Reaching for Air Through Every Crack

I didn't plan to build a leadership sanctuary in rural Georgia.

When I drove down the half-mile driveway for the first time, winding through a dense pine tree forest and then the land opening up around me at the domes, my body already knew.

It was September 2019. Hurricane Dorian was threatening my two uninsured investment properties in Miami. My bodyworker had said offhandedly, I wish my friends didn't live where they do. I said, maybe I can invest in something that actually supports their work.

The next day, they sent me a drone video of a large forest property outside Atlanta. It struck me so deeply that ten days later, I flew out for the day to see it. It was the only property I saw. Although I had had a vision in 2012 of creating a retreat space when my boys went to college, I wasn't looking for land since it wasn't that time yet. It came to me sooner than I could ever imagine.

I walked those trails in my barefoot shoes, toes close to the soil, looking up through the canopy. The previous owner was there, tending to the yard when I arrived and then showing me every detail he could of the property. He watched me moving through his land, the way I was looking up at the domes, the way I was already in love with it, and he saw that I wasn't going to tear anything down.

Not long after, I made an offer because every part of me said yes. I was all in. The way I have always done things. He accepted it.

Later, he told me: I wanted you to have it.

The people I had originally bought it to support moved in, and two months later, they moved on. The land became fully mine to steward.

What I walked into was layers of history: some recent, some ancient. This land was once part of a National Forest, later swapped out of federal protection. Indigenous mounds remain within its boundaries, left by the Muscogee (Creek) people, and thirty minutes away, the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park marks where their leaders once lived.

Even the ground itself is layered. Piedmont rock meets patches of sand here, where the sedimentary geology beginning twenty miles away starts to blend in. "Who dumped sand here?" I wondered on a hike one day, before understanding it was something else entirely: a very special union point. Two worlds of earth, converging in the same ground.

More recently, the land had become the neighborhood's informal dump: tiles, metal scraps, bricks, old pipes rusting in the creek, a barbecue half-buried in the woods. Layer after layer of other people's discarded things muted the soil and its innocence over time.

By the end of the cleanup, eight full containers of debris had been removed, including the takedown of an old garage dome that was falling apart, big steel pillars, broken glass, no future.

That was the first project. Before building, we needed to create space and start restoring the land.

I've thought about that a lot since. How often that's also true of teams. The weight isn't always visible. Often it accumulates slowly: old patterns layered over unspoken tension, people who care deeply quietly disconnecting one reactive conversation at a time. Or simply a team that could move faster, more honestly, more freely, if only someone created the conditions to clear what's been piling up.

Then came a deeper layer of work. A forest that had been clear-cut thirty years before and never recovered. We took on logging, controlled burns, mulching the fallen timber. We walked the edges of the property and followed the creeks until a trail system revealed itself organically. Not designed... discovered. After the trails opened, on two counts, I found beetle-infested sections of trees on the property. We surgically cut down the affected trees before they could keep expanding.

Each season, I listened to what was needed, and took action: resurfaced the main domes, installed new septic lines, added a new kitchen in the smaller dome, pulled up parts of the old driveway that wrapped around to the pool, built a greenhouse dome and a pavilion, laid bridges over the creeks throughout the property, added ladders and swings in the trees, redid the pool, fenced it, and added a sauna, hot tub, and cold plunge, imported the event dome from Poland and had it assembled on the land, drew up an entirely new building to support the event dome and had it built, created a beautiful firepit.

When I arrived in rural Georgia during COVID in July of 2020, there was no internet on the land, and I had to change my cell carrier just to get service. I couldn't stream a movie. The closest town was fifteen minutes away, and I found a vending machine there to rent DVDs. The road outside the property was old and unpaved. Within months of moving in, the road was resurfaced. A local electricity company took over internet service, dug the trenches, and ran broadband all the way up to the domes. I didn't orchestrate any of it. It arrived with speed! 105 Mbps of it.

