Creative Rest | Retreat Series
A monthly Saturday retreat series for women longing for a rhythm of creative play, contemplation, and gentle companionship.
Creative Rest is a monthly Saturday retreat series for women longing for a rhythm of creative play, contemplation, and gentle companionship.
Each gathering offers spacious time for guided conversation, prayerful reflection, and a hands-on creative practice—no experience necessary. We move slowly. We listen deeply. We make with our hands as a way of tending what is alive within us.
Retreats are held in my home and studio, with a light lunch, treats, and coffee/tea provided. All materials are included.
As women, our lives are often filled with demands to hurry and hold more than we can bear. The deepest, truest parts of who we are can get buried or hidden beneath unprocessed grief, fatigue, loss, confusion, or unmet longings. Maybe you’ve noticed yourself yearning for a moment to catch your breath, to get close to beauty, to be still enough to relearn the Voice of Love, to be deeply heard and witnessed.
That’s why I am offering this Creative Rest Retreat Series.
Meet Your Guide
I’m Kaysie Strickland, a spiritual director, artist, poet, and the founder of Listening House. I also write at Poetics of Welcome, where I reflect on creativity, faith, and the practice of staying open.
My work centers on soul care, contemplative attention, and creative practice as pathways toward healing and wholeness. For many years, I’ve walked alongside women navigating grief, transition, faith questions, and vocational discernment. In my own life and in the lives of others, I’ve seen how writing and creative presence become places where God meets us with honesty and gentleness.
I don’t believe we need fixing.
I believe we need to be received with care.
There was a time when rest felt impossible for me. After seasons of relational, vocational, and spiritual trauma, my nervous system was shaped by survival. I longed for a place where I could recover slowly—without being rushed, corrected, or dismissed.
Through small creative practices and the steady presence of wise, compassionate listeners, healing began to take root. Over time, I devoted my life to learning how to listen—deeply, patiently, and with reverence—and respond with creative beauty.
Listening House grew out of that journey. It is the space I once needed, now offered to others: a place of beauty, safety, and rest where you can be heard, held, and welcomed just as you are.
Upcoming Retreats
Feb. 14th, Saturday | 9:30am–2:00pm
At my home & studio
Light lunch + treats included
Winter does important work beneath the surface.
Before anything grows, the soil must soften.
This February gathering is for women who feel weary, hardened by hurry, or simply ready to be tended again. Together, we will slow our bodies, loosen our grip, and create space for what is quietly waiting to emerge.
Through guided conversation, gentle prayer, and a tactile creative practice, we’ll explore what it means to soften—not as weakness, but as preparation. Not as striving, but as trust.
This retreat includes:
A welcoming circle with guided reflection and conversation
A contemplative creative practice focused on texture, layering, and release
Spacious silence alongside shared making
A simple, nourishing lunch and warm drinks
All materials provided—just bring yourself
You do not need to be “creative.”
You only need to be willing to arrive as you are.
This is a place to rest your hands in the soil of your own life and let God do the slow work beneath the surface.
Creative Prayers: A Creative Writing & Contemplation Retreat
March 14th, Saturday | 9:30am–2:00pm
At my home & studio
Light lunch + treats included
Prayer does not require polish.
It requires truth.
This March Creative Rest gathering centers on honest prayer as creative practice—the kind that names what is real, tender, conflicted, grateful, or unfinished. Together, we’ll explore writing as a way of listening, confessing, praising, and asking without performance.
This retreat is for women who:
Long to pray more honestly
Feel stuck or distant in prayer
Love words but need permission to write imperfectly
Want to listen for God’s voice through their own
We’ll spend the day:
Gently grounding ourselves through guided conversation and reflection
Exploring short prompts that invite honest prayer and poetic language
Writing in a spacious, non-judgmental environment
Sharing (only if desired) in a circle of care
Eating, drinking, and resting together
No writing experience is required.
Your words do not need to be beautiful—only true.
Come write the prayers you’ve been carrying but haven’t yet spoken.
A Mixed-Media Retreat on Shelter, Meaning, and Care
April 18th, Saturday | 9:30am–2:00pm
At my home & studio
Light lunch + treats included
All materials provided
Spring invites us to gather—
not in haste, but with care.
This April Creative Rest retreat centers on nesting as a spiritual and creative practice: the slow, intentional work of making a place to hold what matters most.
Together, we will reflect on the ways we seek shelter, what we carry close, and how meaning is formed through attention. Using gathered materials and meaningful words, each participant will create a mixed-media nest—an embodied prayer of care, memory, and belonging.
This retreat is for women who:
Long for a sense of home within themselves
Are learning what to keep and what to release
Love symbolic, tactile making
Need permission to tend their inner world gently
Our time together will include:
Guided conversation around shelter, care, and what we carry
A contemplative mixed-media practice using natural materials, paper, and text
Space for silence, reflection, and unhurried making
A nourishing shared lunch and warm drinks
All materials provided (with the option to bring small found items if desired)
This is not about making something perfect.
It is about making something true.
Come build a place of rest with your hands—and name what belongs there.
“The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is.”
— Parker Palmer