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Conscious Living

Conscious Leadership] 'Gather' Retreat - The Architecture of Belonging: On Community and the Future We’re Building (Oct 18, 2025)

Reflections from the Gather Autumn Away Day — exploring roots, values, and visions for a more connected, equitable future. A meditation on community, belonging, and the power of manifesting a life aligned with purpose.

Conscious Leadership] 'Gather' Retreat - The Architecture of Belonging: On Community and the Future We’re Building (Oct 18, 2025)
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Gather Lisas home and community
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Hi All,

Last weekend felt like a miracle.

For 22 years, I've been an expat across continents. My mission-led life has always been transitory—like that of a military officer or diplomat—full of uncertainties about where home even is. And through all of that, I've held onto this dream: a "community home." Something between Luke's Café in Gilmore Girls and Central Perk in Friends. A place where people could drop by unannounced, laugh, eat freshly baked cake or cookies, play music, and simply be.

It's always felt like a distant "one day" dream. Something for when I finally settle in one place.

In my mind, dogs and children would run freely through the garden. People would rest or meditate under the trees. Inside, there'd be a room dedicated purely to reflection—a peaceful space with a water fountain at its center, just like Gaudí's own meditation room, inspired by water and light. Around it, equipment and tools for neurodiversity and parasympathetic nervous system relaxation, so we can truly feel safe and grounded at the core. Crystal sound baths, color therapy, art materials inviting visitors to journal, paint, or express whatever needed to move through them.

Last weekend, I left the city behind. The trip to Cambridgeshire was exactly what I needed—countryside air, wind and breeze touching my face, yellow foliage lining the roads. It felt romantic and cozy. The warmth of autumn everywhere: amber leaves, golden light, pumpkins dotting the landscape.

When I arrived at Lisa's home for the Gather Autumn Away Day, I realized something: I was standing inside that dream. Not someday. Right there. Real.

Lisa is the founder of Gather—a community for female leaders from all walks of life—and she also works full-time as an architect in London and is a mum and a wife. Her garden stretched out in every direction, vast and alive with autumn color. Amber leaves drifting down. Golden light filtering through the orchard. The earth still warm underfoot. Everything—the nursery, the trees heavy with fruit (apples and quinces - just like my grandmothers' backyards!), the rhythm of conversation—held the same warmth I've long envisioned for my own life. I felt like I was having Thanksgiving in October.

And honestly? As a recovering workaholic, being there among all these incredible women—these everyday heroes balancing careers, businesses, motherhood, creativity—I almost got teary. I found something I didn't know I was still looking for: a sense of home. A sense of belonging.

Lisa is continuing her grandmother's tradition of caring for neighbors and the village. But she's also created something more—a gathering place specifically for women. For mothers or women building careers and businesses. For those who need space to put their heads together and support each other mentally, physically, emotionally. Here, we can reflect, plan, strategize together. Here, we can thrive.

It reminded me of my own grandmothers, who kept their doors open to everyone in the neighborhood—offering fruit from their backyard and food from their heart. Their places were the community centers for everyone: men and women, children and dogs, people from all walks of life. Lisa's home felt like their spirit continuing. An embodied reminder that hospitality, when offered with presence and purpose, can be a form of leadership.

I wanted to share some of the magical moments and resources from that day. I was lucky to find Lisa and the gang right after the pandemic lockdown in London, back in 2023. You can find Gather at https://www.gatherwoman.org/ —there are regular lunches, coffees, cultural events, and resource sharing throughout the year in London, both in person and via WhatsApp groups. It's free to join, and I highly recommend checking it out if any of this resonates with you.

Do you have a support community in your life? Who are they and what do you love about them? Please share your thoughts!

Collective Future

Below are the questions we went over during the 'collective future' discussion session. Lisa kindly put together the visuals and questions below and facilitated the session. I am sharing some of my reflections to get you going. I would love to hear from you as well! Please share your thoughts.

1. Roots and Values

My sense of fairness was shaped early by witnessing contradictions—between what people said and what they did, between power and kindness, between success and integrity. Everyone carries both light and shadow, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As a child, I saw both sides clearly in the ego-driven, highly competitive, patriarchal world around me, and it made me question everything. Yet, my favorite book has always been 'The Secret Garden.'

For years, that dissonance made me run from power. Yet I also saw glimpses of what grace could do—how a single act of kindness could pierce even the darkest moment. Inner flame and light within all of us—an innate human nature. Over time, and through deep inner work, I’ve learned to embrace power differently: not to control, but to elevate; not to dominate, but to dignify.

I learned to watch actions rather than words. To look for authenticity beneath appearances. From a young age, I felt called to bridge worlds that rarely speak the same language—emotion and intellect, wealth and empathy, logic and intuition.

Those tensions became my teachers. They taught me what’s worth fighting for: dignity, transparency, and the courage to live in alignment, even when the path isn’t linear—to fight the good fight, but with grace and compassion.

