There Is a Life Happening Between the Plans

I recently wrapped up The Sacred Life Retreat in Madeira with an incredible group of women surrounded by gardens, mountains, ocean, and views that regularly stopped us mid-conversation.

The retreat was part of nearly two and a half weeks I spent traveling through Portugal, beginning in Lisbon before making my way to Madeira and eventually continuing south through the Algarve and Comporta.

Since returning home, I’ve been thinking about a question that was at the center of our week together:

What is a sacred life?

When I use the word sacred, I’m not talking about religion or spirituality. And I’m not talking about a life that is perfectly balanced, endlessly peaceful, or untouched by responsibility.

I’m talking about intention.

I’m talking about recognizing that our lives are happening now, in the middle of the work, the plans, the obligations, the goals, and everything else competing for our attention.

The question is whether we are present enough to experience them.

Flow Versus Force

One of our conversations in Madeira centered on flow versus force.

I intentionally did not begin the retreat by asking everyone what they needed to fix, change, or figure out. I wanted us to arrive first.

We experienced Madeira. We shared meals, explored, sailed, walked through gardens, rested, laughed, and had conversations that came naturally because we had given ourselves enough time to actually get to know one another.

When we finally sat down for one of our deeper conversations a few days into the retreat, something had changed.

We weren’t discussing what we thought we needed from the week before it began. We could talk about what was actually coming up for us after allowing ourselves to live inside the experience for a while.

That distinction has stayed with me.

We spend so much of our lives trying to get ahead of the moment we are currently in. We plan the outcome, anticipate what comes next, and sometimes decide what an experience is supposed to mean before we have given it the opportunity to become anything at all.

There is value in allowing an experience to reveal itself to you.

And there is a difference between having an intention for your life and trying to control exactly how that intention has to take shape.

The January 1 Letter

One of the exercises I gave our guests was to write a letter to themselves and date it January 1, 2027.

The idea was not to create another list of resolutions.

I asked them to write from the perspective of the woman opening her eyes on January 1 and looking back at the months between then and now.

What has moved forward?

What did she finally make a decision about?

What has she made room for?

What is she proud of?

What feels different about the way she is living?

There is a subtle but important difference between writing I hope I will and writing from the perspective of I did.

I collected the letters before we left Madeira, and around the beginning of the new year, they will find their way back to the women who wrote them.

I’m curious to see what happens between now and then.

It's an exercise anyone can do. Choose a date a few months from now and write to yourself from that day. Instead of focusing only on what you want to accomplish, write about the life you are living. What are your days like? What have you made time for? What are you enjoying? What did you finally do? How do you feel?

Sometimes imagining the life we want helps us recognize the choices available to us now.

10 Invitations to Be Present

I also gave everyone a small challenge for the week: 10 Invitations to Be Present.

They weren’t assignments to complete or another checklist designed to make the retreat productive. They were simple invitations to notice the experience while we were inside of it.

Have lunch with someone from the retreat. Capture a Madeira sunset. Sleep 30 minutes beyond your normal wake-up time. Take a walk through the gardens alone and literally stop to smell the roses. Leave your phone in your room for 30 minutes. Remember everyone’s name. Write something down. Do something you have never done before.

Small things, intentionally chosen, because presence is easy to talk about and surprisingly easy to miss, even when we have traveled thousands of miles specifically to experience somewhere new.

But I don't think those invitations belong only on a retreat.

There are small ways to become more present wherever we are.

Take the longer walk. Sit outside for lunch. Leave your phone behind. Look at the sky. Call someone instead of sending the text. Stay at dinner a little longer. Pay attention to the place you're in instead of immediately documenting it.

Presence doesn't always require changing your life.

Sometimes it requires noticing it.

Why Travel Continues to Matter to Me

After nearly a decade of creating retreat experiences, I still believe deeply in the gift of leaving what is familiar for a while.

Travel changes our perspective because it changes what we are paying attention to.

We look up more.

We notice architecture, food, language, landscapes, customs, and the rhythm of how other people live. We have conversations with people we would never encounter in our normal routines. We are reminded that our everyday lives represent one very small part of a much larger world.

Madeira reminded me of something else I have seen repeatedly through OMNoire: there is also tremendous value in experiencing the world in community.

You can see a destination through your own eyes and then experience it again through the people around you.

Someone notices something you missed. Someone asks a question you hadn't considered. A dinner becomes a three-hour conversation. A group of people who arrived knowing very little about one another leaves with shared stories that will forever connect them to that place and to each other.

And there is also value in traveling simply for yourself.

After Madeira, I continued through Portugal with time in Lisbon, the Algarve, and Comporta. I was no longer responsible for hosting a retreat and could experience the country differently.

Both experiences mattered.

Community and solitude. Conversation and quiet. Plans and room to wander.

Maybe that's part of a sacred life too: knowing there is room for all of it.

We Deserve to See the World

There is one belief underneath so much of what I have built with OMNoire that has only become stronger with time:

We deserve to experience this world.

As Black travelers, there is something meaningful about seeing ourselves in beautiful places across the globe and knowing, without qualification, that we belong there.

We belong at the luxury resort and on the private island. We belong at the table overlooking the ocean, walking through centuries-old cities, staying in castles, watching the sunrise on safari, and experiencing the art, culture, food, history, luxury, adventure, and natural beauty this world has to offer.

That has always influenced how I choose destinations for OMNoire.

Of course I want somewhere beautiful. But I’m also thinking about what a place will awaken in us, what it will teach us, what might surprise us, and which moments will still come up in conversation five years from now.

Madeira gave us plenty of those moments.

So, What Is a Sacred Life?

I don't think there is one answer.

Your sacred life may look completely different from mine.

But I do think it begins with recognizing that the life we're so busy planning for is also the life we're living right now.

We don't have to wait for some future version of our lives to become more intentional about how we experience them.

We can pay closer attention now.

We can take the trip, linger over dinner, watch the sunset without reaching for our phones, choose the beautiful hotel, walk the unfamiliar street, have the conversation, take the day off, and allow ourselves to experience something simply because it brings us joy.

There is an enormous world out there, and I want us to see as much of it as we can.

More importantly, I want us to be present enough to remember how it felt when we were there.