Margaretha Montagu - Dr Margaretha Montagu

03/08/202612/07/2026

On the Camino de Santiago, Every Season Has Something to Teach Us

CrossRoads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

After years of hosting Camino de Santiago hiking retreats in southwest France, I’ve discovered that nature doesn’t just provide a beautiful backdrop—it quietly shows us how to navigate life’s changing seasons.

One of the questions I’m asked surprisingly often is, “When is the best time to walk the Camino?“

Each season has something the others don’t.

Over the years, I’ve welcomed dozens of guests to my little farmhouse in southwest France, where my retreats include two or three days walking sections of the Camino de Santiago along the historic Le Puy route. Some arrive in spring, when the countryside seems determined to prove that miracles happen every year. Others come in the blazing heat of summer, when the cicadas perform with the confidence of an orchestra that has never needed a conductor. Autumn brings golden vineyards and crisp mornings. Winter, although quieter for retreats, has its own kind of honesty.

People often ask me which season I prefer.

I’ve stopped trying to choose.

Each one reminds me of something I’d almost forgotten.

Spring, for example, is gloriously impatient.

Wildflowers appear where only weeks before there was bare earth. The orchards burst into blossom as though someone had quietly switched nature back on. Swallows return from Africa with impeccable timing, apparently having misplaced neither their passports nor their sense of direction. The vines, which looked so lifeless throughout winter, suddenly produce tiny green shoots that promise an entirely new vintage.

If nature ever needed a slogan, spring’s would surely be: Never underestimate new beginnings.

It’s a comforting thought for anyone standing at a crossroads in life.

Many of my guests arrive feeling as though something inside them has gone quiet. Retirement has left them wondering what comes next. A difficult year has dented their confidence. A life transition has left them feeling untethered.

Spring gently suggests that beginnings rarely announce themselves with fireworks.

Most start as tiny green shoots.

Summer tells a different story.

The sunflowers that line the Camino seem almost absurdly optimistic. They spend their days following the sun with unwavering commitment, blissfully unconcerned with what the neighbouring field might be doing.

There is probably a lesson in that.

Modern life encourages endless comparison. Someone else has a better career, a larger house, a more adventurous retirement, or grandchildren who apparently produce museum-quality artwork before they can walk.

The sunflowers remain magnificently uninterested.

They simply turn towards the light.

I’ve often thought we’d all be happier if we spent a little less time looking sideways and a little more time looking upwards.

Autumn may well be my favourite season of all.

The vineyards surrounding my farmhouse begin to glow with shades of gold, amber and crimson. The harvest reminds us that growth isn’t the whole story. There comes a time when we have to gather the fruits of what we’ve spent years cultivating.

Many of my guests are at exactly that stage of life.

After decades of building careers, raising families or caring for others, they begin asking a different question.

What now?

Not because life is winding down.

Quite the opposite.

Because they finally have the opportunity to decide what they want the next chapter to look like.

The Camino seems particularly well suited to these ruminations.

Walking alone through vineyards that have witnessed countless harvests has a curious way of putting our own lives into perspective. The vines don’t produce grapes every month of the year. They don’t apologise for resting through winter, nor do they panic if they aren’t ready for harvest in September.

They simply trust the season they’re in.

Only humans seem convinced that we should be productive every day of every year.

No wonder so many of us are exhausted.

Then winter arrives.

The leaves fall.

The orchards stand bare.

The vineyards appear almost lifeless.

At first glance, it can seem as though nothing is happening.

Yet anyone who works with the land knows better.

Life has seasons too.

Some are filled with growth and excitement.

Others invite us to pause, recover and reflect.

Hosting Camino retreats has taught me that many of us resist these quieter seasons. We mistake resting for failing. We become impatient if life isn’t moving as quickly as we’d planned.

Nature never seems to make that mistake.

It knows that every season has a purpose.

Many of my guests come back again and again. Often in different seasons. And as they walk through vineyards, orchards and sunflower fields, at different times of the year, they begin to see that they, too, are allowed to have seasons. Seasons of striving and seasons of stillness. Seasons of loss and seasons of renewal. Seasons of letting go, and seasons of beginning again.

The countryside simply gets on with it.

Season after season.

Year after year.

What season of life are you in?

If you’re standing at a crossroads and feel that a few days walking the Camino through the vineyards, orchards and sunflower fields of southwest France might help you see your own season more clearly, I’d love to tell you more about my small-group walking retreats.

Sometimes the next chapter doesn’t begin with forging ahead. Sometimes it begins with recognising and appreciating the season you’re in.

You can email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.

If your soul is craving fresh air, meaningful movement, and a chance to reconnect with nature, join me on a 5-day/4-night CrossRoads Camino de Santiago Walking Retreat – a powerful, natural reboot for your body, mind, and spirit. No fitness requirements. No forced bonding. No pressure to have a breakthrough. Just one foot in front of the other, and finding your way to a brighter future.

Do you dream of escaping your stressful life to raise a herd of goats or grow sunflowers in the south of France? Then you may be ready for an Esprit Meraki retreat. Get access to this “very serious” quiz to help you figure out how urgent your need for a change of scenery is, when you subscribe to my monthly newsletter.

What Life Lessons Can You Learn While Walking the Camino de Santiago? – a free guide filled with 10 not just “quaint anecdotes” or Instagram-worthy moments (though there are plenty of those) but real transformations from real people who walked this insight-giving trail – Subscribe to my monthly newsletter to Download the Guide

“I am an experienced medical doctor – MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract cert, Transformational Life Coach (dip.) Life Story Coach (cert.) Stress Counselling (cert.) Med Hypnotherapy (dip.) and EAGALA (cert.) I may have an impressive number of letters after my name, and more than three decades of professional experience, but what qualifies me to excel at what I do is my intuitive understanding of my clients’ difficulties and my extensive personal experience of managing major life changes using strategies I developed over many years.” Dr M Montagu

02/08/202608/08/2026

What Horses Can Teach Us About Contentment

I used to think contentment was something you had to earn. Like it was a reward you unlocked after enough years of doing the work. I pictured it as a mountain peak — you’d get there eventually, breathless and enlightened, and finally feel content in some permanent, glowing way.

