Dear Christina,

I almost didn't go. I nearly let all the usual things decide for me – the calendar, the distance, the effort of stepping out of the life that always seems to be calling my name. The quiet question of whether I really needed it. Could I allow myself to go somewhere simply because something in me was asking? The little voice that said, “Maybe later.” The habit of putting myself last and calling it being practical. I can see now how close I came to missing something I did not even know I was hungry for.

And Christina, Bulgaria was not what I expected. I expected it to be beautiful. I did not expect it to feel so alive. The mountains were wide and green and somehow still. The rivers ran clear over stone. The trees, the moss, the waterfalls – everything felt as if it had been there forever, waiting without needing to announce itself.

And then there were the people. That may have surprised me most. One evening, the father of the woman who owns the retreat house invited us to sit with him. He had built the place himself. We did not share a language, but Rosie translated while he poured homemade rakia and set little plates of food on the table. We stayed there for hours – not because there was so much to say, exactly, but because there was no rush to leave. No performance. No fuss. Just warmth. The kind of welcome you feel in your body before you know what to do with it.

And then the stories began. Stories of the Samodivi – wild feminine presences of the forests, rivers, and night air. I thought I was listening to old Bulgarian tales, and then they started finding places in me. A quiet voice. A forgotten wanting. A wildness that had not disappeared, only waited. Joy returning, not as decoration, but as life. They did not tell me who to become; they came close to the parts of me I had let get covered over. And somehow, I felt less far away from myself.

And then there were the women. Different lives, different countries, different reasons for coming – and still, again and again, that feeling of “you too?” We cooked. We walked. We laughed in that loose, unguarded way I had almost forgotten. We sat in circle and heard things that made the room go quiet. One evening, we stood outside by a small fire under a sky full of stars, and I remember thinking: this is what I was hungry for. Not escape. Not pampering. Soul care – the kind that reaches the places a quiet weekend at home never quite touches, the kind that reminds you there is more to you than what you manage, answer, carry, and keep moving.

I did not come home as a different woman. I came home feeling closer to the one I had been missing. And maybe that is the part I most want to tell you. I am still me – but something has color again.

I wish you had been there. Or maybe I just hope one day you are.