2. Vision for the Future

When I imagine a thriving future, I see capital flowing like clean water—circulating through communities, nourishing rather than extracting. I see boardrooms where wisdom and empathy are not opposites. I see leaders who understand that planetary stability is a financial reality, not a philanthropic choice. It's a future that serves both the child and the city, where data, design, and spirituality meet in service of regeneration.

3. Redefining Success

Success, to me, is becoming someone who can hold complexity without losing grace. On my deathbed, I want to watch the film of hearts I touched—not titles earned or deals closed.

Everything on this planet is an experiment: democracy, capitalism, AI. They're all games of probability, tests of what might work. What matters is how we shape these systems and structures—not through disruption, but through elevation. Through updates that come from the heart, not the ego.

I wish more decisions were led by human warmth instead of fear or scarcity. Right now, too many choices are made for us by a select few operating from ego-based thinking. But heart-based decisions increase the probability of collective flourishing. They consider lives, ecosystems, and futures—not just returns on investment.

In the decades ahead, I believe success will be measured by stewardship: who tended to what others overlooked, who made the invisible visible, and who chose connection over extraction at every turn.

4. Community and Belonging

Genuine community feels like an exhale—a space where you don't need to translate yourself to be understood. For me, it's the moments when conversation flows between futures and fears in equal measure, when vulnerability doesn't require courage because safety is already there. It's cross-generational tables, where age isn't hierarchy but texture. We build belonging by showing up as we are—without performance, without the need to prove—and by holding room for the fullness of others. No judgment.

5. Intergenerational Futures

Unconditional love. Starting with the self first. If I could pass one truth forward, it would be this: your power is never in imitation, but in integration. Take the best of what came before you and reimagine it. My hope is to learn from younger generations how to move with more lightness—how to build change not just from resistance, but from joy.

6. Repair and Renewal

If the future could heal anything, I'd wish for it to dissolve our collective amnesia—the ways we forget our connection to the earth, to ancestry, to empathy. I'd wish for it to heal our traumas—no matter how small or big they are. Everyone carries traumas from modern life, from childhood, and even from our ancestors through our DNA—what we now understand as epigenetics. And unless we address them—these patterns that govern 95% of our subconscious mind—our lives become a non-stop uphill battle against unaddressed blockages and patterns of destruction. Those are scarcity, fear, and ego-based.

The pathways to healing begin in intimacy: with our own nervous systems, our families, our food, our breath. From there, we can design new systems that don't perpetuate extraction—financially, emotionally, or spiritually.

7. Signals of Change

I see it in the way younger people talk about work and worth, in the rise of mutual aid, creative collectives, regenerative agriculture, and founders who care as much about soil health as shareholder value. I see it in the way women are reclaiming their softness as strength, and men are learning to listen again. These are the quiet revolutions that tell me something better is coming.

8. Hope and Courage

When the world feels divided, I return to beauty—sunlight through leaves, a poem that names the unnameable, a conversation that reminds me how interconnected we are. Hope, for me, isn't naïve; it's a discipline. Courage is remembering that the future is built not by certainty, but by those willing to imagine differently anyway.

9. Power of the Everyday

The future is shaped in micro-moments: the words we choose, the money we spend, the pauses we take before reacting. Influence begins in how we treat others when no one's watching. Every email, every meal, every investment can either reinforce separation or restore connection. The everyday is the architecture of change.

P.S. Looking at Lisa's place and beautiful garden, my imagination wandered to Gother's garden house. What beauty and grace we all have here—to gather, think, and reflect, supported by a loving community.

Resources shared

The ’Pause Life by Dr. Mary Claire Haver
Dr. Mary Claire Haver, MD, FACOG, MCP, Culinary Medicine Specialist and New York Times best-selling author of The New Menopause and The Galveston Diet, founded The ’Pause Life to offer an easy-to-follow approach to menopause. Dr. Haver’s menopause toolkit focuses on lifestyle changes to support your menopause journey.
The 'Pause Life by Dr. Mary Claire Haver
  • Women on Our Way (WOOW) is a London-based community for motivated and motivating women working to forge values-aligned careers. Sade is the founder! Their mission is to support women on this journeys, so ambition can be channeled towards growth and actualisation. Through regular in-person events, members gain new connections, access to resources and the possibility to find what it is they need to ‘Make it Happen!’. Join the movement and follow them on Instagram & LinkedIn!
  • Sade's recommendation on discovering your purpose via 'human design': I discovered Human Design during the pandemic. It blends astrology, the I Ching, Kabbalah, and modern physics to create a personalized "energetic blueprint" using your birth date, time, and location. The system reveals your unique "Strategy and Authority"—how you're designed to make aligned decisions and interact with the world authentically.
Human Design Chart | Lupo Astralis | Coaching
Lupo Astralis is a transformative coaching practice incorporating Human Design alongside other tools and techniques to unlock their clients potential.
Lupo Astralis | Coaching

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