Then I watched Bianca fall asleep standing up in a patch of afternoon sun, bottom lip drooping, one back leg cocked at that ridiculous angle horses manage without ever tipping over, and I realised I’d had the whole thing backwards.

The Nap That Changed My Perspective

Bianca is not a horse who does much. She’s not the herd’s ringleader — that’s Tess’s job, self-appointed and taken far too seriously. She’s not the one who greets every visitor at the gate like she’s running for local office, either. Bianca’s contribution to the herd is, essentially, vibes. Good ones. She finds the sunniest spot in the paddock most afternoons and simply commits to it.

I noticed her doing this one day when I was mid-spiral about an email I hadn’t sent, a blog post I hadn’t finished, and a general sense that I was somehow behind on my own life despite living in rural France with six miniature horses and no boss. I looked up from my phone and there was Bianca, radiating pure, uncomplicated contentment over a patch of grass and a bit of warmth. That was it. That was the whole event. No achievement had preceded it. No milestone had earned it. She hadn’t done a single thing to deserve that nap except show up and notice the sun was out.

It’s an infuriatingly simple lesson for someone who spent two decades in medicine believing that rest was something you scheduled after the crisis, not during it.

We’ve Over-Engineered Happiness

Here’s what gets me about the way we talk about contentment these days: we’ve turned it into a project. There are trackers for it, five-step frameworks for cultivating it, entire industries built on the premise that contentment is a skill you’re failing to master correctly. I say this as someone who has, at various points, been part of that industry. I’ve written the frameworks. I’ve added the trackers.

But horses don’t track anything. A horse’s entire concept of a good day can be reduced to: gate open, grass available, sun out, nobody’s chasing me. That’s the whole checklist. Angelito will greet a treat like it’s the first food he’s ever encountered in his life, even though he had breakfast twenty minutes ago and will have dinner in a few hours. There’s no sense that this particular carrot is less exciting because he’s had carrots before. He’s not comparing it to a better carrot he had last Tuesday, or worrying that this carrot means he’s not disciplined enough. It’s just a good carrot, and he is, for the four seconds it takes to eat it, completely present for it.

Meanwhile I’ll eat an entire meal while scrolling and not remember a single bite.

We’ve made happiness so complicated that we’ve talked ourselves out of the very thing it’s supposed to produce — which is simply noticing what’s good, right now, without qualification. Somewhere along the way, “practising contentment” became another item on the to-do list instead of the thing that interrupts the to-do list. That’s backwards. Contentment isn’t a task. It’s a pause.

Don’t start a Journal

I’m not going to tell you to start a happiness journal, mostly because if you’re anything like me, that journal will become one more thing you feel vaguely guilty about not doing consistently, sitting on your nightstand judging you.

What I’ll say instead is this: notice the gate. Whatever your version of an open gate is — the ten minutes before everyone else in the house wakes up, the first sip of coffee that’s still properly hot, the fact that nobody currently needs anything from you — notice it before it closes again. You don’t need to earn that moment. You don’t need to have done something impressive first. Bianca certainly hadn’t. She’d just stood in the right spot at the right time and let herself feel the sun.

The horses don’t wait for the big wins to feel good. They don’t need the metaphorical mountain peak. They take the small, unremarkable, entirely undramatic moments — an open gate, a treat, a nap — and they don’t diminish them by comparing them to something bigger. That’s the whole trick, if you can call it a trick. It’s really just attention. Unglamorous, repeatable attention to the small simple thing that’s already happening.

I still catch myself scrolling past my own version of the sunny patch most days. But I’m getting better at looking up now.

Notice the Small Things With a Small Herd of Friesian and Falabella Horses in the southwest of France

If your version of the sunny patch has been buried under a to-do list for longer than you’d like to admit, this is, quite honestly, what we do most at Maison Meraki. Days built around noticing — the horses, the Camino de Santiago walk, the meal that isn’t eaten standing up at a counter. No frameworks, no trackers. Just space to remember what it feels like to savour the simple, small thing in front of you.

Private Rebooted and Realigned Retreat –this 3-day/2-night, bespoke, one-on-one retreat on the Camino de Santiago in the sun-blessed southwest of France enables you to press pause, connect with a small herd of Friesian and Falabella horses, recalibrate your inner compass, and return to your life rested, rooted and realigned with who you are now.

My small-by-design retreats are capped at four guests for exactly this reason — because contentment, like a good nap in the sun, doesn’t happen well in a crowd. If you’re curious what a few unhurried days here might do for you, come take a look. Bianca will most likely be asleep in the sun when you arrive. She usually is.

01/08/202627/07/2026

The Cost of Being the Strong One for Too Long

The Burnout Chronicles

There’s a particular kind of tired that doesn’t show up on any test. I know because I’ve had patients describe it to me for two decades, and because I lived it myself for rather longer than I’d like to admit. It’s the tiredness that comes from being the one everyone else leans on, for so long that you’ve forgotten there was ever a version of you who got to lean on someone else.

I had a patient once, I’ll call her Anne, who came to see me for headaches that wouldn’t resolve. She was fifty-two, ran a household of six, including an elderly father-in-law and a daughter going through a divorce, and had not, by her own account, had a single day off in three years where someone else was responsible for holding things together. Her headaches weren’t a mystery once you knew that. What was a mystery, at least to her, was that she’d never once considered herself under strain. “I’m the practical one,” she told me. “Someone has to be.”

