Author: Margaretha Montagu

Mindfulness Can Turn Your Retreat into a Life-Changing Journey (Not Just a Holiday)

What this is: A practical guide to using mindfulness as the bridge between “going on a retreat” and actually experiencing transformation. This explores how present-moment awareness turns travel from escapism into a catalyst for the next chapter of your life.

What this isn’t: Another fluffy piece about “finding yourself” whilst sipping overpriced smoothies. No Instagram-worthy platitudes. No suggestion that a week away will magically solve everything.

Read this if: You’re done with surface-level solutions and ready to approach your retreat—and your transition—with genuine intention. You know that real change requires more than a change of scenery, but you’re curious whether mindful travel might be the missing piece.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Mindfulness transforms retreat travel from escape to exploration, shifting your focus from running away to walking toward something new
2. The journey itself becomes the practice, not just the destination, making every moment of travel an opportunity for awareness and growth
3. Presence amplifies the retreat experience, helping you absorb insights more deeply and integrate them into daily life back home
4. Mindful travel creates space for unexpected revelations, allowing your unconscious mind to surface what you’ve been too busy to notice
5. The skills you develop while travelling mindfully become tools for navigating life transitions, building a practice that extends far beyond your time away

Introduction: The Journey Before the Journey

Here’s what nobody tells you about booking a retreat during a major life transition: the moment you click “confirm reservation” is when the real work begins.

Not the packing. Not the travel arrangements. The reckoning.

Because somewhere between purchasing your ticket and boarding the plane, you’ll likely experience at least three minor panic attacks, two moments of “what on earth am I doing,” and one serious consideration of cancelling the whole thing. The anticipation feels too big. The hope feels too fragile. What if you travel all that way and nothing changes?

I’ve spent twenty years hosting transformational retreats on the Camino de Santiago, and I can tell you this: the people who experience the deepest shifts aren’t necessarily the ones who arrive most broken or most desperate. They’re the ones who’ve learned to be present, not just at the retreat itself, but during every stage of the journey toward it.

What you’ll gain from reading this: A framework for approaching retreat travel with the kind of mindfulness that doesn’t just make the experience more pleasant, it makes it genuinely transformative. You’ll discover how to turn every aspect of travel—from airport queues to unfamiliar beds—into opportunities for the awareness and self-discovery you’re seeking.

The Story of Claire Brennan

Claire Brennan sat in Terminal 3 at Heathrow, watching her departure board with the kind of intensity usually reserved for cardiac surgeons monitoring vital signs.

Toulouse. Gate 42. Boarding 14:25.

Three hours and seventeen minutes until she’d be walking on French soil. Three hours and seventeen minutes until her “new life” could officially begin.

The divorce had been finalised four months ago. The house sold six weeks back. Her daughter was settled at university, her son thriving in his gap year travels. She’d done everything the books suggested: therapy, journaling, divorce recovery gatherings. And still, she felt like a photograph slowly fading, the edges of herself becoming less distinct with each passing day.

The retreat had seemed like the answer. Seven days walking the Camino, storytelling circles, transformation, rebirth. She’d paid the deposit on a particularly dark Tuesday, imagining herself striding purposefully along ancient paths, finally becoming the woman she was meant to be.

But sitting here now, watching businesspeople scroll their phones and families wrangling luggage, Claire felt nothing. Numb. Observing her own life from somewhere very far away.

Her coffee had gone cold. She hadn’t noticed. The Danish she’d purchased sat untouched, a small monument to her lack of appetite. Around her, the airport hummed with purpose—everyone going somewhere, being someone. Claire was just… waiting.

Just get there, she told herself. Once you arrive, everything will click into place.

Then a small child, perhaps three years old, dropped a stuffed elephant directly onto Claire’s shoe. The girl looked up, eyes wide with that particular toddler terror of having Done Something Wrong.

“Oh, darling, it’s perfectly fine,” Claire said, bending to retrieve the worn grey toy. Its left ear was missing, one eye hung by a thread. She could feel the child’s whole body tense, preparing to cry.

“Edward likes adventures,” Claire said softly, making the elephant do a little dance. “I think he was trying to explore my shoe. Is that right, Edward?”

The child’s face transformed. “He’s called Mr. Trunks!”

“My sincere apologies, Mr. Trunks.” Claire performed a small bow.

The mother appeared, flustered and apologetic, thanking Claire profusely whilst herding the child away. But something had shifted. Claire looked down at her hands—they were trembling slightly. She could feel her heartbeat. The airport sounds had suddenly acquired texture: the wheeled suitcases, the incomprehensible announcements, someone’s laughter three gates away.

She was here. Actually here.

Not in the future, imagining transformation. Not in the past, cataloguing failures. Here, in this uncomfortable chair, with cold coffee and an uneaten Danish, being smiled at by a stranger’s child.

Claire picked up her phone and cancelled the meditation app she’d been halfheartedly using. Instead, she opened her notes and wrote: “Mr. Trunks. Terminal 3. The feeling of coming back into my body.”

When her flight was called, she didn’t rush. She noticed the weight of her bag, the slight catch in her left knee, the scent of someone’s perfume, the quality of light through the terminal windows. She’d travelled dozens of times before, always in a fog of efficiency and mild irritation, treating airports as obstacles between herself and her destination.

This time, she paid attention.

On the plane, she observed the safety demonstration instead of scrolling. She felt the exact moment of takeoff, that brief suspension between earth and sky. She watched clouds through the window, their shapes constantly shifting, and thought about impermanence in a way that felt discovered rather than learned.

By the time she collected her rental car in Toulouse, Claire had accumulated seventeen small observations in her notes. Not profound ones. Just present ones. The way French sounds different when you’re actually listening. The texture of the steering wheel. How hunger feels when you’re paying attention to your body.

She drove toward the retreat centre slowly, windows down, letting unfamiliar air move through the car. She got slightly lost and instead of panicking, she pulled over, consulted her App, noticed the particular quality of late afternoon light on the Pyrenees in the distance.

When she finally arrived, walking through the gate to where I stood waiting with the horses, she looked different from most guests I meet. Not transformed—not yet. But aware.

“I think,” she said, her eyes bright with something like wonder, “I think the retreat might have already started.”

She was absolutely right.

The takeaway: The retreat doesn’t begin when you arrive at your destination. It begins the moment you decide to be present in your journey. Claire’s transformation wasn’t waiting for her in France—it was available to her in Terminal 3, on the plane, in the rental car. Mindfulness doesn’t make the retreat work; it recognises that travel itself can be the teacher if we’re willing to pay attention.

Why Mindfulness and Retreats Are Natural Travel Partners

What Happens When We Combine Awareness with Movement?

There’s a particular magic that occurs when you pair conscious awareness with a physical journey. As both a physician who’s spent two decades studying stress management and someone who’s hosted dozens of people on walking retreats, I’ve observed this alchemy repeatedly.