As soon as I arrived, I met a man who became my partner for two and a half years and who showed me to the doors to the local network I needed: contractors, builders, land people, pool contractors. Not every step was smooth, but each one got done efficiently. For example, one pool contractor made two failed attempts, but I was able to reclaim my money without lawyers.

Community arrived too. In 2022, two women drove out to meet me. Someone who had attended one of my events brought them to me, reached out, made the introduction, invited them to visit. When they arrived, I learned that one of them had grown up on the very road The Florrest sits on, and I learned that there was an incredible city that no local had ever told me about. Suddenly I saw it, I wasn't just building on land outside Atlanta. I was building near the city of Macon, with its own identity, its own pulse. And like the slogan says: Where Soul Lives. It made sense.

A neighbor whose property bordered the north side of mine wanted the 28 acres there, land I never used, never felt called to, where the dogs barked and his house was by the trail. It was a natural release. The funds came back into the build.

Then the letter came in the mail.

I had just returned from Los Angeles, where I'd gone for a retreat with a voice coach, learning to use my voice more fully, more powerfully. A cease and desist. It said that I was out of code. The kitchen I had built in the second dome made it a duplex, and duplexes weren't permitted in rural Georgia.

After everything! After all of it...

If I was going to keep the property, I wanted the freedom to create what my heart desired. I didn't want to operate under the radar.

The first hearing didn't go well. I had been advised to request a residential duplex designation, and the room erupted. People had come from all over the county to protect rural Georgia, and I understood them completely. I wanted to protect it too.

After that, I hired a law firm, working directly with a partner and an associate, to guide me through the zoning law, not to speak for me, but to teach me. I networked with locals so they could understand who I was and what I was building. I prepared until I could walk into that second hearing and make my own case, without hand-holding, without someone else carrying my argument for me.

The room was packed. The energy was charged. I made my case.

When the approval came through, most of the room didn't even register what had happened. But the commissioner who had been quietly rooting for me, she gave me the smallest movement of her head. Just barely.

You got it.

The handful of friends who had come to support me (you are my heroes) didn't know whether to cheer or stay quiet. We had won. But we couldn't celebrate in that space.

This was now officially The Florrest.

Reaching for air through every crack. Permitted against resistance. Regenerating land. Figured out step by step. Not a concept. Not a retreat center that was handed to me. A sanctuary that required every single thing I had, and strengthened me, in the building of it, for the work I now guide inside of it.

What I learned through all of it: the unknown can make people feel threatened, and when people feel threatened, they get aggressive. They fear association. They fear being on the wrong side. The cleanest thing you can do is understand that, stay clear of the entanglement, and keep moving with focus and clarity.

The truth about that whole chapter is that I was also rebuilding myself at the same time.

I grew up across cultures, shaped by contrasting experiences, seasons of abundance and others of uncertainty, belonging and displacement, achievement and emotional exhaustion. By the time I had the credentials the world recognizes, an economist by training, an MBA from Chicago Booth, a co-founded internet startup in Argentina, experience in business recovery with PwC London, a TEDx talk (The Alchemy of Living Playfully, 2017), a co-authored bestseller with Jack Canfield, and a life lived across continents, I had arrived at a question I couldn't ignore:

Why isn't my presence creating the impact it's capable of, and why isn't that impact creating the resources it's worth?

The answer wasn't in my capability. It was in my self-concept. I hadn't yet claimed full authority over myself: who I let in, what I gave, where I drew the line. I was overly compassionate, endlessly forgiving, giving second and third chances to people who hadn't earned my time or energy. I adapted to environments by making myself smaller, over-giving without structure or boundaries, without the energetic architecture that would have made my generosity sustainable. Keeping the peace at the cost of my own voice, leading from obligation instead of truth.

Learning to lead without depleting myself: to give from a full place, to speak honestly without managing or carrying others' emotions, to hold boundaries without hardening, and to return to center, again and again.

That's the foundation everything at The Florrest is built on.