That sentence has stayed with me longer than almost anything else a patient has said to me. Someone has to be. It’s such a reasonable thing to think, and it’s exactly the thought that keeps capable people running on empty for years without ever naming what’s happening to them.

Being the strong one has a strange kind of invisibility built into it. Nobody checks in on the person who’s always fine, because you’ve spent years demonstrating, quite convincingly, that you don’t need checking in on. You become the person others call when something’s wrong, which means you’re perpetually discussing everyone else’s crisis and rarely, if ever, discussing yours with anyone. Over time this stops feeling like a role you play and starts feeling like a fact about who you are. Not “I’m coping right now” but “I’m a coper.” The first is a temporary state. The second is an identity, and identities are much harder to put down, even when they’re crushing you.

I need to be specific about the cost, because “burnout” as a word has become so broad it’s almost stopped meaning anything. The cost of being the strong one for too long is rarely dramatic. It’s more often a gradual narrowing. You stop mentioning that you’re struggling, because you’ve noticed people seem faintly relieved when you say you’re fine, and some unconscious part of you doesn’t want to destroy that relief. You stop asking for help with small things, because it’s quicker to just do them yourself, and soon you’re doing everything yourself, and calling it efficiency instead of what it actually is. You develop headaches, or a bad back, or insomnia, or the kind of low mood that doesn’t look like sadness so much as a faint, permanent greyness over everything, and you treat each symptom as an isolated inconvenience rather than what it usually is: your body’s attempt to get your attention after your mind stopped listening.

The particular irony of this pattern is that the people most likely to fall into it are precisely the people least likely to ask for help, because asking for help feels like abdicating the role that gives them their sense of worth. I’ve watched capable women in particular function like this for decades, often praised the entire way for their resilience, which is a strange thing to be congratulated for when what it’s actually costing you is your health.

If any of this sounds familiar, and I suspect it does, the first step usually isn’t a retreat or a course or even a conversation with a friend. It’s simply naming the pattern out loud, ideally to someone who’s spent years watching what unmanaged strain does to a body and a mind, and who can help you build something more sustainable than white-knuckled coping.

That’s the work I do, the before, during and after my retreats. As a stress management expert with two decades of clinical experience and a fair amount of hard-won personal history on the subject, I help people who’ve been the strong one for too long recognise the pattern before it costs them their health, and build something more sustainable in its place.

If Anne’s story, or any part of your own, sounds alarmingly familiar, I’d genuinely like to help.

Find out more, have a look at my Rested, Rooted and Realigned retreats and/or my guided online course Roadmap to Resilience: From Burnout to Balance

It’s time to kick exhaustion to the curb and finally ditch that terminally overwhelmed feeling, evict your inner critic, declutter your mind and take control of your life like a boss. You’re about to turn your life from a comedy of errors into a blockbuster success story (with a much better soundtrack). This two-day online course is designed for anyone facing a major life transition, needing to dramatically reduce stress, end exhaustion and overwhelm, and prevent or recover from burnout.

31/07/202611/07/2026

The Luxury We Need Most Isn’t Five-Star Hotels. It’s Time to Think.

CrossRoads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

When people hear the word luxury, they often imagine infinity pools, Michelin-starred restaurants, Egyptian cotton sheets and champagne on arrival.

There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. I enjoy a comfortable hotel as much as the next person.

But after hosting dozens of Camino retreats in southwest France, I’ve come to believe that the greatest luxury of all isn’t something money can buy.

It’s uninterrupted time to think.

That may not sound particularly glamorous. In fact, in a world that celebrates productivity and busyness, it can sound almost wasteful. Surely we should be doing something.

Yet I’ve noticed something remarkable over the years.

Guests often arrive convinced they need answers. They hope that somewhere during the retreat, they’ll finally manage to decide whether to retire, change careers, move house, end a relationship, begin a new project or simply work out what comes next.

What they haven’t realised is that they just haven’t given themselves enough time to think things through.

Not reflective thinking.

The kind that isn’t squeezed between meetings, interrupted by notifications or accompanied by the constant temptation to “just check this “important” email.”

The kind that unfolds slowly, like a country lane disappearing on the horizon.

My Camino de Santiago walking retreats include two or three days of walking sections of the historic Le Puy route. Guests walk alone, carrying little more than a picnic, some water and perhaps a notebook. I don’t walk with them, because over the years I’ve learned that people benefit more from the walk when they succeed in finding their own way.

Something begins to happen after the first hour or two.

The conversation in our heads gradually quietens.

The mental to-do list loses its urgency.

The imaginary arguments, worries and rehearsed conversations begin to fade.

People start noticing things again.

The scent of wild thyme warming in the sunshine.

The neat rows of vines stretching towards the horizon.

A buzzard circling overhead.

The reassuring rhythmic footfall of boots on a 1000-year-old path.

At first glance, it looks as though nothing is happening.

In reality, something very important is.

Thoughts start to flow freely.

For many of my guests, particularly those who have spent decades in demanding careers, this can feel surprisingly unfamiliar. They have become exceptionally good at solving everyone else’s problems, meeting deadlines and making decisions under pressure.

What they have forgotten is how to sit quietly with their own thoughts.

Perhaps that is one of the hidden costs of modern life.

We have more information available to us, instantly, than any previous generation. More opinions. More entertainment. More news. More noise.

What we have less of is uninterrupted reflection.

Little wonder so many people feel mentally crowded.

One of the things my guests have taught me is that clarity rarely arrives because we force it. It appears when we stop chasing it quite so desperately.