Travel inherently disrupts our patterns. New beds, unfamiliar food, different languages, altered schedules—all these disruptions can either increase our stress or create opportunities for awareness. Mindfulness is what determines which way it goes.

When you travel mindfully to attend a retreat, you’re essentially conducting a dress rehearsal for the life transition itself. Both involve:

• Moving from the known to the unknown
• Letting go of familiar routines
• Trusting the process despite uncertainty
• Being open to what emerges rather than controlling outcomes
• Building new neural pathways through novel experiences

The practice you develop navigating airports mindfully, sitting with discomfort on long flights, staying present through delays and disruptions—this same practice becomes your toolkit for navigating divorce, career changes, grief, illness, or any major life transition.

When you approach retreat travel with mindfulness, you’re not just preparing yourself for transformation. You’re modelling a different way of being that ripples outward. Your grown children notice you’re handling stress differently. Your colleagues see someone who returns from travel genuinely refreshed rather than needing a holiday from the holiday. Your community encounters someone who’s learned that presence is possible even in chaos.

This isn’t selfish or self-centred. When you learn to travel mindfully, you bring back more than photographs and souvenirs. You bring back a demonstrated truth: it’s possible to stay grounded whilst everything changes.

The research supports this, too. Studies on mindfulness and travel show that present-moment awareness during journeys increases positive emotions, reduces travel-related stress, enhances memory formation, and improves our ability to adapt to new situations. All skills that are desperately needed during major life transitions.

Moreover, there’s something about the liminal space of travel—being between one place and another—that mirrors the liminal space of life transitions. You’re not who you were, not yet who you’ll become. That uncomfortable in-between place becomes less frightening when you’ve practised being present within it.

Five Critical Mistakes to Avoid When Travelling Mindfully to Retreats

1. Mistaking Mindfulness for Achievement

You’re not trying to be the “best” at being present. Some moments you’ll be completely absorbed in worry about whether you locked the back door. That’s fine. Mindfulness isn’t about never having thoughts; it’s about noticing when you’ve drifted and gently returning. The woman sitting in the airport, catastrophising about the retreat, is having a mindful moment if she notices she’s catastrophising.

2. Waiting for Arrival to Begin Being Present

The retreat started when you booked it, perhaps even before. Every email confirmation, every item you pack, every goodbye you say—these are part of the journey. If you spend the entire travel day in “just get there” mode, you’ve missed precious opportunities for practice and awareness.

3. Treating Discomfort as a Problem to Solve

That uncomfortable aeroplane seat, the crying baby, the delay, the confusion about which bus to take—these aren’t obstacles to mindfulness. They’re the curriculum. Your retreat will include discomfort too (blisters, challenging weather, emotional breakthroughs that hurt). Learning to be present with travel discomfort is a foundational practice.

4. Over-Planning Every Moment

Yes, you need tickets and accommodation. But if you’ve scheduled every single moment, eliminated all space for spontaneity, you’ve essentially tried to control your way through a journey designed to teach you to let go. Leave gaps. Allow for detours. Trust that not everything needs to be figured out in advance.

5. Travelling as Escape Rather Than Exploration

There’s a vast difference between running away from your life and walking toward your next chapter. If you’re using the retreat to avoid dealing with something, that something will be waiting when you return, often with interest accumulated. Mindful travel means being honest about what you’re moving toward and what you’re temporarily leaving behind.

Intention-Setting Exercise: The Mindful Traveller’s Compass

Before you begin your journey, find a quiet moment to complete this brief but powerful exercise. You’ll need five minutes and something to write with.

Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.

Now, complete these sentences:

I am travelling toward: (not running from, but moving toward) Write one specific quality, feeling, or version of yourself you hope to encounter or develop.

During my journey, I will notice: (choose one sense to focus on) Sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch—commit to paying particular attention to one throughout your travels.

When I feel overwhelmed, I will: (create one simple grounding practice) This might be as simple as “count five breaths” or “notice three sounds.”

I’m leaving behind: (name one specific pattern or belief you’re ready to release) Be honest and specific.

I’m bringing with me: (name one strength that’s already yours) Something that’s already helped you through difficult times.

Fold this paper and keep it accessible during your journey. Read it during moments of transition: at the airport, before boarding, when you arrive. Let it be your compass rather than your map.

Further Reading: Books That Illuminate the Path

1. “The Art of Pilgrimage” by Phil Cousineau. Why this book: Cousineau distinguishes between tourism and pilgrimage beautifully, offering a framework for approaching any journey as a transformative practice. Perfect for understanding why retreat travel differs fundamentally from holiday travel.

2. “Walking Home” by Sonia Choquette. Why this book: A raw, honest account of walking the Camino during grief. Choquette doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulty or promise easy transformation, making it an antidote to spiritual bypassing.

3. “Wherever You Go, There You Are” by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Why this book: The foundational text on mindfulness meditation, Kabat-Zinn’s work is essential for understanding that presence isn’t about where you are but how you are.

4. “The Places That Scare You” by Pema Chödrön. Why this book: Chödrön’s compassionate approach to working with fear and uncertainty is invaluable for anyone navigating major transitions. Her teachings on “staying with” discomfort are particularly relevant for travel challenges.

5. “Wanderlust” by Rebecca Solnit. Why this book: A cultural history of walking that illuminates why moving through landscape on foot creates particular conditions for thinking, creativity, and transformation.

PS: My book, “Embracing Change, in 10 minutes a day,” offers practical daily practices for navigating life transitions. It’s designed specifically for people who are time-poor but change-rich, offering micro-practices that build genuine resilience. Many retreat participants work through it before, during, and after their journeys. Available here.*

If you are currently facing a major life transition or any other dramatic change in your circumstances, and you have no idea how you are going to cope, the good news is that the strategy presented in this book can help you, step by step, to improve your ability to handle the stress caused by change, even if you feel entirely powerless at the moment.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I stay mindful when travel itself is inherently stressful?

Travel stress is actually the perfect mindfulness laboratory. Instead of trying to eliminate stress (impossible), practice noticing your response to it. When your flight is delayed, can you observe your frustration without being consumed by it? This skill—being with difficulty without being overwhelmed—is exactly what you need for life transitions. Start small: notice three breaths during moments of travel stress.

What if I’m travelling with others who aren’t interested in mindfulness?

Your practice doesn’t require anyone else’s participation or even awareness. You can be fully present whilst others scroll their phones, complain about delays, or rush through airports. In fact, practising presence whilst surrounded by distraction is advanced-level work. Your calm may even influence travel companions unconsciously.

Can I be mindful and still use travel time productively?

Mindfulness isn’t about doing nothing; it’s about being aware of what you’re doing whilst you’re doing it. You can read, work, or plan mindfully. The question is: are you present to the activity or going through motions whilst your mind spins elsewhere? There’s a difference between mindful productivity and anxious busyness disguised as productivity.

How is mindful retreat travel different from regular mindfulness practice?