During this chapter, I was also navigating circumstances that significantly limited my ability to parent my boys the way I wanted to. Not by my choice. There were seasons where I was sidelined from co-parenting in ways that were deeply painful and that I had no control over.

What I could have a say in was who I chose to be inside of those circumstances.

I chose to stay rooted. To choose compassion and patience over bitterness. To trust that it was the way through. To keep showing up as myself, clearly, consistently, devotedly, even when the access was limited and the pain was real. Not performing that I was ok. Actually building it, day by day, in the quiet of a story I hadn't yet owned.

My boys eventually saw that. I once kept count, 32 trips to Nashville in five years, as if the number itself was the proof. But it wasn't the number that mattered. It was simply showing up, again and again. That gives me peace, knowing I did my best with everything I had to juggle. Peace about who I am, what I let in, my intentions. Letting people have their emotions without making them mine. Focusing on what I can control.

That peace is not a destination. It's a choice and a practice. It's the same practice I bring into every leadership room I enter.

You can't truly lead people to steadiness you haven't found in yourself. You can't teach trust you haven't embodied under pressure. You can't expect a team to stay honest and present through discomfort if you haven't done that yourself, in the hardest rooms, with the highest stakes, when everything in you wanted to collapse or control.

I didn't learn this in a training, although I constantly train. I learned it in the fire of my own life.

Everything I now create at The Florrest grows from this. The road wasn't smooth and I wouldn't change a single detour, because it shaped who I am today.

All of this, the cleanup, the build, the zoning fight, happened on one track. On another track, almost from the beginning, the land was already being used.

In July 2021, a year into living at The Florrest, I hosted my first retreat with friends who believed in what was taking shape here. It was a seed. The event dome had just been put together, the AC just added, but the property wasn't yet at the level of professionalism and order I knew it could reach. It had to meet what it was ready for.

From there, I rented the venue mostly directly to retreat leaders, with occasional Airbnb bookings for families during gaps, including a bachelorette celebration and birthday gatherings. I hosted group retreats and worked with private clients of my own, alongside local events (including two yoga studio collaboration events).

The couple from that first retreat had chosen to stay together afterward, and built something they could do as a team: a solar energy company, remote from the start. On their third visit, they brought that team, people who had never met in person, and it became my first corporate experience. A few months later, my brother brought the C-suite of his company, a digital payments business based in Brazil, with leaders flying in from both Argentina and Brazil. He knew my work, and he trusted it enough to bring his own team. Alongside all of it, private clients found me too, in person and online, by word of mouth. A local healthcare company asked for a single day, the first version of what would become the Connection Day, before it had a name.

There were requests that felt like noise: a fifty-person nonprofit event that would have meant tent rentals, extra bathrooms, an event planner; a 70th birthday celebration; a group wanting to rent the venue with overflow guests staying in the area; a venue rental that, two weeks out, wanted to switch to a mini festival instead. Just considering them was draining: rain days, parking, the stress about the septic system, noise pollution, bothering neighbors, distracted guests drinking in the woods and having accidents. None of it was in alignment with the peace and clarity I wanted to offer.

Some noise was more exciting. MTV found the property on Google. They came out a few times, first to see it, then with more people to confirm, before filming a wellness day episode in a single day. I was on international TV too. What was remarkable: at the cast's final dinner that night, women who generally didn't talk to each other connected, here, in a way they hadn't before.

At the beginning, my tagline was "Create your own experience in nature." What that led to was transaction: people came, used the space, and left.

The hardest challenges weren't the zoning hearings or the cease and desist. The hardest was realizing that I had placed others at the center of the sanctuary before I had placed myself at the center of my own life. I was supporting and uplifting people who couldn't see me in my gifts. I have something real and profound to offer. I have capacity. And if I structure my business around my own irrelevance, I'm wasting what I'm here to do, my purpose.