Some of the most important decisions I’ve seen people make haven’t happened at a table with spreadsheets and pros-and-cons lists. They’ve happened somewhere between two small villages on the Camino de Santiago, while watching butterflies drift across a wildflower meadow or listening to the wind rustle through the trees.

Not because the Camino generously hands out answers.

But because it gives people something they need: Time.

Not time to be entertained.

Not time to be productive.

Simply time to think.

It’s curious, really.

We think nothing of spending a considerable sum on a luxurious holiday, yet we often struggle to justify setting aside a few days simply to reflect on our lives.

I’ve come to believe that genuine luxury has very little to do with opulence.

It’s waking without an alarm.

It’s walking without being in a hurry.

It’s hearing birds instead of traffic.

It’s eating lunch beneath a tree instead of at your desk.

It’s allowing your mind enough room to wander until, almost unnoticed, it begins to find its way home.

Perhaps that’s why so many guests tell me that walking the Camino was the highlight of their retreat. Not because it was physically demanding or particularly adventurous, but because it gave them permission to do something they hadn’t done in years.

To stop.

To breathe.

And finally, to think.

Perhaps you’re longing for that kind of luxury too.

If you think you—or someone you care about—would benefit from a few days walking the Camino, slowing down, and giving yourself the priceless gift of time to think, I’d love to tell you more about my small-group Camino de Santiago walking retreats in the peaceful countryside of southwest France.

You can email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.

Author Bio: Dr Margaretha Montagu – described as a “game changer”, “gifted healer”, “guiding light” and “life-enriching author” – is an experienced medical doctor, a certified NLP practitioner, a medical hypnotherapist, an equine-assisted psychotherapist (EAGALAcertified) and a transformational retreat leader who guides her clients through life transitions – virtually, or with the assistance of her Friesian and Falabella horses, at their home in the southwest of France.

30/07/202626/07/2026

The First Time I Burnt Out, I Didn’t Notice

What burning myself out more than once taught me about unchecked exhaustion.

At the summit of my medical career, I remember being quietly proud of how little sleep I could exist on. Six patients an hour. Home visits squeezed into lunch. A pager that could and did go off at any time. I didn’t think of it as burning out. I thought of it as being extremely good at my job.

That’s the part I want to start with, because it’s the part nobody warns you about. Burnout doesn’t arrive like a car crash. It arrives like a slow leak in a tyre you keep meaning to check. You don’t notice that the ride is getting rougher. And if you do, you just tell yourself the road is worse than it used to be.

I found out I’d burned out the way most of my patients told me they found out: my body brought it to my attention. Not dramatically. No collapse in a corridor, no ambulance, nothing you could share on Instagram. Just one Friday morning, I found myself sitting in my car outside the surgery, engine off, and couldn’t make myself open the door. I sat there for eleven minutes. I know because I watched the clock, telling myself I’d go in “in a minute,” the way you tell a child one more minute of television before bedtime.

What frightened me wasn’t the eleven minutes. It was that nothing had actually gone wrong that week. No crisis, no bad outcome, no complaint. I simply ran out, quietly, the way a battery does, with no dramatic warning light, just an engine that suddenly won’t start.

I got out of the car and went in. Of course I did. I saw twenty-two patients that day, and I don’t remember a single one of them. I told colleagues I was “just tired.” I told myself the same thing for another four years, until my body finally said “no more.”

What I didn’t understand at the time—and what took me two decades, hundreds of consultations and a great many remarkably patient patients to fully appreciate—is that exhaustion rarely arrives waving a red flag. It doesn’t burst through the door shouting, “You’ve reached your limit!”

It begins with subtle shifts. You stop being someone who’s tired and become someone who’s “just like that.” Brisk. Efficient. A little less patient than you used to be. A little less interested in things that once made you smile. You tell yourself you’ve become more practical, more realistic, busier. And because everyone around you seems equally busy, nobody questions it—including you. I wore “fine” the way some people wear a uniform: every single day, in every season, until I’d almost forgotten I had other clothes.

“Burnout exists because we’ve made rest a reward rather than a right.”
― Juliet C Obodo

I’d love to tell you that the car park moment changed everything. It didn’t. Life rarely offers neat little turning points wrapped up with orchestral music in the background. What it did do was plant a question that refused to leave me alone: if I couldn’t recognise burnout in myself, despite being a doctor, how many of my patients were walking around just as oblivious?

From that day on, I listened differently. Not for the dramatic clues—the tearful consultation, the sick note for stress, or the person who finally admitted they couldn’t cope. Those were the easy ones. I started paying attention to the quieter signs. The mother who no longer mentioned the painting classes she once loved. The accountant who described every weekend as “recovering.” The executive who couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed. When asked how they are, that little four-letter word: “Fine.” Delivered a fraction too quickly, with a smile that never quite reached their eyes.

I’ve learned that burnout doesn’t usually steal into your life with a bang. It’s more like a dimmer switch than a light switch. The brightness fades so gradually that your eyes adjust, and before you know it, you’re used to living in darkness.

That’s really what this blog post series is about. Not the collapse, because most people never collapse in any way you’d recognise from the outside. It’s about the warning signs: the eleven minutes of immobility in that car park. The ones nobody sees, that you explain away, that you suppress because you need to go inside after and carry on. I burned out more than once before I learned to recognise those minutes for what they were, insisting that I was “coping just fine.”

If any part of this sounds familiar, the ever-increasing exhaustion of being “fine” for too long, it’s precisely for you I created my Rested, Rooted and ReAligned Retreat. At my 200-year-old farmhouse in the rolling hills of Gascony, you’ll leave behind the constant doing and rediscover what it feels like simply to be. You’ll walk a peaceful section of the Camino de Santiago at your own pace, spend quiet time with my small herd of horses, whose uncanny ability to reflect what’s really going on inside us has humbled me more times than I can count, and enjoy the rare luxury of not having to hold everything together for everyone else.

