a cemetery of unread messages. Anxiety had become my constant companion, humming beneath every interaction, every decision.

"This is not the plot I signed up for," I whispered.

We have constructed lives of magnificent inefficiency. We perform busyness like it's a theater piece. Let's be candid. We're all playing this bizarre game of productivity Tetris, aren't we? Trying to fit in one more work project, one more social obligation, one more anything-but-rest activity. We answer questions about our wellbeing with tallies of accomplishments. We measure worth by exhaustion. The most coveted luxury is not diamonds or leather but time - the raw, unscheduled kind.

The truth is, the most "together" people need a retreat the most. Those who appear flawlessly competent, endlessly resilient.

I was thinking about this at a café in Paris last month with my friend. Her perfectly composed exterior betrayed nothing of her exhaustion until she mentioned, almost casually, that she hadn't taken a proper break in three years. Three. Years. When I asked why, she looked at me with practiced certainty.

"I'm building something important," she said, stirring her coffee with precision.

Aren't we all, I thought. But what exactly, and at what cost?

So I did something radical. I decided to disappear.

A stone guesthouse in a small French countryside town, where a river cuts through ancient limestone. No internet. No agenda. Just me, some books I'd been saving, and nothing but the strict reality of hours passing, unmarked by notifications.

Curious, when did you last select yourself as the protagonist? Not the supporting character in someone else's narrative. Not the reliable figure who dissolves her needs into other people's emergencies. Just you, claiming the center of the frame without apology.

The first day I sat on the stone terrace overlooking the river for three hours. The water moved over rocks with indifference to deadlines. My thoughts, usually racing with such violence - the perpetual anxiety of not doing enough, not being enough - slowed to match its pace. Stillness felt foreign, almost frightening. My body recognized it before my mind did.

I watched light change positions. I allowed hunger to announce itself naturally, not by clock or convenience. I touched the rough wood of the river railing and felt its splinters without reaching for my phone to document the moment or distract from it.

The second morning I woke without an alarm. My body remembered rhythms that existed before schedules colonized them. I made coffee and tasted it entirely. I read a book whose pages I turned with my whole hand, not a quick finger swipe.

These acts seem almost embarrassingly simple. They are the mundane mechanics of being human. Yet in a world that has commodified every moment, choosing to simply be becomes a quiet rebellion. I'm here to tell you that your plot twist doesn't have to be dramatic.

Sometimes the most revolutionary act is simply stopping.

My French retreat wasn't beautiful in the way we've been taught to recognize beauty. One night I cried with such force that my ribs ached the next day - the physical pain of emotions finally given space. The anxiety and burnout I'd been carrying, layer upon layer, began to peel away like old paint. Another day I slept fourteen hours, my body reclaiming a debt I had been ignoring. These are not Instagram moments. They are the unglamorous mechanics of restoration.

The silence carried weight. In its pressure, I remembered things about myself I had neatly packed away. Desires too inconvenient for my calendar. Ideas too subtle to survive the noise. The precise sensation of being fully awake in my life rather than managing it from a slight distance.

What emerges in retreat is deeper than joy or contentment. It's recognition. The quiet shock of meeting yourself again after a long absence. A recalibration that happens below the surface of conscious thought.

Then comes the inevitable return.

I'd love to tell you I came back transformed into a permanent-serenity goddess who never stresses. That's not how reentry into real life works. But something subtle had shifted. I began asking before each commitment: "Does this serve the story I want to live?" Not the biography that impresses at dinner parties. Not the resume that wins professional approval.

The narrative that feels true when I am alone with it.

Your retreat may look entirely different from mine. Perhaps it's a weekend in your home with devices locked away. Maybe it's a train ride to nowhere in particular. Or an afternoon in a museum where you look at just one painting for as long as you wish. The geography matters less than the decision to temporarily step outside the machinery of your own life.

This isn't self-indulgence. It's survival architecture. The world doesn't need another hollowed woman juggling external composure while struggling internally, running on fumes. Your work, your relationships, and your presence on this earth all deserve the version of you that remembers how to rest without justification.

To retreat is to rewrite. To reclaim authorship of days that have begun to write themselves. To remember that plots require space between actions for meaning to develop.

The most compelling stories contain moments where everything stops, where characters withdraw to make sense of what has happened and what might happen next. These pauses aren't narrative failures. They're the intervals that make narrative possible.

Do it for the plot.

You are the author. The pen has always been yours.

Your story is waiting for you to reclaim it.

But it may need a retreat first.

Strolling through the serene streets of the French countryside, enjoying a peaceful moment of solitude.

In quiet rebellion, Autumn Withers

For women, writers, and creatives seeking their own retreats: I offer transformative gatherings in the French countryside, Paris, and the wilds of South Africa. Limited spaces, gentle structure, maximum permission to simply be. Visit mystoryshift.com/retreats to give your future self the gift of a retreat.