A three-month, in-person series for ten to fifteen women. Four gatherings at the Abbey at Otter Creek, at the base of the Baraboo Bluffs, where nature, breath work and an honest look at your life help you see yourself clearly — and make the change you've already made finally stick.
You've been through something big. A divorce. A diagnosis. A new career. A body you fought for. A house that suddenly got quiet. And you did the brave thing — you came through it.
So why does part of you still feel like you're not quite enough? Why do you still over-explain, over-give, and wait to be chosen?
Because the transformation happened, but the way you see yourself hasn't caught up yet.
You were never broken. You've just been looking in the wrong mirror.
That's who this is for. Women who have already done the hard part — and are ready for the boundaries, the belonging, and the worthiness that make it stick.
And here's what took me years to learn: you can't truly belong anywhere — in a circle, a marriage, a family, a room full of people who love you — until you belong to yourself.
This is where you come home to her.
A healthy mind and a life that fits you don't come from thinking your way to them. They start lower down, in the body — which is why this begins with a forest and a breath, not a worksheet.
Three months. Four gatherings. Nature, breath work, and honest insight, in the company of women doing the same thing at the same time.
Not a retreat weekend. Not group therapy. A season.
And you leave with tools that work outside the room, on your own, in everyday life: the breath, listening to your body, and an honest look at where your energy goes.
What you take from it is yours. Some women leave with the breath. Some leave with a way of seeing their life they'll use for years. Most leave with both, and a few friends they weren't expecting.
We begin indoors at the Abbey with an opening ceremony — arriving in your body, meeting the circle of women you'll walk this with, and setting your intentions for the season. Then we step outside into the winter woods. Forest bathing: slow, unhurried, nothing to produce and nowhere to be. Somewhere in it, a moment to really look at yourself in the mirror, held there by the women around you.
You leave back in your body, clear on what you came for, and no longer walking into this alone.
Breath work and guided meditation. A chance to actually get in touch with yourself, and to let some of the parts you've been holding tight begin to unwind. This is the one you'll take home and use on an ordinary Wednesday.
You leave with a practice that settles your body in minutes, anywhere.
A full assessment of your life — what's working and what isn't. Where you're pouring out, and where you could let something in. Then a guided visualization of what it would actually feel like to have it different, and you say it out loud to the room. We share it so we don't carry it.
You leave with a page in your own handwriting — where your energy goes, and what you want instead.
Every woman speaks. Not a performance — just her own words about where she started and where she is now. Everyone leaves with a token to take home, and with the others' numbers in her phone.
You leave with your own words for how far you've come, and a circle of women who'll hold you to it.
You can't belong to anyone else until you belong to yourself.
Welcome back to your power
I guide from having done this work in my own body and my own life — and I'm still doing it.
For nearly 20 years, my work has been holding up a mirror. I've watched hundreds of women walk in guarded and walk out on fire — seeing themselves clearly, sometimes for the first time in years. And I know that moment from the inside. For a long time I thought something in me was broken. It turned out I was just looking in the wrong mirror.
I did it scared. There were moments I thought it might actually kill me, and it didn't.
What I learned on the way through is this: healing comes from being honest about what you actually want. From loving yourself through the fear instead of waiting for it to leave first. From time in nature. And from a core group of women who get it — even when their lives look nothing alike on paper. Underneath, we're all the same.
Those four things are what In Focus is built on. This isn't a system I studied. It's the one I lived — and that's how I know it works.
— Steph Shanks
All four gatherings happen at the Abbey at Otter Creek, a historic property at the base of the Baraboo Bluffs in Prairie du Sac, cared for by a family with a passion for restoration.
Rock bluffs, a quiet pond, perennial gardens and the creek itself. The kind of place where your shoulders drop before you've even parked the car.
If you'd like to extend the care, the Abbey offers optional spa treatments and sauna sessions, and a chef-prepared meal to take home (each at an additional cost), so dinner is already handled when you walk back through your own door.
Close to home, and a world away from it.
Small enough to be known. Large enough that you're not alone in it.
No homework. No catching up if you miss something, and no being punished for being human. Reverent about the work, irreverent about everything else.
Applications close Sunday, November 22. That leaves time for every conversation before we begin.
This first group is the founding circle — the women who go first, and who shape what this becomes. Applications close November 22.
Not ready yet, or want to hear about the next circle?
Join the waitlist