No pressure. No “acting-as-if.” No need to be “fine.”

Curious whether it’s for you? Click here to find out more.

29/07/202610/07/2026

Your Next Chapter Doesn’t Need a Perfect Plan

It only needs the courage to take the next meaningful step.

When people talk about turning the page, they usually imagine a dramatic moment.

A resignation letter handed in with trembling hands.

A house sold.

A suitcase packed.

A new business launched.

A plane taking off towards somewhere warmer, sunnier and altogether more exciting.

Life certainly contains moments like that. They make good stories, and films would be rather dull without them.

But I’ve come to suspect that most new chapters don’t announce themselves with quite so much fanfare.

They arrive quietly.

So quietly, in fact, that we often fail to notice them at all.

I’ve seen it happen countless times.

Someone tells me they’re waiting for life to begin again, yet as we talk, they describe taking their grandchildren blackberry picking every Saturday morning. Or learning to paint after forty years of insisting they weren’t creative. Or joining a local choir because they were tired of eating alone on Friday evenings.

They tell these stories almost apologetically, as though they were irrelevant to the “real” story.

I don’t think they are the sideshow.

I think they are the main events.

Perhaps we’ve become so accustomed to measuring life by milestones that we’ve forgotten to notice its quieter transformations. We celebrate promotions, weddings and retirements because they have clear dates attached to them. We can point to them on a calendar.

Inner change is much less obliging.

No diary records the afternoon you finally forgave yourself.

No certificate arrives to mark the day you realised your life no longer needed to look better than everyone else’s.

Nobody throws a party because, after months of grief, you caught yourself laughing without immediately feeling guilty.

And yet those moments may alter the course of a life far more profoundly than many of the events we celebrate.

Looking back over my own life, I can see that the biggest changes rarely began with certainty. More often, they began with curiosity. And courage.

A conversation that stayed with me long after it had ended.

A book that asked uncomfortable questions.

A walk that untangled thoughts I’d been carrying for months.

A quiet sense that something no longer fitted, accompanied by an equally quiet conviction that there might be another way to live.

At the time, none of those moments felt particularly significant.

Only afterwards did I realise they were the opening paragraphs of a completely new chapter.

I wonder how many beginnings we overlook because they don’t look the way we expected.

Perhaps we’ve been waiting for lightning when there was only candlelight.

Perhaps we’ve been searching for certainty when all we really needed was the courage to take the next step.

I’ve always loved watching dawn arrive in the countryside. It never seems to happen all at once. At first, there’s only the faintest softening of the darkness. The outlines of the trees become a little clearer. A bird offers a tentative note, as though checking whether morning has really arrived. Mist hangs over the fields while the first rays of sunlight catch the tops of the trees, turning them briefly to gold.

If you weren’t paying attention, you could almost miss it.

Life changes like that.

Rarely in an instant.

Usually, gradually.

Until one day you look back and realise you’re no longer the person who first set out on the journey.

Not because you found a new version of yourself somewhere along the way.

But because, through all the joys, disappointments, losses and unexpected detours, you gradually became more fully yourself.

I think that’s one of life’s quiet miracles.

Not that we can reinvent ourselves overnight, but that we are always capable of growing. Of changing. Of becoming a little wiser, a little kinder and a little more at home in our own lives.

If these posts have a single message, I hope it is this.

A life change, challenge or crisis is not simply something to survive.

It is an invitation to pause long enough to ask whether the life you’ve been living still fits the person you are now.

Sometimes the answer will be yes, and you’ll return to it with fresh gratitude.

Sometimes the answer will be no, and you’ll begin the slow, often untidy work of reshaping your life until it does.

So if you’re waiting for your next chapter to begin, don’t overlook the possibility that it already has.

It may have started with a difficult conversation.

Or a diagnosis.

Or a redundancy.

Or a walk through the woods on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, when the air smelt of pine needles and warm earth, and for reasons you couldn’t quite explain, you came home feeling just a little lighter than when you left.

The beginning of a new chapter isn’t always announced by a fanfare.

Sometimes it sounds like birdsong.

Sometimes it feels like taking a deep breath.

And sometimes it begins with the quiet realisation that you don’t need to become someone else.

You simply need to keep becoming more authentically yourself.

28/07/202608/08/2026

What Horses Can Teach Us About Listening with Self-Awareness

What Horses Teach Us About Active Listening

I used to think I was a good listener. Then I got a small herd of Falabellas who couldn’t care less about my medical degree, my life coaching certificates, or the very reasonable things I was trying to explain to them, and I found out I had a great deal to learn. Tess, my Friesian mare, in particular, has a way of pinning her ears at me that says “What a lot of hogwash!” Humbling.

In our hyper-connected, fast-paced modern world, communication has largely been reduced to words on a screen, quick voice notes, or hurried conversations over coffee. We are constantly talking, texting, and broadcasting, yet we rarely take the time to truly listen. We often listen merely to reply, rather than to understand.

Enter the horse. A 1,200-pound prey animal whose very survival has depended, for millennia, on its ability to read the subtlest shifts in its environment. Working with horses offers an in-depth masterclass in a skill we desperately need to reclaim: aware and active listening.

The Illusion of Verbal Communication

Most of us rely heavily on verbal language. We assume that if someone isn’t speaking, they aren’t communicating. However, psychologists and communication experts have long noted that a significant portion of human communication is non-verbal—encompassing tone of voice, facial expressions, posture, and micro-movements.

When you step into a round pen or a pasture with a horse, your verbal language becomes almost entirely irrelevant. You cannot explain your intentions to a horse using words. You cannot negotiate, rationalise, or debate. Instead, you are forced to engage in a completely different paradigm of communication. You must learn to “listen” with your eyes, your body, your perception and your intuition.