To be in relationship, I invited leaders to post-experience integration calls. Not just for me to hear how it went, but for me to hold space for what they were carrying, their challenges, what came up for them. That kind of holding is part of my mentorship work. But in the venue, it wasn't framed clearly, so most people didn't show up. When we do close that loop, that's where the soil becomes fertile. That's where we compost what doesn't serve and water what does. That's where every experience (however it arrived) becomes sacred. A chance to see where we can refine. A reminder of who we really are. I really wanted that, and since it wasn't happening, I realized I needed to create the internal and external structures to make that result possible.

Closing a loop isn't complicated. It's simple but profound: when something completes, both parties share their experience, you acknowledge what happened, and you finish clean. It's a skill, one any team can practice with each other, not just with me. Without that closing, you're left holding onto things that were never resolved. I once extended real flexibility to someone navigating a difficult situation in their own life, new dates, extended credit, alternatives, and still, the loop never closed. When it does close, you can reconnect with someone cleanly, whenever that happens, next week, next year, or in ten.

People would keep wanting what they wanted. So to make my presence at the property compatible, I designed a large deck with its own stairwell and outdoor space, approved and permitted, so I could have free access without going through the main dome.

Then I asked myself: do I really need this? I listened to my body, and it felt disconnected, separate from my own venue, even just from the thought of it: the property full of people, and me on the sides, trying to stay out of their way.

I'm grateful for all of it. The discomfort and doubts. The clients who filled the venue with gratitude, joy, recognition, celebration. The retreats I hosted myself, and the chefs who came to nurture and support us along the way. The experiences that stretched me. Every moment taught me something, what I wanted, and what I didn't. It let me see myself, know where I needed to refine, where I needed more structure. It changed me from someone open to whatever, into someone who could say: this is what I stand for, this is what I'm here to do.

I create conditions for people to regenerate, to feel safe and seen, to let go, and to activate their gifts. When I lead, people get activated. When I don't lead, people use the space, and either don't see me, or see me as the housekeeper.

Here is what I came to understand: The Florrest isn't a place where people are pampered. It's a place that is already set, intentional, beautiful, complete. Whatever arises from there, a request, a reaction, a way of showing up, becomes the mirror. It's where leaders see themselves, and learn how to be in right relationship with themselves, with the land, with the people around them. The goal was never the money. The money is a result of who you are and your internal coherence. The Florrest doesn't guarantee that. What it offers is something more foundational: you will see yourself here.

Not only see, but practice, feeling called to your purpose, leading, organizing, seeing what's in the way, knowing yourself better, seeing who you're being and what that's creating, working with discomfort, speaking up, facing what needs to be faced, staying connected when the results don't match your expectations.

I've joined many masterminds, retreats, and programs in the last sixteen years. I met incredible people and connected deeply, and I took the gems each teacher had to offer, their gift, their angle of approach. There's a point in every container where the returns diminish, where you've learned what that teacher or that group has to give. When that point arrives, I've learned to leave well, with gratitude, without force, without fear of disconnection. Not clinging to something that's already given what it had to give, but also not burning it down. That way, if the time ever comes to reconnect, the soil is still fertile.

That's also why I don't want to build an offering that requires constant new material, performance, hype, dancing for attention just to keep people engaged. The relationship itself, done well, doesn't need that. It can simply be there, available, when it's time.

And I know what real community feels like, I have a large family that mostly lives one block away from each other, and I visit often. Deep friendships, people I return to again and again. We're connected in essence, to love, without me needing anything from it. They love me for who I am, not for what I do.

Because of that, I don't have an ache to create community around myself or my work. Early on, I realized that The Florrest was never meant to be a community people belong to in the traditional sense. It's a space where the communities people already belong to (their teams, their families, their missions) get to come back stronger. If a community forms here, around the people who resonate with this work, that's a natural consequence. It's not the goal.

You don't come here to join something. You come here to meet yourself more deeply so you go back to your own people, more whole.

That is the game I am here to play. I want to play it with people who want that too.

I don't want to become a community, a follower of someone, a fan of something, identified by anything outside myself. Who I am, what I believe, how I'm being, that stays at the center. The people around me, family, friends, work, whatever forms, become the training ground. Whether they mirror me or stand in opposition, everything becomes a way to become more myself. More alive. Without collapsing.

