Planning for the year ahead virtually with Kate Emmerson

Caroline Sylge experiences a private retreat online from her home in Devon with life coach Kate Emmerson, and over the course of her birthday weekend takes stock of her past year and plans well for the year ahead

Three days before my birthday at my home in Devon I open a bright white box to find a hand-written invitation on top of a delicate bed of tissue paper.  ‘Make some coffee, take a deep breath and open your treasure,’ it says.  The kind instruction is from life coach and mentor Kate Emmerson, who has devised a private four-day virtual retreat for me to do across my birthday weekend.

Inside I find a ribbon-bound folder with sleeves containing eight beautifully hand-made prompts for a series of exercises to do, twice a day, over the course of the four days. The idea is to spend a couple of hours (or indeed as long as I want to) each morning and afternoon on tasks that will help me take stock of the year just gone, and plan for the next year, with clarity and joy.

Alongside the folder there’s also a pulse point essential oil to use, and a fetching blue and green candle to light each time I settle down. Before I start each exercise, I am to listen to a pre-recorded voice message from Kate on WhatsApp in preparation, and she has prepared me before the retreat with a one-hour online session, during which we chat through what to expect and I am asked to pick a card to set the tone of my retreat - the card I pick represents ‘healing’.

“The evening before my birthday we light a giant outdoor fire, and I sit in the light English rain with a woolly hat on my head and watch the flames eating up all the challenges of my year. It feels delicious”

I have created a retreat space at home in my garden studio and - sitting on my pink chaise, with said coffee and a candle lit - I am eager to begin. The first task? To set an intention for my retreat and write it down on a concertina paper that Kate has decorated with gorgeous blue and green ink drawings and wrapped in blue suede ribbon.  The second task, that afternoon, is to come up with three things that I am most proud of from my past year. So far so good.

Over the course of the weekend, led by Kate’s clear and clever suggestions, I then go on to find the highlights of my previous 12 months in eight main categories of life (health, home, work, money, joy, spirituality, relationships, self-development); to understand the challenges I have faced and what insights I can gain from them; to identify the ‘ushers’ who have helped me get from A to B in the theatre of my life, and to thank them with a whole heart; and to understand the qualities I have demonstrated and so take heart that I have learnt and grown, no matter how hard the year might have felt.

I enjoy taking stock in my cosy and warm studio, but between times I also do my usual daily practices (morning yoga; twice daily Vedic Meditation), have a pre-arranged massage in my house, go for walks down my local Devon lanes, swim in the sea and chill out in my local spa. Though this might sound super relaxing, I confess my days are not as spacious as I would have liked them to be during the weekend, but, as advised by Kate, I just go with it, getting on with the domestic stuff I need to do and enjoying regular family time as well. Part of the joy of a virtual retreat, other than not having to travel anywhere at all, is that you can devise the timings to suit you, and you don’t have to put your whole life on hold if you don’t want to or simply can’t.

As I work through each task, I take pleasure in Kate’s hand-painted and thoughtfully devised cards and booklets. Making my mark - quite literally, by writing on paper - is one of the core themes of the retreat, and I frequently journal in an extra notebook that Kate has advised me to have to hand. Some things I keep, some things I send off to people who have helped me along my year-long path, and some things, most joyously, I throw away.

Such is the case on day three, when I am asked to write down what I do not want to take forward into my new year, and to then burn the (rather beautiful) paper they are written on, alongside a note of all the obstacles I have faced. That evening, the night before my birthday, my husband lights a giant outdoor fire in our fire bowl, and I sit in the light English rain with a woolly hat on my head and a glass of wine in my hand to gently watch the flames eating up all the challenges of my year. It’s a delicious feeling.

The next morning, my birthday, it’s time to contemplate the year ahead, to set intentions for what I want to let go of, and for what I want to welcome in. I am asked to come up with a phrase that sums up the essence of this, then to write it on (another) beautiful card and put it somewhere prominent so that it will help me realign whenever I am struggling.

I have the card above my desk as I write this, and it says ‘Stay Free’, which, it turns out, is the essence of my retreat. Freedom for me? More of all the good stuff already in my life - poetry, comedy, art, love, coastal walks, swimming in the sea, creativity and light-heartedness.

But in order to be and stay free, I find, I also need to go through rather than round all the other stuff that perhaps doesn’t always feel so joyous - and this is the main insight of the weekend. To face my responsibilities, to put the effort I need into my business, to show up at my poetry desk each day, to be the good friend, mother, wife and colleague I know I can be. That the only way out is through, and there are no short cuts. Perhaps this is the ‘healing’ of the retreat card I pulled.

Though I could have checked in with Kate directly on a phone call at set times during the course of the weekend, I decide to spend what precious time I do have on my tasks, and instead leave her little voice notes, so that she can bear witness to my process, and we chat after the weekend to integrate everything. Despite her being present only in a textual, virtual way, the talent of her coaching is that, whether my challenges are huge (making the decision to change our daughter’s school) or small (working out what to do about all the photos I’ve taken over the years), she helps me look clearly at the tasks ahead and break them down into achievable bites.

The creative care Kate puts into her booklets and voice prompts is unusual, and extremely rare. It helps me end my four days feeling truly creative myself, as well as refreshed and ready to jump into the next 12 months of challenges that are no doubt ahead. I'll book her without question when I need to take stock again.