Reading the Equine Language

Horses are constantly broadcasting their internal state, but their language is a silent symphony of physical cues. A horse’s ears are perhaps its most expressive feature. Ears pinned flat against the neck often scream anger or extreme discomfort. Ears flicking back and forth can indicate divided attention or uncertainty. A relaxed, slightly drooped ear may suggest contentment and trust.

But it doesn’t stop at the ears. A horse communicates through the tension in its jaw, the swish of its tail, the shifting of its weight, and the softness—or pointedness—of its gaze. When a horse licks and chews, it processes information and releases tension. When it rests a hind leg, it is signalling relaxation.

To work safely and effectively with a horse, you must become an active observer. You cannot be distracted by your phone or lost in your own thoughts. You must be entirely present, actively “listening” to the continuous stream of non-verbal data the horse is providing. If you ignore a horse’s subtle signs of anxiety—a tightened lip, a slightly elevated head—you might soon find yourself dealing with a full-blown panic response. The horse teaches you that listening is not a passive state; it is an active, continuous engagement with the present moment.

Linking this Way of Listening to Human Relationships

The profound beauty of learning to listen to a horse is how seamlessly this skill translates back into our human relationships. When we train ourselves to notice the subtle physical cues of an animal, we inadvertently sharpen our awareness of the people around us.

Think about your last conversation with a colleague, a partner, or a child. Were you truly listening, or were you just waiting for your turn to speak? If you apply the “equine listening/absorbing” approach, the entire dynamic shifts. You begin to notice the unspoken narrative.

You might notice that while your colleague is saying “I’m fine with this project,” their crossed arms, tight jaw, and lack of eye contact are screaming the exact opposite. You might realise that your child’s sudden quietness and slumped shoulders are communicating a distress that they don’t yet have the vocabulary to articulate.

By becoming attuned to these non-verbal cues, we become better, more empathetic listeners. We stop taking words at face value and start listening to the whole person. We learn to read the room, to sense the underlying emotional currents, and to respond to what is actually being felt, rather than just what is being said.

The Gift of Being Heard

There is a profound psychological comfort in feeling truly heard and understood. When a horse realises that you are “listening” to its subtle cues—that you step back when it shows anxiety, or that you soften your posture when it seeks connection—it responds with immense trust. The horse relaxes, knowing it is safe with someone who understands its language.

We are no different. When we practice deep, active listening with the people in our lives, we create a safe space for vulnerability and authentic connection. When people feel that you are not just hearing their words, but truly seeing their emotions and understanding their unspoken needs, the quality of the relationship transforms. Trust deepens. Conflicts resolve more easily. Empathy flows.

A Practice for Everyday Life

You don’t need to own a horse to practice this, though it does help a lot if you can practice with a horse first. You can start today. In your next conversation, challenge yourself to listen like a horseman/woman. Silence your internal monologue. Put away your phone. Look at the person in front of you. Notice their posture, the tension in their face, the movement of their hands, and the cadence of their breathing.

Listen not just to reply, but to understand what the other person is trying to get across. In doing so, you honour the profound lesson that horses have been trying to teach us all along: that the most important things we say to one another are rarely spoken aloud.

If any part of you just went “well, that explains a few things,” I’d love to welcome you to a Rebooted and Realigned Retreat. It’s a bit of Camino de Santiago walking, listening to horses, and blessedly little talking — the kind of quiet that helps you actually hear what your inner critic has been drowning out. Come see for yourself.

28/07/202615/07/2026

The Best Retreat Hosts Aren’t the Busiest Ones

One of the most unexpected lessons I learned as a retreat guest was that the best hosts aren’t the ones who do the most. They’re the ones who make you feel most at home.

When I first started attending retreats, I had a rather romantic notion of what a retreat host ought to be.

I imagined someone who was endlessly energetic, always organising the next activity, checking that everyone was happy, answering questions before they were asked and somehow managing to be present in three places at once. The sort of person who could produce herbal tea, profound wisdom and a freshly baked croissant with equal ease.

In other words, a superhero.

As it turns out, the retreat hosts I remember most weren’t like that at all.

They weren’t constantly talking. They didn’t feel the need to fill every silence with another insight or every spare moment with another carefully planned activity. They weren’t trying to impress anyone.

They simply had a way of making people feel wonderfully welcome.

It’s surprisingly difficult to explain what that feels like.

It’s in the way they greet you at the door, as though they’ve genuinely been looking forward to your arrival rather than simply expecting yet another guest. It’s the unhurried conversation over a cup of tea while you recover from your journey. It’s the reassuring sense that there is nowhere you need to be and nothing you need to achieve for the next few days.

They weren’t performing hospitality.

They were simply being hospitable.

There’s a world of difference.

We’ve all experienced the opposite, haven’t we? The frantic host who is so busy making everything perfect that they never quite have time to enjoy the people they’ve invited. Meals become military operations. Every tiny hiccup feels like a crisis. You almost feel guilty asking where the teaspoons live because they already seem to have enough on their plate.

I suspect many of us have been that person ourselves at least once.

I certainly have.

There was a time when I thought being a good host meant constantly being available. If guests were reading quietly, perhaps I should ask whether they needed anything. If there was a lull in conversation, perhaps I should suggest another activity. If someone wandered off on their own, perhaps I ought to check they were all right.

My intentions were kind.

My timing wasn’t always perfect.

One of the greatest gifts retreating has given me is the realisation that people don’t usually come away in search of more stimulation.

Most of them are desperate to escape it.