The novelty of travel creates optimal conditions for awareness. Your usual autopilot patterns don’t work in unfamiliar environments, forcing you into presence. Plus, the act of physical journey mirrors internal journey beautifully. You’re literally and metaphorically moving from one place to another, making the practice more tangible and memorable.

What if I get to the retreat and realise I’ve been mindless the entire journey?

First, noticing this IS mindfulness. Second, there’s no such thing as a wasted journey. Every moment of “mindless” travel still disrupted your patterns, still moved you physically through space, still brought you to where you need to be. Start being present now, wherever “now” is. The retreat doesn’t judge your arrival state; it works with whoever shows up.

Conclusion: The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Breath

Here’s the truth about major life transitions: they don’t resolve neatly. There’s no final destination where everything makes sense and you’re fully transformed into your next-chapter self. But there are journeys—literal and metaphorical—that teach you how to walk through uncertainty with more grace, more awareness, more trust.

Mindful retreat travel isn’t about perfection. It’s about permission. Permission to be present to difficulty. Permission to find meaning in delays and detours. Permission to discover that transformation isn’t something you achieve at a destination; it’s something you practise in every moment of the journey toward it.

As the poet Rumi wrote: “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”

Your pull toward retreat, toward travel, toward transformation—trust it. But trust it mindfully. Let every stage of the journey count. Let every uncomfortable aeroplane seat and confusing train station, and moment of doubt be part of the curriculum.

You’re not going on a retreat to escape your life. You’re travelling mindfully to learn how to be fully present for it.

Your Next Step: Walk the Camino With Intention

If this article has resonated with you, I invite you to consider something more than just reading about mindful retreat travel—experience it firsthand on my seven-day Crossroads Camino de Santiago walking retreat in the breathtaking south-west of France.

This isn’t a typical hiking holiday. It’s a carefully designed journey specifically for people at life’s crossroads—those navigating divorce, loss, career transitions, or simply the profound question of “what’s next?” Each day combines mindful walking on ancient pilgrimage paths with evening storytelling circles alongside my Friesian horses, creating space for both movement and reflection, companionship and solitude.

As a physician with twenty years in stress management, an NLP master practitioner and medical hypnotherapist, I’ve designed this retreat to address exactly what you’re experiencing: the need for genuine transformation, not escape. The walking provides rhythm and release. The stories shared in the circle provide connection and insight. The horses offer their particular wisdom—teaching presence simply through being with them.

This retreat teaches you to travel mindfully whilst you’re actually doing it, building skills that extend far beyond the Camino into your everyday life back home.

Discover more about the Crossroads Camino retreat here.

A Final Reflection

Think about this: What if the life you’re seeking isn’t waiting for you somewhere else, but is actually available right now, in this moment, in your awareness of reading these words?

And when you do travel—to a retreat, to a new chapter, to an unknown destination—what would change if you treated every step of the journey as sacred ground?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you experienced mindful travel, or are you preparing for a journey? What’s one thing you’ll commit to noticing on your next trip?

If your soul is craving fresh air, meaningful movement, and a chance to reconnect with nature, join us on a Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreat in the southwest of France. This isn’t just a scenic hike – it’s a powerful, natural reboot for your body, mind, and spirit. Imagine quiet paths, rolling hills, cozy evenings, and slow conversations. No fitness requirements. No forced bonding. No pressure to have a breakthrough. Just one foot in front of the other, and a journey that meets you exactly where you are.

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

Research

Systematic reviews focused on mindfulness in tourism

Iacob, Jesus & Carmo (2021) — “A Systematic Review: Mindfulness Applied on the Field of Tourism” (Journal of Spatial and Organisational Dynamics). This review screened 517 records and included 16 empirical studies, summarising how mindfulness (including socio-cognitive mindfulness and mindfulness meditation perspectives) has been studied in tourism and what outcomes were reported. ​

Systematic reviews where mindfulness is central/explicit

Câmara, Pocinho, Agapito & Neves de Jesus (2023) — “Meaningful experiences in tourism: A systematic review of psychological constructs” (European Journal of Tourism Research). This systematic review (70 articles from Scopus/WoS) frames meaningful tourism experiences through positive psychology and explicitly includes mindfulness among the constructs assessed in the reviewed literature.

Retreats During Life Transitions: Escape Route or Expensive Mistake?

What this is: A straight-talking exploration of whether booking that getaway during your divorce, career crisis, or major life upheaval is genuine self-care or just really expensive avoidance. Spoiler: it depends entirely on why you’re going.

What this isn’t: A guilt trip about deserving a break or a prescription for what you “should” do. This isn’t about whether you need rest (you do), it’s about whether a holiday will actually give you what you’re hoping for.

Read this if: You’re tempted to book flights while your life is in flux and you’re wondering if you’re running toward something or away from something. Or if you’ve already returned from a holiday feeling more confused than when you left.

Why Your Mid-Crisis Retreat Could Be the Best (or Worst) Decision You’ll Make

5 Key Takeaways

Going on Retreat While Your Life Falls Apart: Strategic Move or Self-Sabotage?

1. The “why” matters infinitely more than the “where” – Your intention determines whether a holiday becomes transformational or just postpones the inevitable reckoning.
2. Timing isn’t about calendar dates – It’s about your internal readiness to either process or pause, and knowing which you genuinely need right now.
3. Not all getaways are created equal – A boozy resort week hits differently than a walking retreat, and your transition stage determines which serves you better.
4. The person you’re running from has your boarding pass – You can’t outrun your thoughts, but you can choose environments that help you think better ones.
5. Strategic rest isn’t the same as strategic avoidance – Learning to tell the difference might be the most valuable skill you develop this year.

Introduction: The £3,000 Question

With one eye still on last year’s retreat season and what it taught me, and the other on next year’s season, I’m planning to go on a retreat of my own: one that will involve two 12-hour flights and a serious financial investment.

Only natural to think carefully about why I’m going on this retreat: to recharge my batteries, obviously, to get inspiration for the next season’s retreats, and…yes, to process the current life transition I’m going through at the moment.

I’ve watched this particular scenario play out dozens of times over nearly two decades of hosting transformational retreats: someone books a holiday three weeks after their world implodes, convinced that a change of scenery will provide the clarity they’re desperately seeking. Sometimes it does. Often, all they have done is to purchase an expensive delay.

How will I avoid this happening to me?

The real question isn’t whether you should go on holiday during a life transition. It’s whether you’re seeking the kind of rest that restores or the kind that merely distracts. Because here’s what twenty years as a physician and retreat host has taught me: your crisis has already packed its bags, and it’s coming with you.

To avoid the distraction trap, I’m planning to mindfully make the most of every moment, and to record all insights as they appear, by doing a series of stories, as I did in December, with my 24 Advent stories.

So before you cancel those flights, know this: done intentionally, a holiday during a transition, no matter how radical, can be the pause that changes everything. The trick is knowing the difference between running away and making your way mindfully toward.

The Woman Who Fled to Bali (And Found Herself)

Emma Richardson had been staring at her laptop screen for forty-seven minutes, cursor blinking mockingly in a blank email, when she finally snapped it shut and opened a travel website instead.