That is what I offer others too. When each person gathers their own light, their own gifts, they contribute more powerfully to their teams, their families, their communities. This is what's needed: people anchored enough in themselves to build something sustainable, a more beautiful humanity on this planet, starting here.

The credibility I carry into every Leadership Team Connection Day runs deeper than certificates. It's from having done this work in my own life, and continuing to do it, so I can meet each person exactly where they are.

Since bringing my boys into the world, The Florrest is the most honest, most aligned thing I have ever created. It asked me to become someone I had to grow into. Just like being a parent does.

All of that, the retreats, venue rental, events, sessions, teams, wellness days, was part of how this work found its shape. Now it has become more focused and more intentional. Today, The Florrest exists primarily as a leadership sanctuary.

I know now where my capacity belongs, in the spaces where the stakes are high, the mission is real, and the leader is ready to go deeper.

Rural Georgia is quiet. I love connecting to the land, listening, activating my capacity to perceive the subtle. I choose it. Some days I walk out from the domes with no destination, turning off my mind, attuning to the rhythm of my steps, staying open to whatever the trail reveals. I travel to see family and to retreats and conferences, several times a year. I've found a rhythm that honors me, the business, and my family. It's sustainable, and I love it.

The Florrest is a 153 acre forest sanctuary outside Atlanta where leaders and teams come to reconnect, to themselves, to each other, and to the deeper purpose driving their work.

What I do has a name: leadership calibration.

It means helping leaders and teams identify and shift the invisible patterns, the communication gaps, emotional dynamics, and energetic disconnection that quietly limit performance, trust, and impact, no matter how talented or well-intentioned the people involved are. Not fixing. Not training. Calibrating.

The issues that don't show up on a performance review. The ones everyone can feel but no one is saying out loud.

Sometimes the question comes from a team that's already good, led by someone who refuses to let good enough be the ceiling.

Other times it comes from a leader sitting in a team meeting noticing that something essential has gone quiet, not a crisis, not a conflict, just a fading. People technically present, technically delivering, but the aliveness that once made the work feel worth doing has become harder to access. Communication has become more about managing than connecting. The trust is assumed rather than felt. The shared purpose that once pulled people forward has become something people describe rather than something they feel in their bodies.

Either way, there is more available than what's currently being accessed.

The leaders I work with have something in common that has nothing to do with their title or their track record. They have the courage to look honestly at themselves, at their team, and to care enough to go deeper.

They come because they care too much about their people and their mission to keep moving at the pace they've been moving without stopping to ask:

Are we coherent enough to create the results we actually want?

The Leadership Team Connection Day is my signature offering, a full day at The Florrest for teams of 6 to 15. It begins before anyone arrives: each person completes a private reflection that comes to me first, so by the time your team steps onto the land, I already have a sense of what's present, what's gone quiet, and what's ready to move. This is not a day of presentations and pre-designed exercises. It goes deeper than that. It works at the level where disconnection actually lives, the body and the nervous system, not the slide deck. The land gives people permission to exhale, and from that opening, something real becomes possible between them again. One to two weeks later, an integration call grounds the experience so it anchors into the rhythm of work.

What your team leaves with isn't a list of action items or a generic framework. It's something deeper, a felt shift, and the beginning of a practice called Return to Center. A reminder to see each other as human, even in the pace of the work. The meetings after this day are not the same busyness, because the people in them have experienced being together in a new way.

It's where teams are invited to begin, but it's one door, not the only one. Teams traveling in, or ready to go deeper from the start, can choose a multi-day retreat. Founders and executives who want ongoing support work with me through private mentorship.

We'll find the right pathway and depth for you and your team.

This work begins with an application. If it feels aligned, you'll be invited into a real conversation about what you or your team is navigating, what you're sensing, and whether The Florrest is the right next step.

The forest is ready when you are.