Many arrive after months—or years—of being continuously surrounded by people wanting something from them. Their diaries have become impossible games of Tetris. Their phones seem incapable of remaining silent for more than thirty seconds. They’ve become so accustomed to reacting that they’ve almost forgotten what it feels like simply to respond.

The last thing they need is a host who accidentally adds to the busyness. What they need is someone who quietly gives them permission to slow down.

I noticed that the retreat hosts I admired most all had one quality in common.

They never seemed to be in a hurry.

That doesn’t mean they weren’t working hard. Anyone who has ever hosted a retreat knows there are meals to prepare, shopping to do, questions to answer and approximately one thousand tiny details that nobody ever notices unless they go wrong.

The work is real.

But the atmosphere doesn’t have to feel like work.

The best hosts somehow managed to protect their guests from seeing the frantic paddling beneath the surface. Like swans gliding serenely across a lake, they created an impression of ease that invited everyone else to relax too.

I found that deeply reassuring.

Because calm, it turns out, is wonderfully contagious.

When someone welcomes you without rushing, speaks without hurrying to the next point and sits down with you instead of constantly springing up to do one more thing, your own nervous system quietly takes note.

Perhaps I don’t have to rush either.

Perhaps nothing terrible will happen if I finish this cup of tea before moving on to the next thing.

Perhaps I can finally exhale.

That may not sound particularly profound, but I think it is.

We live in a culture that celebrates busyness almost as a virtue. We admire people who multitask, optimise and squeeze one more thing into an already overflowing day. Somewhere along the way we’ve started confusing being busy with being valuable.

Retreats offer a gentle alternative.

They remind us that presence is far more generous than performance.

As I’ve hosted more retreats, I’ve found myself becoming less interested in trying to create a perfect experience and much more interested in creating a restful one.

Of course, I want everything to run smoothly. I care about comfortable rooms, delicious food and thoughtful details. But I’ve learned that guests rarely remember whether dinner was served exactly on time or whether every cushion was perfectly plumped.

They remember how they felt.

They remember laughing over breakfast.

They remember sitting in the garden with a glass of wine as the evening light softened over the vineyards.

They remember feeling safe enough to let go.

And, perhaps most importantly, they remember a host who didn’t make the retreat about themselves.

That, I think, is the true art of hospitality.

Not being the most interesting person in the room.

Not dazzling people with endless knowledge or keeping them constantly entertained.

Simply creating a space where other people can hear themselves think again.

Looking back, I realise that the retreat hosts who influenced me most probably had no idea they were doing so. They weren’t teaching through carefully crafted lectures or inspirational speeches. They were teaching by example. They showed me that kindness doesn’t have to be loud, that confidence doesn’t need to dominate a room, and that making people feel at ease is a far greater gift than making them feel impressed.

It’s a lesson I’ve carried home from every retreat I’ve attended, and one I try to bring to every retreat I host.

After all, nobody comes to the French countryside hoping to watch someone else rush around.

They come in the hope that, somewhere between the vineyards, the birdsong and a leisurely cup of coffee, they might remember what an unhurried life feels like.

If that sounds rather appealing, I’d be delighted to welcome you to one of my retreats.

I can’t promise perfection. I can promise a warm welcome, plenty of time to breathe and absolutely no medals for keeping busy.

27/07/202608/08/2026

The Most Life-Changing Decisions Are Slow Decisions

Whenever I’m facing an important decision, there’s one thing I’ve learned to avoid.

Rushing into anything.

Urgency has a wonderfully convincing voice. It whispers that you need to decide today. That if you don’t act immediately, you’ll miss your chance. Everyone else seems to know what they’re doing, so why are you still hesitating?

It sounds remarkably persuasive.

It is also often remarkably, utterly and completely wrong.

I’ve noticed that people going through a major life change frequently become impatient with themselves. The marriage has ended, so they feel they should know what comes next. They’ve retired, so they think they ought to have discovered a new purpose by Tuesday. Redundancy arrives on Friday, and by Monday morning they’re scrolling through job adverts, convinced they must replace not only their income but also their identity.

As though uncertainty were a problem to be solved as quickly as possible.

I understand the temptation. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. It sits beside us at three o’clock in the morning, asking awkward questions we’d much rather postpone until daylight. Given the choice, most of us would gladly exchange uncertainty for almost anything else.

But discomfort isn’t always a sign that something has gone wrong.

Sometimes it’s simply the feeling of a life rearranging itself.

One of the reasons I love walking is that it teaches us something modern life keeps encouraging us to forget.

You can only take one step at a time.

The path unfolds gradually. You notice the scent of pine warming in the sunshine, the rhythmic chorus of cicadas in the long grass, the crunch of gravel beneath your boots. Every so often, you reach the top of a hill and realise the view was hidden until you climbed high enough to see it.

Life has a curious habit of unfolding the same way.

Gradually, you become aware of a vague feeling that something no longer fits. Then comes a conversation that lingers in your mind for days. A book that seems to have been written just for you. A walk during which the same thought returns again and again until it quietly refuses to be ignored.

Looking back, it can all seem perfectly obvious.

Accepting it is another matter entirely.

We like to imagine that wise decisions are made by gathering enough information. There is certainly some truth in that. But I’ve also noticed that there comes a point when more information simply creates more noise.

It’s rather like trying to see your reflection by constantly stirring the water.

At some stage, you have to stop.

You have to let the water become still.

Only then does the picture emerge.

That doesn’t mean doing nothing.

Waiting wisely is very different from avoiding difficult decisions. One is an active process of paying attention. The other is simply procrastination wearing a respectable disguise.

The challenge is learning the difference.

I’ve come to think that some of the most important work we do during big changes is invisible. While we imagine we’re “doing nothing”, we’re actually grieving, questioning, noticing, letting go and slowly becoming the person who will eventually be capable of making the decision.