Three months earlier, her husband had moved out. Two months earlier, she’d been made redundant. Six weeks earlier, her mother had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia. The universe, it seemed, had decided to reorganise her entire life in one brutal quarter, leaving Emma standing in the wreckage of every certainty she’d carefully constructed over fifteen years.

The Bali retreat looked perfect. Yoga at sunrise. Meditation at sunset. Organic food, whatever that meant. The photographs showed women in flowing linen, laughing over coconut bowls, looking exactly like people whose lives hadn’t recently detonated. Emma’s credit card was out before she’d consciously decided.

Her sister’s reaction was immediate: “You’re running away.”

“I’m taking care of myself,” Emma shot back, defensive in that way that proves the other person has hit raw bone.

The flight was interminable. Emma watched three films without registering a single plot point, her mind circling the same anxious loop: what should she do about work, about Martin, about her mother’s care, about the fact that she was thirty-nine and suddenly had no idea who she was anymore.

Bali was gorgeous. Objectively, undeniably gorgeous. The yoga shala overlooked rice terraces that shimmered in the morning light. The food was extraordinary. Her room smelled of frangipani and sandalwood.

And Emma? Emma felt absolutely nothing.

Well, not nothing. She felt guilty for spending money she couldn’t afford. Anxious about the emails piling up. Terrified that she’d return home in two weeks exactly as lost as when she’d left, only poorer and more stressed.

On the third morning, she skipped yoga. Instead, she sat on her balcony with terrible instant coffee and finally let herself cry. Properly. The kind of crying that sounds like an animal and leaves you wrung out and strangely clean.

The retreat facilitator, a woman named Ketut with unsettling intuitive accuracy, found her there an hour later.

“Maybe you needed to fall apart somewhere safe,” Ketut said simply, settling into the chair beside her without asking permission. “Your home has too many ghosts right now. Here, you can break without an audience.”

Emma hadn’t thought of it that way. She’d been so busy feeling guilty about “running away” that she hadn’t noticed what she’d actually done: given herself permission to collapse somewhere she wouldn’t have to immediately reassemble for other people’s comfort.

Over the next ten days, something shifted. Not dramatically. Not like the books promised. But Emma started walking the rice paddies each morning, letting her mind unspool without trying to fix anything. She journaled without editing. She told her story in the evening circles without apologising for taking up space.

She didn’t return home with answers. But she returned with something more valuable: the realisation that she didn’t need to have answers yet. That this transition was happening to her, yes, but also through her, and there was a difference.

Six months later, Emma would tell me she’d needed that holiday precisely because it wasn’t an escape. It was a controlled environment to stop performing competence and start processing reality. The Bali retreat hadn’t fixed anything. It had given her space to stop trying to fix everything and start feeling it instead.

Why Holidays During Transitions Are Trickier Than You Think

The question of whether to take a holiday during a major life transition isn’t actually about holidays at all. It’s about what we’re asking that holiday to do for us, and whether our expectations align with reality.

As both a physician who spent two decades working with stressed patients and someone who has hosted transformational retreats on the Camino de Santiago for the same length of time, I’ve seen every variation of this scenario. I’ve watched people book holidays as elaborate avoidance mechanisms. I’ve also watched people use intentional getaways as the catalyst for genuine transformation. The difference isn’t in the destination, the duration, or even the cost. It’s in the intention and, crucially, in the timing.

This is what I want to do during this retreat.

Here’s what most people don’t realise: life transitions operate on their own timeline, and that timeline rarely cooperates with our holiday calendar. The acute crisis phase, that initial period where everything feels raw and rough, isn’t when most people can actually absorb the benefits of a restorative break. Your nervous system is in survival mode. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re making decisions from a place of pain rather than clarity.

This is when retreats become expensive forms of numbing. You’re physically somewhere beautiful while mentally still trapped in the disaster you left behind. Worse, you’ve now added guilt about not being able to “enjoy yourself” or “make the most of it” to your already considerable emotional load.

But there’s a sweet spot, usually three to six months into a transition (though this varies wildly based on the nature of the crisis and can be as long as 5 years, or more), where strategic rest becomes transformative. You’ve survived the initial impact. You’re no longer in pure survival mode. You have just enough emotional bandwidth to actually process rather than merely react. This is when the right kind of getaway can offer profound insights.

The keyword being “right.” A week at an all-inclusive resort where you anaesthetise your feelings with alcohol and avoid all introspection will feel good in the moment and terrible on the flight home. But a retreat that offers structure, gentle guidance, and space for reflection, like the storytelling circles we facilitate in my Camino de Santiago Crossroads retreats, can help you metabolise your experience in ways that staying home simply won’t allow.

Your environment shapes your thinking more than you realise. Sometimes you need distance from your regular life, not to escape it but to see it clearly. Your home is full of triggers and reminders and responsibilities that keep you in familiar patterns. A new environment interrupts those patterns, creating space for new thoughts to emerge.

This isn’t just feel-good psychology. This is about how your brain processes trauma and change. You need both activation (engaging with your difficult feelings) and rest (stepping back from constant crisis management). Most people only give themselves one or the other. The magic happens when you create conditions for both.

A well-timed, intentionally chosen holiday during a life transition can be the pause that allows integration. It can be the space where you finally grieve what’s ending and start imagining what’s beginning. It can be where you remember that you’re still you, even when everything around you has changed.

But it only works if you’re honest about what you’re actually seeking. And that requires asking yourself some uncomfortable questions before you book anything.

Five Critical Mistakes to Avoid

1. Booking in the Eye of the Storm

The absolute worst time to book a holiday is in the first shock of crisis. I don’t care how good the deal is or how much you “need to get away.” Your judgment is compromised. Your nervous system is dysregulated. Wait. Let the dust settle slightly. Give yourself at least six to eight weeks from the initial crisis before making major holiday decisions. The exception? If someone else is organising it for you and all you have to do is show up. Sometimes being held by others’ planning is exactly what you need.

2. Choosing Destinations That Require Peak Mental Energy

Now is not the time for that complex itinerary through five countries with multiple connections and logistical challenges. Your cognitive capacity is already stretched. Choose simple. Choose direct flights. Choose places where someone else handles the details. This isn’t about lacking adventure; it’s about conserving your limited resources for actual healing rather than travel logistics.

3. Going Solo When You Need Witnesses (or Vice Versa)

Some transitions require solitude to process. Others require community to witness and validate your experience. Knowing which you need is crucial. If you’re someone who processes by talking and you book a silent solo retreat, you’ll feel more isolated. If you’re someone who needs quiet internal space and you book a group tour, you’ll feel invaded. Be brutally honest about your actual needs, not what you think you should need.

