Come celebrate your life — uncover what you sense is next

To manifest a dream into a reality, Lori Sortino and her reading circle invite women to a retreat from Sunday, March 25 through Friday, March 30 at Dancing Deer Retreat Center for a week of transformation and honesty.
“The inspiration behind it comes from being a part of a women’s circle,” Sortino said. “One in particular started because I opened my home and we had a collage party where we cut images out of magazines.”
Heart's JourneyThose gatherings became more regular and deepened an experience they want to now share with other women. The experience is prefaced by an agreement to be honest yet compassionate, which is what the group had cultivated together.
“Sitting down and starting with a new group of people and being explicit about how we are going to be together,” Sortino said. “The aspect of building a community is about being together, having dialogue, and practicing,”
The retreat will offer transformative exercises, guided meditations, and “powerful tools that will help you connect to your most authentic and empowered self.”
Sortino and her Heart’s Journey group want to give participants a “roadmap to living your life with a new sense of wholeness.”
What a woman might get out of the experience will be personal to the woman, but Sortino is certain about what she wants to deliver — “Being empowered — it is all about being authentic, and how can we be more authentic.”
With a warmth and compassion of someone who has been through transformation, Sortino expressed that the week should challenge women in ways that may be uncomfortable at first.
“If I say something inauthentic, or using my small voice, or being hard on myself,” Sortino said, “we have made an agreement to call each other out. If we hurt each other, we say sorry, but that is why we are there — to practice the hard stuff.”
The week’s retreat costs $795 and includes five nights at Dancing Deer Retreat Center, healthy vegetarian meals, and a personal deck of impression cards.
Contact Lori at 805-709-6000 or lori@heartsjourney.com, or heartsjourney.com.