On our first afternoon in Oaxaca, I watched eight women gather for a traditional cacao ceremony and do something most of them hadn’t done in years: nothing. No phones face-up on the table. No agenda to get through. Just cacao, traditional music, a light breeze rustling through the jacaranda trees, and the particular quiet that arrives when you’ve finally given yourself permission to stop.
That moment told me everything about why this week mattered.
These were not women who needed rescuing. They were leaders, builders, caregivers, decision-makers — accomplished in every outward sense. But they had arrived, each in her own way, at the same quiet recognition: something essential had been pushed so far to the back that they’d almost stopped noticing it was missing.
What they needed was space. An intentional pause. An adult gap year, condensed into a single week.
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My partner Kimberly Manno and I designed the Vamonos Experience around a simple belief: when you live inside urgency, your vision narrows. Your life becomes a to-do list. Your identity becomes intertwined with your role and your output. And the only way to see clearly again is to step outside the frame long enough to see it.
The week follows a process I developed during my own adult gap year and over the past three years of hosting this experience. It moves through five stages: quieting the noise, defining what matters most, letting go of inherited expectations, creating your own version of success, and embodying a new way of being. Each stage builds on the last. And each one, I’ve found, has to be felt as much as understood.
By the second day, the composed, capable versions these women had walked in wearing began to soften. Not because they broke down, but because they didn’t have to hold themselves together in the usual way. Through storytelling and reflection, what had lived beneath the surface began to rise: fierce independence, relentless responsibility, the quiet loneliness of being the one everyone else depends on.
Several women named it the same way: I’ve been putting myself last for so long, I forgot it was a choice.
There was grief in that recognition. And anger, especially at the ways women are conditioned to treat self-sacrifice as virtue. But underneath both was something that felt like relief and belonging. Like a door opening.
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We spent time examining not just what these women wanted, but what had been driving their choices beneath the surface. Decisions that looked like ambition often had fear underneath. Patterns that looked like strength were sometimes exhaustion wearing a familiar costume.
Through parts work, they met the voices that had been running the show: the Protector, the Critic, the Performer, the Caretaker. Not flaws, but adaptations — working overtime, necessary once, but no longer needing to lead. When that shifted, something opened. Joy. Ease. Creativity. Parts of themselves that had been waiting for space.
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In the middle of the week, we hiked into the hills outside the city. There was a path and a guide who knew exactly where we were going. But for the women on the trip, there was nothing to manage — no decisions to anticipate, no one depending on them to get it right. That, in itself, was the shift.
There is something that happens when the structure is held for you — when your only responsibility is to walk, to notice, to be present. For women used to being the ones others rely on, it feels unfamiliar at first. And then something loosens.
We stopped at Las Salinas, where water flows through ancient rock in a way the Zapotecs believe is the source of all life. I watched one woman — who had arrived carrying so much — step into the water and, for a moment, let all of it go. The look on her face was simple: joy, freedom, lightness. She wasn’t responsible for anyone. She wasn’t managing anything. She was just there.
That moment stays with me. Because it captures what becomes possible when you are genuinely cared for — when the weight you’ve been carrying is finally set down long enough for you to remember what it feels like to just be yourself.
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Insight alone only goes so far if it stays in the head. So on our last night, we stepped outside.
A traditional temazcal is a ceremonial steam lodge, an experience used in Mesoamerican cultures for centuries as a form of physical and spiritual renewal. Ours took place inside a traditional beehive structure, low and close, heat rising from lava rocks at the center. The steam was real. The sweat was real. So was everything else.
The practice is simple but not easy. You name what you are ready to release — and you throw it into the burning coals. Then you declare what you are choosing to carry forward. Out loud. In front of the group.
I’ve witnessed a lot of meaningful moments in this work. This one was different. There is something about the combination of heat, darkness, and the act of saying a thing aloud — not writing it in a journal, not thinking it quietly, but speaking it into the air with other women listening — that makes it land differently. More permanently. Women who had spent the week finding language for things they’d never quite named before were now releasing them with intention. And claiming, just as deliberately, what they wanted next.
That is the work of embodiment: not just knowing who you want to be, but beginning to feel what it’s like to actually choose her.
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In our closing circle, I asked each woman to name one truth she was taking home. What I heard:
I matter. It’s my time. I don’t have to carry everything alone. I am grateful for the choices I have made. I can trust myself. I am worthy even when I’m not needed, even when I’m not productive, even when I’m not holding everything together.
They didn’t leave with rigid plans. They left with something more durable: clarity about what they value, and the self-trust to act from it. For some, direction emerged where there had been fog — a return to long-held passions, a pull toward more meaningful work, the courage to revisit ideas they had once dismissed. For others, it was quieter: a steady sense that they were already on the right path, and finally had permission to trust it.
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This is the third year we’ve hosted the Vamonos Experience, and what I understand more deeply each time is that the pause is not a luxury. It is the work. When high-achieving women create intentional space, they don’t fall behind. They step out of reaction and back into authorship. They stop managing their lives and start choosing them.
An adult gap year, in a week. It turns out that’s enough time — if you use it intentionally.
The 2027 experience is in early planning. If this resonates, I’d love for you to be in the room. Reach out to get on the list.