4. Expecting the Holiday to Fix You

This is the biggest trap. You cannot outsource your healing to a location. Bali will not solve your divorce. The Maldives will not cure your career crisis. These places can provide supportive environments for you to work on yourself, but they cannot do the work for you. If you’re going on holiday expecting to return “fixed,” you’re setting yourself up for profound disappointment. Go to rest, to reflect, to process. Don’t go expecting alchemy.

5. Returning Without Integration Time

This mistake happens on the back end. You have a profound experience on your holiday, gain real insights, feel genuinely restored, and then land back home and immediately dive back into the chaos with no buffer. Schedule at least two days between returning home and resuming normal responsibilities. Give yourself time to integrate what you’ve learned before the default patterns reassert themselves. Otherwise, that expensive wisdom evaporates within forty-eight hours.

A Simple Intention-Setting Exercise

Before you book anything, try this:

Find a quiet space. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths.

Now ask yourself: “What am I hoping this holiday will give me?”

Write down the first five things that come to mind. Don’t edit. Be honest.

Look at your list. For each item, ask: “Can a holiday actually provide this, or am I asking it to do something it cannot do?”

For example:

• “I want to feel rested” → A retreat can provide this.
• “I want to know what to do about my marriage” → A basic retreat probably cannot provide this, but it might provide space to think more clearly about it. A relationship-themed retreat might be more useful.
• “I want to feel like myself again” → A retreat cannot restore your old self, but it might help you start discovering your new self.

Now, ask yourself one final question: “What do I need to bring with me to make this journey worthwhile?”

This might be a journal. A willingness to be uncomfortable. Permission to do absolutely nothing. An openness to meeting new people. Whatever it is, name it. Write it down. Pack it alongside your swimsuit.

This simple practice can be the difference between a retreat that serves you and one that disappoints you.

Private Breakup and Divorce Recovery Retreat -this 2-day/2-night, bespoke, one-on-one break-up and divorce retreat on the Camino de Santiago in the sun-blessed southwest of France enables you to press pause, recalibrate your inner compass, and return to your life with more purpose, intention, and clarity.

Further Reading: Five Books That Actually Help

1. “The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere” by Pico Iyer

Iyer writes about the profound power of stillness in a world obsessed with movement. This isn’t a self-help book; it’s a philosophical exploration of why going nowhere can sometimes take you exactly where you need to be. I chose this because it challenges our assumption that change requires constant motion.

2. “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell

Odell makes a compelling case for strategic withdrawal as a form of resistance and restoration. Particularly relevant if you’re considering a holiday as an escape from productivity culture. This book will help you understand the difference between numbing and genuine rest.

3. “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” by Katherine May

May’s gorgeous meditation on the necessity of fallow periods during life transitions is essential reading. She writes about winter, both literal and metaphorical, as a time that requires different things from us. Beautiful, wise, and deeply comforting.

4. “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brené Brown

Brown’s work on vulnerability and wholehearted living is particularly valuable when you’re in transition and feeling broken. This book reminds you that falling apart is sometimes necessary before you can reconstruct yourself more authentically. Not specifically about holidays, but crucial for understanding the inner work.

5. “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” by Cheryl Strayed

Strayed’s memoir of walking the PCT after her life imploded is the ultimate story of using physical journey as a metaphor for internal transformation. Whether you’re considering a walking holiday or any kind of getaway, this book shows what’s possible when you stop running and start walking toward yourself.

P.S. If you’re looking for a practical, accessible guide to navigating transitions, my book “Embracing Change, in 10 Minutes a Day” offers daily practices you can use before, during, and after any holiday to support genuine transformation. It’s designed for people who are time-poor but need real tools, not platitudes.

If you are currently facing a major life transition or any other dramatic change in your circumstances, and you have no idea how you are going to cope, the good news is that the strategy presented in this book can help you, step by step, to improve your ability to handle the stress caused by change, even if you feel entirely powerless at the moment.

Five FAQs People Are Actually Asking

Q: How do I know if I’m ready for a holiday or if I’m just avoiding dealing with my problems?

A: Ask yourself this: “Am I booking this to create space for processing, or to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings?” If you’re hoping the holiday will mean you don’t have to think about your situation, that’s avoidance. If you’re hoping it will give you space to think differently about your situation, that’s strategic rest. Also check your body. Avoidance often feels urgent and panicky (“I need to get away NOW”). Strategic rest feels more like a deep exhale (“I need space to breathe and think”).

Q: Is it selfish to spend money on a holiday when my life is falling apart?

A: Only you can answer this based on your actual financial situation, but here’s a reframe: is it selfish to invest in your capacity to navigate this transition well? Sometimes spending money on genuine restoration prevents far more expensive breakdowns later. The question isn’t whether you “deserve” a holiday (you do), it’s whether this particular holiday, at this particular time, is the most effective use of limited resources. If you’re choosing between therapy and a holiday, choose therapy. If you’re choosing between collapsing from exhaustion and taking a restorative break, the break might be essential.

Q: Should I go alone or take someone with me?

A: This depends entirely on what you need to process. Some realisations only come in solitude. Others require the witnessing and reflection that good company provides. Consider: do you need to be seen and validated, or do you need privacy to fall apart? Both are legitimate needs at different points in transition. Trust your gut on this one, but don’t default to taking someone just because you’re afraid to be alone with your thoughts. That discomfort might be exactly what you need to sit with.

Q: What if I go on a retreat and still feel terrible?

A: Then you feel terrible in a different location, and that’s okay. A retreat isn’t a cure; it’s a container. Sometimes the value is simply proving to yourself that you can function somewhere new, that the world is bigger than your crisis, that you’re still capable of getting on a plane and showing up. Lower your expectations. Stop demanding that the holiday “fix” you. Let it be what it is: a pause. Nothing more, nothing less.

Q: How long should I wait after a major life event before booking a holiday?

A: There’s no universal timeline, but as a general guideline: wait until you’re sleeping semi-normally again, until the acute crisis fog has lifted enough that you can think beyond the next twenty-four hours, until you have some sense of what you’re moving toward (even if it’s vague). For most people, this is somewhere between six weeks and three months post-crisis. But listen to your actual body and mind, not arbitrary timelines. If you’re still in survival mode, wait. If you’ve stabilised enough to have capacity for reflection, it might be time.

Conclusion: The Holiday You Take Versus the Journey You Make

Here’s what I’ve learned from watching people navigate transitions, from my work as a physician, from hosting transformational retreats, and from writing eight books about crisis, confidence and change: the external journey you take matters far less than the internal one you’re willing to make.

You can go to Bali and learn nothing. You can stay home and transform everything. Or, more powerfully, you can use a well-chosen, intentionally planned getaway as a catalyst for the deeper work you’re already committed to doing.

The question isn’t really “Should I go on retreat during my life transition?” The question is: “Am I ready to use this pause wisely, or am I still hoping geography will save me?”

As the poet David Whyte writes: “The journey is not about arriving somewhere else, but about arriving here, to this place you never left, as someone you have never yet been willing to be.”

Your next chapter doesn’t start when you return from holiday.

It starts the moment you decide to show up honestly to wherever you are.

