My rebirth journey began when I stumbled upon the School of Womanly Arts (SWA) in New York City a few months after my husband died. SWA was founded by an irreverent, outrageous women with the moniker Mama Gena. She shocked this “good Catholic girl” with her words and her actions when I first started following her. Yet her message deeply resonated with me, and continues to guide my life to this day. In a nutshell, Mama Gena was advocating for a pleasure revolution. Noting that most women are burned out and tired from serving everyone except themselves, she suggested infusing life with pleasure instead. Think fresh flowers, essential oils, delicious food, warm baths and more. I certainly had not given pleasure much thought over the previous 20 years of raising children, being a good wife and building a career. So not surprisingly I was intrigued.
But there was more. Mama Gena also preached the power of “turn on.” This concept was even harder for me to grasp than pleasure and may be challenging for some of you as well. For now, suffice to say that Mama Gena was telling women that it was important to tap into their sexual energy regardless of whether they were in a relationship or not. This is a topic we will cover in more detail in future blog posts.
The third pillar of SWA teachings was desire. Rather than framing desire as a deadly sin or avarice as some religious traditions might suggest, Mama Gena taught that desire is the connection between us and that which is greater than us. Or to put it another way, desires are divine guidance and should be heeded, not repressed. Now that was a thought that was truly revolutionary.
I was intrigued enough to schedule a free call with her assistant, and a few months later, I found myself traveling to New York City to attend one of the SWA’s free weekend events at New York University Performing Arts Center. What I experienced there was truly eye opening for me at the time. I saw hundreds of women learning how to prioritize their pleasure and desires and live in turn on according to feminine principles. I was intrigued, and in the fall of 2015, I signed up for her Virtual Pleasure Bootcamp, where I connected with other women just like me.
We were all learning that we did not have to live according to masculine principles anymore. In fact, we would find more joy, success and happiness by embracing a feminine path.
Mama Gena was clear that she was not talking about the feminine path portrayed in fairy tales, all sugar and spice and everything nice. The damsel in distress that had to wait for the kiss of a prince to awaken her. Or a feminine that was plain and bland like the middle C on the keyboard of a piano. She was advocating living life full out by playing all 88 keys, from the darkest low notes to the highest highs. She also was suggesting defiance of all the ways women have been taught to behave because as she puts it: “You have to be outrageously defiant and headstrong to connect to your divinity in a world that excludes the feminine.”
By the time I attended my second free weekend in January 2016, I was hooked. I signed up for her signature Mastery Course, and traveled to New York four times for weekend sessions. By the fall of 2016, I had enrolled in the advanced course, Creation, which led to still more trips to New York and also Miami. All told it took about two years to learn this new way of living. My “graduation” took place in Paris in June 2017, and my life has not been the same since. In fact, I even marked my renaissance by changing my name from Carol to Caroline, a small one- syllable change with enormous symbolism.
When I returned home from France, I was a Mama Gena evangelist. I had experienced such a huge transformation that I had a strong desire to pass the message on and point women to the free weekends at the SWA to learn more. Since I had been hosting spiritual book clubs for years, it seemed like a natural next step to host salons where we discussed topics related to what I was learning at SWA. But it wasn’t long before I felt a calling to do more. By this time, I knew this desire was sacred and should be heeded.
So, in November 2017, three friends and I hosted the Bella Luna Retreat. Seven more retreats followed between 2018 and 2021, and what I witnessed was as revolutionary as anything I had seen at the SWA. By focusing on pleasure and desire – and yes – turn on, women’s lives changed. In fact, they experienced radical transformations. They lost weight, found new love, resurrected old loves, changed jobs and above all learned to experience day to day life differently than ever before. And they experienced this transformation without every traveling to NYC or enrolling in the SWA.
While my initial intention had been to point the way to SWA, life has a way of surprising us and that’s what happened to me. By 2019, Mama Gena abruptly decided to stop hosting in-person events and no longer organizes the free weekends or her Mastery and Creation courses. By following her own feminine wisdom, she turned out to be clairvoyant. When the global pandemic hit in 2020, she had no events to cancel or refunds to give. By that time all her offerings were already online. Meanwhile I was realizing that I was just as capable of guiding women on this new path as she was. In fact, all I needed to do was gather the women and the magic happened – effortlessly.
After the first three retreats, I connected with a new divine partner, whose wisdom will also be featured on this blog. We continued to plan retreats together that were unique, each focused on a different theme. Eventually the teachings come together in this nine-month journey that I am calling Rebirth. It encompasses all of the tools we have learned and practiced over the years and then some. And it offers me the long-awaited inspiration to write a much-desired second book in the process.
What’s more, the inspiration to start this blog came after we had already taken women on a nine-month Rebirth journey. Just as had happened in previous retreats, the process was transformative. Engagements, new homes, and amazing business opportunities and promotions ensued. But so did a process of letting go of old jobs, partners and ways of life.
This journey is not for the faint of heart. As you’ll see, you have to be willing to let go of the old before you can make room to receive the new. But believe me when I tell you that you do have what it takes to transform your life. Trust me and the sacred circle of women who have already walked this path before you. While I have changed their names and identifying details to protect their privacy, their stories are real. In fact, my own stories are embedded in the chapters that follow. I chose not to single myself out because my story could be yours or another woman’s who is bold enough to embrace this path of the divine feminine. The details may vary but each and every story on this blog is sacred, magical and divine. And if you stick with it, the same will be true for you.
Sacred Circle Retreats 