Perhaps that’s why answers rarely arrive when we chase them.

They tend to appear when we create enough space for them to catch up with us.

Why, then, do we expect ourselves to make life’s biggest decisions at breakneck speed?

If you’re standing at a crossroads today, wondering which direction to take, perhaps the wisest thing you can do is resist the pressure to figure everything out right away.

Gather information.

Take long walks.

Sleep on it.

Pray, if that’s part of your life.

Because the best decisions are rarely the ones we make in a panic.

More often, they’re the ones that emerge slowly, like when the morning mist lifts from a valley to reveal a path that was there all along.

You simply couldn’t see it yet.

26/07/202627/07/2026

A Retreat Should Leave You Wanting More, Not Needing Another Holiday

One of the biggest surprises I had as a retreat guest was discovering that even something designed to restore you can leave you feeling utterly exhausted.

It sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it?

After all, a retreat is supposed to be restful. It’s where we go to escape the busyness of everyday life, to breathe a little more deeply, to think more clearly and perhaps even remember what it feels like to wake up without immediately reaching for our phones.

So why have I occasionally come home from a retreat feeling as though I needed another week off?

The answer, I think, is surprisingly simple.

Not everything that fills us up also allows us to recharge.

I’ve attended retreats that were beautifully organised, packed with fascinating workshops, inspiring speakers, meaningful conversations and activities from breakfast until bedtime. Every hour had been planned with the very best of intentions. There was always something to do, somewhere to be or someone to talk to.

And yet, by the final day, I found myself secretly longing for… silence.

Not another discussion.

Not another exercise.

Not another invitation to “share with the group.”

Just an hour alone with a book, a comfortable chair and nobody expecting me to be involved.

It made me realise something rather important.

A full schedule isn’t the same as a full heart.

Many of us arrive at a retreat with lives that are already overflowing. Our diaries resemble complicated jigsaw puzzles. We spend our days solving problems, making decisions, answering questions and trying to keep up with a world that seems determined to move faster every year.

Our minds are tired long before our bodies are.

If a retreat simply replaces one timetable with another, have we really escaped anything?

Of course, activities have their place. I’ve learned something valuable on every retreat I’ve attended, whether it was during a workshop, a guided walk or an unexpectedly profound conversation over dinner.

But I’ve also learned that our minds need stretching space.

Just as muscles grow stronger during rest rather than during exercise itself, insights often appear in the pauses between activities rather than during them.

It’s the quiet walk after lunch.

The cup of tea enjoyed without conversation.

The moment you look up from your book because a bird has landed on the fence.

The ten minutes spent watching clouds drift across a summer sky.

Nothing appears to be happening.

Yet something usually is.

I remember one retreat where there was an unexpected gap in the programme because of heavy rain. At first, everyone seemed slightly unsettled. We had become so accustomed to moving from one activity to the next that an empty afternoon felt almost… alarming.

People wandered off in different directions.

Some curled up with novels.

Others sat by the window watching the weather.

A few simply slept.

By dinner that evening, the atmosphere had changed completely.

Conversations were gentler.

People laughed more easily.

Nobody seemed to be trying quite so hard.

The rain had quietly given us permission to rest.

I’ve never forgotten that.

Since then, I’ve become rather suspicious of anything described as “action-packed” when it’s paired with the word retreat.

Adventure? Certainly.

Learning? Absolutely.

But action-packed?

That sounds suspiciously like ordinary life wearing linen trousers.

One of the greatest gifts a retreat can offer is freedom from the constant feeling that every moment must be productive.

We are remarkably good at turning even leisure into another achievement. We count our steps, optimise our sleep, track our meditation streaks and wonder whether we’re reading enough books to qualify as properly relaxed.

It’s exhausting.

A retreat should loosen that grip.

It should remind us that watching the evening light change over a vineyard isn’t wasting time.

Neither is lingering over breakfast.

Or reading three chapters because the story is too good to put down.

Or sitting in the garden doing absolutely nothing except listening to the wind in the trees.

Those moments are not interruptions to the retreat.

They are the retreat.

Hosting my own retreats has made me think carefully about the difference between offering people opportunities and giving them obligations.

There’s an important distinction.

An invitation feels light.

An expectation feels heavy.

I want guests to feel free to join a conversation, but equally free to wander off on their own. To enjoy a leisurely walk without worrying whether they’re missing something. To take an afternoon nap without apologising for it. To choose solitude without feeling antisocial.

After all, many of us spend our lives responding to everyone else’s expectations.

A retreat should be one of the few places where that burden becomes noticeably lighter.

Ironically, I’ve found that when people are given genuine freedom, they often become more curious rather than less. They engage more deeply because they’re choosing to, not because they’re following the programme.

Rest, it seems, has a way of making us more present.

Looking back, the retreats I remember most fondly aren’t necessarily the ones where I did the most. They’re the ones where I noticed the most. The scent of lavender warming in the afternoon sun. The satisfying crunch of gravel beneath my walking boots. The taste of coffee without simultaneously replying to emails. The pleasure of an unhurried conversation that wandered wherever it pleased.

Those memories don’t feel dramatic.

They feel nourishing.

And perhaps that’s the point.

If the idea of returning home refreshed rather than needing another holiday to recover from your holiday appeals to you, I’d love to welcome you to one of my Camino de Santiago walking retreats.

Just don’t be surprised if the most productive thing you do all week is absolutely nothing at all.

I put the essence of who I am, and everything I have experienced that makes me who I am, with great enthusiasm, into my retreats, courses and books. – Dr Margaretha Montagu (MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract (cert,) Transformational Life Coach (dip,) Life Story Coach (cert) Counselling (cert,) Med Hypnotherapy (dip) and EAGALA (cert)