Join Me for a Different Kind of Journey

If this article has stirred something in you, if you’re recognising that what you need isn’t escape but intentional space to process your transition, consider joining us for a seven-day Crossroads Camino de Santiago hiking retreat in the stunning south-west of France.

This isn’t a typical walking holiday. Each day, you hike sections of the ancient Camino, creating space for your thoughts to settle and clarify with each step. In the evenings, we gather for storytelling circles with my Friesian horses, whose presence creates an atmosphere of gentle witnessing that allows profound truths to surface. You’ll be working through elements of my Purpose Pivot Protocol course, designed specifically for people navigating major life transitions.

This retreat is for people who are done running and ready to walk toward themselves. For people who know that transformation requires both solitude and community, both movement and stillness, both challenge and support. My retreats are intentionally supportive and refreshingly free of forced positivity or prescriptive answers.

You won’t leave with all your problems solved. But you will leave with clarity about your next right step, held by a community that sees your struggle and your strength equally clearly.

A final question for reflection: If this holiday you’re considering could give you only one thing, what would you most want it to be? And more importantly, what would you need to bring with you to make that possible?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What’s your experience with holidays during difficult transitions? Did they help or hinder your journey?

Discover your readiness for change with my Turning Point Quiz.

If your soul is craving fresh air, meaningful movement, and a chance to reconnect with nature, join us on a Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreat in the southwest of France. This isn’t just a scenic hike – it’s a powerful, natural reboot for your body, mind, and spirit. Imagine quiet paths, rolling hills, cozy evenings, and slow conversations. No fitness requirements. No forced bonding. No pressure to have a breakthrough. Just one foot in front of the other, and a journey that meets you exactly where you are.

The Purpose Pivot Protocol – drawing inspiration from the Camino de Santiago, this transformative course guides you through a proven framework to recalibrate your authentic purpose and create a meaningful and fulfilling next act. Get immediate access

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.

Healing Is NOT the Destination

What this is: A reality check for anyone who’s turned healing into their full-time job and forgotten they’re allowed to live whilst doing it. This is about reclaiming permission to exist messily, joyfully, and imperfectly whilst growing.

What this isn’t: Another productivity hack disguised as wellness advice. This isn’t about “optimising” your healing journey or finding a faster route to being “fixed.”

Read this if: You’ve caught yourself thinking, “I’ll be ready when I’m healed,” or postponing joy until you’ve got your act together. If you’re exhausted by the pressure to be perpetually improving, this is for you.

Five Key Takeaways

1. Healing is part of living, not a prerequisite for it – You don’t need to wait until you’re “ready” to start your next chapter.
2. The myth of being “finished” keeps you stuck – There is no magical moment when you’ll be polished enough, healed enough, or worthy enough.
3. Living whilst healing is not reckless, it’s revolutionary – Engaging with life during your transformation accelerates growth, not derails it.
4. Your worthiness isn’t conditional on your progress – You deserve rest, joy, and love right now, exactly as you are.
5. The journey itself is where the transformation happens – Not at some imagined finish line, but in the messy middle.

Introduction: The Finish Line That Keeps Shifting

You’ve done the work.

The therapy sessions. The journaling. The boundary-setting conversations that left you shaking. Waiting to be healed. The books with their dog-eared pages and highlighted sentences that felt like lifelines. The early mornings with meditation apps. The late nights untangling thoughts that seemed hopelessly knotted.

And still, somewhere deep inside, there’s this whisper: Not yet. Not ready. Not fully healed.

So you keep working. Keep improving. Keep fixing. Because surely, there’s a version of yourself waiting just around the corner, a version who has it all together, who doesn’t carry old wounds or react from old patterns, who is finally, finally enough.

But here’s what I’ve learned from two decades as a physician, another two as a retreat host walking alongside hundreds of people through their own crossroads, and from the personal storms that stripped me down to my foundation: healing was never meant to be a destination. It was always meant to be the path you walk whilst living.

This article will challenge the story you’ve been telling yourself about needing to be “ready” before you deserve to live fully. You’ll discover why postponing your life until you’re healed is keeping you stuck, and how to give yourself permission to live, love, and thrive whilst still growing.

A Woman Waiting to be Healed

Claire Hartwell’s Story

Claire Hartwell sat in her car outside the art supply shop for seventeen minutes, hands gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white against the grey vinyl.

Through the shop window, she could see rows of paint tubes lined up like little soldiers of possibility. Cadmium yellow. Burnt sienna. Cerulean blue. The names alone made something in her chest ache with longing. She’d driven forty minutes to get here, talked herself into it over morning coffee, even dressed in her “brave” jumper, the soft green one her daughter said made her look happy.

But now, parked three spaces from the entrance, all she could think was: I’m not ready yet.

The divorce had been final for eighteen months. The therapy sessions were helping, she supposed. She’d read seven books on healing from betrayal. Started saying no to her mother’s guilt trips. Even managed to stop checking his social media, most days. But painting? The thing she’d loved before marriage, before children, before she’d folded herself into someone else’s life like origami? That felt too big. Too exposed. Too much like claiming something for herself.

When I’m healed, she thought. When I’ve worked through all of it. When I don’t wake up with that stone in my stomach. Then I’ll be ready.

A woman emerged from the shop carrying a canvas, and Claire watched her load it into her boot with easy, confident movements. That woman looked ready. That woman probably had her life sorted. That woman had probably finished her healing.

Claire started the engine and drove home.

Three weeks later, she was back in her therapist’s office, the familiar cream walls and the sound of the rain against the window creating their usual cocoon.

“I want to paint again,” Claire said, the words tumbling out. “I keep thinking about it. But I’m not, I don’t know, fixed yet? Like I’m still dealing with so much anger, and I haven’t forgiven him, and sometimes I still cry in the shower, and it feels selfish to do something just for me when I’m still such a mess.”

Her therapist, a woman with kind eyes and a habit of tilting her head when she was really listening, was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, “Claire, what if healing isn’t about becoming someone who doesn’t cry in the shower?”

The question hung in the air like dust motes in afternoon light.

“What if healing is about becoming someone who cries in the shower and paints on Tuesday afternoons?”

That evening, Claire stood in her spare bedroom, the one that had become a storage room for everyone else’s overflow. Boxes of her son’s university textbooks. Her daughter’s childhood toys she couldn’t bear to donate. Her ex-husband’s golf clubs he’d never collected.

She moved it all to one side. Not perfectly. Not completely. Just enough.

The next morning, she went back to the art shop. Her hands still shook as she selected brushes. Her heart still raced as she chose her first canvas. But this time, she didn’t wait to be ready. She didn’t wait to be healed.

She bought the paints.

That first brushstroke, three days later, was terrible. Clumsy. The colour wasn’t right. Her technique, rusty from twenty years of disuse, made her want to cry. But underneath the imperfection, underneath the frustration, was something else entirely.

Awareness.

