Welcome friends of Little French Retreat and new friends that have been waiting here on my substack, Unfolding Conversations... my new writing home where I will be talking about wellbeing practices, recipes, personal experiences and also stories of guests, friends and people that have inspired me as they follow their purpose and who I believe will inspire you too.
You may wonder why I have moved newsletter platforms from my website to substack….Well, it’s for a good reason. Firstly that’s the nature of growth - if you want to expand you need to branch out. Secondly it’s a great platform, run by supportive creators with an ever expanding community, which offers new possibilities that will reach further than that of my website and enable me to grow my community in a new and exciting way.
I can also include on this platform my upcoming podcast ‘Dames du Paradis’ that I am creating with friend Kate Hill, from Relais de Camont, a creative writing retreat just down the road from me... Kate is a wonderful friend, writer and cook, a wise elder now in her early seventies and continuing to recreate herself at every decade. Her gusto for life and knowledge of the area has always been an inspiration and our chats, sat next to the wood burner with copious amounts of tea, a homemade slice of cake (or two) with our hounds snoring at our feet, is soon to go live as we share with you our love of food, recipes, nature, gardening, our passion for the area and what it means to live slow and quietly.
We took inspiration for the namesake of this project ‘Dames du Paradis’ from a silent walk we went on 7 years ago around the nearby ruins of an 11th century convent named Paravis. The women of paradise or Les Dames du Paradis, were a cloistered community that had been kidnapped en route from Paris to the south of France to become one of the most important religious communities within France between the 11th and 15th century. Our creative brains set light immediately, firstly at the wonder of this place and then at how aligned we felt to this community.
Obviously we are not ordained, yet we often feel like wayward nuns fulfilling our daily duties in our individual hermitages. Whilst our domain’s are certainly less like a spartan cloister, since we both have a tendency to decorate with an interiors eye and a scattering of brocante (antique) finds and paintings, we feel our backgrounds provide a good grounding for our ultimate goal to recreate Paravis again, to find our very own place to live as an intergenerational commune for sustainable, supportive wellbeing to live our best lives.
But first the podcast, which is our place to enjoy ourselves, have more reasons to eat cake (Gluten and dairy free) and meet new people. Whilst I will include the link to new episodes in my posts to you, you can also become one of our community of Dames (and Monsieurs) by signing up to the podcast here:
Alongside exciting new writing projects and our podcast are my wellbeing offerings :
ONLINE YOGA CLASSES
BEGINNERS ONLINE YOGA 6 WEEK COURSE / next begins February 7th
RETREATS / Six annual 6 day retreats at two unique venues here in France
COACHING / Intuitive coaching for work and life to realign you with your creative potential and to communicate meaningfully about your passion
Click on the individual links above or button below to discover more.
I was recently invited to join Gill Moakes on her podcast ‘Heads Together’ to talk about ‘What it REALLY means to be Authentic’ you can listen to us on the link below.
Thank you for reading and I look forward to sharing more soon, Tamsin x
Welcome to Unfolding Conversations......
So happy to welcome you here to this great Substack community and share the art of lost living with you and the Dames du Paradis!