Claire didn’t paint her way to healing. She healed her way through painting. The anger she thought she needed to resolve first? It showed up in bold reds and violent slashes across canvas, and in expressing it, it began to transform. The grief she thought would swallow her? It became gentle blues and greys, and in witnessing it, she found she could hold it without drowning.

Six months later, her dining room was her studio. Her life wasn’t perfect. She still had hard days. Still navigated co-parenting tensions. Still worked through layers of old pain. But she was living. Not waiting. Not postponing. Not making her worthiness conditional on being completely healed.

The painting hanging in her hallway, the one visitors always asked about, was a landscape, imperfect and alive, painted on a day when she’d cried in the shower that morning and laughed at her own terrible technique that afternoon.

She’d titled it: Still Healing.

Why We Confuse Healing With Achievement

The Cultural Story We’ve Absorbed

Somewhere in our collective consciousness, we’ve absorbed a dangerous narrative: that healing is linear, measurable, and completable. Like a course you finish. A qualification you earn. A project with a definitive end date.

This isn’t entirely our fault. We live in a world obsessed with before-and-after transformations. We’re shown the triumphant “after” photo, the success story neatly packaged, the person who “overcame” their struggles and now lives unburdened. What we’re rarely shown is the truth: that healing is cyclical, that growth sometimes crashes rather than climbs, and that becoming more of who you’re meant to be is a lifelong unfolding, not a destination you reach.

As a physician who spent twenty years helping people navigate stress, illness, and life’s unexpected turns, I witnessed this pattern repeatedly. Patients would postpone joy, connection, or pursuing dreams until they were “better.” Until the diagnosis was resolved. Until the crisis had passed. Until they felt worthy of living fully.

The irony? The very act of engaging with life, of pursuing what lights them up, often accelerated their healing more than waiting ever did.

The Ripple Effect of Permission

When you give yourself permission to live whilst healing, something remarkable happens. It’s not just you who transforms.

Your children watch you navigate difficulty without abandoning yourself. They learn that struggle doesn’t disqualify you from joy. That you can hold pain in one hand and possibility in the other.

Your friends witness permission in action. Suddenly, they too start questioning whether they need to be “ready” before pursuing that course, that relationship, that dream they’ve been postponing.

Your community gains a member who shows up fully, messily, authentically. Not someone who has it all together, but someone who’s learning to live courageously whilst still growing.

This is how transformation ripples outward. Not through perfection, but through permission. Not through having arrived, but through walking the path with intention, presence, and radical self-compassion.

The impact extends beyond what you can measure. In my work hosting transformational retreats on the Camino de Santiago, I’ve watched this pattern unfold hundreds of times. Someone arrives believing they need to “fix” themselves before they can truly live. They leave understanding that the walking itself, the community, the daily choice to show up imperfectly, is where the healing happens.

They become beacons of possibility. Their courage to live whilst healing gives others permission to do the same. The ripple becomes a wave.

Five Mistakes to Avoid

1. Treating Healing Like a Performance Review

The Mistake: Constantly evaluating your progress, measuring how “healed” you are, and setting benchmarks for readiness.

Why It Backfires: You end up living in your head, analysing yourself rather than experiencing yourself. Healing becomes another task you’re failing at rather than a natural unfolding.

Instead: Notice without judgment. Observe your patterns with curiosity rather than critique. Ask, “What am I learning?” instead of “Am I fixed yet?”

2. Postponing Everything Until You’re “Ready”

The Mistake: Waiting to date until you’ve healed from your last relationship. Waiting to start your business until you’ve overcome imposter syndrome. Waiting to create until you’ve resolved your perfectionism.

Why It Backfires: Readiness isn’t a feeling you achieve; it’s a choice you make. Waiting keeps you safe but stuck.

Instead: Start before you’re ready. Take the smallest possible step. Paint badly. Date messily. Create imperfectly. Trust that you’ll learn what you need to learn by doing.

3. Making Healing Your Identity

The Mistake: Defining yourself by your wounds, your recovery, your journey. Every conversation becomes about what you’re working through.

Why It Backfires: You become invested in staying in the healing process because it’s who you are now. Your identity depends on remaining wounded.

Instead: Remember you are not your story. You are the one living it. Healing is something you’re experiencing, not something you are.

4. Isolating Until You’re “Better”

The Mistake: Withdrawing from relationships, community, and connection because you’re “not ready” to show up fully.

Why It Backfires: Isolation deepens pain and slows healing. Connection, even imperfect connection, is medicine.

Instead: Show up as you are. Let people see you mid-process. Practice saying, “I’m having a hard time, and I’m so glad to be here with you.”

5. Believing Healing Is Solo Work

The Mistake: Thinking you have to figure it all out alone, that asking for help is a weakness, that your healing is your burden to carry.

Why It Backfires: We heal in relationships. In witnessing and being witnessed. In community and connection.

Instead: Seek support that resonates. Whether it’s therapy, coaching, retreats, or trusted friends, let yourself be held whilst you transform.

Intention Setting Exercise: Start Living NOW

Find a quiet moment. Pour yourself something warm. Sit comfortably.

Step One: Place one hand on your heart. Take three deep breaths.

Step Two: Complete this sentence aloud: “I give myself permission to ________ even though I’m still ________.”

Examples:

• “I give myself permission to create even though I’m still grieving.”
• “I give myself permission to love again even though I’m still healing from betrayal.”
• “I give myself permission to pursue my dream even though I’m still afraid.”

Step Three: Notice what comes up. Resistance? Relief? Emotion? Simply witness it.

Step Four: Write this permission statement somewhere you’ll see it daily. Your mirror. Your journal. Your phone wallpaper.

Step Five: Within 24 hours, take one small action aligned with your permission. Not perfect action. Not grand action. Just one small, brave step.

Further Reading

1. “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brené Brown. I recommend this because Brown dismantles the myth of needing to be perfect before you’re worthy. Her research on vulnerability and wholehearted living provides evidence-based permission to show up as you are.

2. “Kitchen Table Wisdom” by Rachel Naomi Remen. Remen, a physician and therapist, shares stories that illuminate how healing happens in the living, not in the waiting. Her perspective on what it means to be whole whilst still wounded is transformative.

3. “Women Who Run With the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. This book reconnects you with the wild, instinctual self that knows healing isn’t about domestication or control. Estés reminds us that wholeness includes our untamed, unfinished parts.

4. “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön. Chödrön’s Buddhist perspective on impermanence and groundlessness offers profound wisdom on staying present with discomfort whilst still engaging with life. Essential reading for anyone in transition.

5. “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk. For understanding how healing happens in the body, not just the mind. Van der Kolk’s research shows that engaging with life, movement, and connection is essential to healing trauma.

P.S. My book, “Embracing Change in 10 Minutes a Day,” offers practical, daily practices for navigating life transitions without making healing a full-time job. It’s designed for people who want to transform whilst still living their lives. Available here

If you are currently facing a major life transition or any other dramatic change in your circumstances, and you have no idea how you are going to cope, the good news is that the strategy presented in this book can help you, step by step, to improve your ability to handle the stress caused by change, even if you feel entirely powerless at the moment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn’t it irresponsible to move forward before I’ve fully healed?

Not at all. In fact, waiting to be “fully healed” is often what keeps you stuck. Healing isn’t about reaching a state of completion; it’s about increasing your capacity to hold complexity, to live with both pain and joy, to act with intention even when you don’t have all the answers. Moving forward doesn’t mean bypassing your healing; it means allowing your healing to happen within the context of a lived life.

How do I know the difference between healthy growth and just avoiding my issues?

Healthy growth feels expansive, even when it’s uncomfortable. Avoidance feels constrictive and usually involves numbing, distracting, or denying what you’re feeling. Ask yourself: “Am I moving towards something meaningful, or am I running from something painful?” Both can coexist, but the motivation matters. If you’re engaging with life whilst also doing the inner work, you’re growing. If you’re using busyness to avoid feeling, that’s different.

What if I make mistakes or hurt people because I’m not healed yet?

You’ll make mistakes whether you’re “healed” or not, because you’re human. The goal isn’t to become someone who never causes harm; it’s to become someone who can acknowledge harm, repair relationships, and keep learning. Waiting to be perfect before you engage with life guarantees you’ll never truly live. Better to show up imperfectly and be willing to make amends.

Can I really be happy whilst still dealing with trauma or grief?

Yes. Happiness and healing can coexist. One of the most damaging myths we’ve absorbed is that we must resolve our pain before we’re allowed to experience pleasure. In reality, allowing yourself moments of genuine joy whilst navigating difficulty is not only possible, but it’s also essential to your wellbeing.

What if people judge me for living my life before I’m “better”?

Some will. People are uncomfortable with others who refuse to stay small or wait for permission. But their discomfort is their journey, not yours. The people who matter will celebrate your courage to live fully. The ones who judge were likely never going to approve anyway. Your job isn’t to be palatable; it’s to be alive.

Conclusion

There’s a quote that lives in my heart, one I’ve returned to through my own crossroads and crises:

“We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move through our traumas and to come out the other side, wiser and more able to face the world and ourselves.” — Leigh Bardugo

But here’s what I’d add: we don’t have to wait until we’ve “come out the other side” to start living. We can live, love, create, and connect whilst we’re moving through. The transformation happens in the walking, not at some imagined destination.

You are not a project to complete. Your life is happening now, not when you’re healed. Not when you’re ready. Not when you’ve got it all figured out.

Now.

Messy, imperfect, glorious now.

Crossroads on the Camino de Santiago

If this article resonates, imagine what might shift if you gave yourself seven days to walk, reflect, and reconnect with who you’re becoming. My Crossroads Camino de Santiago retreats in south-west France offer exactly that: a chance to move through transition whilst walking an ancient path that has held seekers, wanderers, and pilgrims for over a thousand years.

We walk manageable distances through stunning countryside, sharing meals and stories, gathering in circles with my Friesian horses who somehow know exactly when someone needs gentle witnessing. There’s no pressure to have answers, to be “fixed,” or to perform healing. Just space to be exactly where you are whilst taking intentional steps towards where you’re going.

These retreats are for people who understand that transformation doesn’t happen in isolation. Who want to live whilst they heal, not wait until some impossible perfect moment.

The path is calling. You don’t need to be ready. You just need to take the first step.

Discover the Crossroads Camino Retreat

My work is grounded in a simple truth I’ve learned through personal storms and professional experience: you don’t need to be healed to deserve a beautiful life. You deserve it now, exactly as you are.

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.

Ready to discover your next chapter? Take my Turning Point Quiz to gain clarity on where you are and what wants to emerge next.

Research

Healing as a non-linear “journey” rather than a precondition for meaningful living: Qualitative health research describes healing as emerging over time (often with ongoing symptoms), emphasising meaning, integrity, and functioning rather than “cure first, life later”: Scott JG, Warber SL, Dieppe P, Jones D, Stange KC. Healing journey: a qualitative analysis of the healing experiences of Americans suffering from trauma and illness. BMJ Open. 2017 Sep 13;7(8):e016771. This study describes healing as “fits and starts” and not equivalent to cure, which directly challenges the idea that life must be on hold until full healing occurs.

The Transition Trap: Why Smart, Capable People Burn Out Without Realising It

What this is: An honest look at why silent burnout sneaks up during life’s earthquakes, when you’re too busy surviving to notice you’re running on fumes.

What this isn’t: Another “practice self-care” listicle or suggestion to take a bubble bath whilst your life implodes. No platitudes, no one-size-fits-all advice.

Read this if: You’re going through something massive (divorce, illness, loss, career upheaval) and you’re functioning but suspect you’re one bad day away from completely falling apart. Or you’ve already fallen apart and want to understand why.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Burnout during transitions can look like competence – you’re getting things done, which is precisely why no one (including you) sees you’re drowning.
2. Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between “good” and “bad” stress – even positive changes like a new relationship or career pivot deplete the same reserves as grief and loss.
3. The signs are there, but they masquerade as transition symptoms – insomnia “because of the stress,” irritability “because of everything going on,” and brain fog “because there’s so much to think about.”
4. Recovery requires more than rest – it demands a fundamental recalibration of how you’re moving through this chapter, not just a weekend off.
5. Catching burnout early in a transition can transform the entire experience – instead of limping into your new chapter depleted, you can actually build something sustainable and meaningful.

Introduction: The Exhaustion No One Names

During major life transitions, you may not realise that whilst you’re busy being brave, capable, and “handling it,” your body is quietly keeping score.

You think you’re just tired because of the divorce paperwork. You assume you can’t focus because grief is disorienting. You believe the insomnia is temporary, the irritability justified, and the constant low-level anxiety simply part of navigating something hard.

What if I told you it’s burnout, and you’ve been running on an empty tank for months without realising it?

I’ve spent 20 years as a physician with a particular interest in stress management, another 15 hosting transformational retreats along the Camino de Santiago, and I’ve written eight books on navigating life’s hardest moments. The pattern I see most often isn’t dramatic collapse, it’s this: intelligent, resourceful people grinding themselves down to nothing whilst calling it “coping.”

This article will help you recognise the burnout hiding in plain sight, understand why life upheavals create perfect conditions for it, and give you actual strategies to address it before you lose yourself entirely in the chaos of change.

The Woman Who Mistook Burnout for Strength

Sarah Mitchell’s Unravelling

Sarah Mitchell had always been the reliable one. The strong one. The “Don’t worry, I’ve got this” one. So when her 22-year marriage ended, she naturally decided she would handle it the same way she handled everything else in life: efficiently, methodically, pragmatically, and without any unnecessary emotional spillage.

Falling apart, after all, was for other people.

The first three months dissolved into a beige haze of solicitors’ offices that smelled of stale coffee and old carpet, the kind that makes your shoes stick slightly as you walk. Estate agents with aggressively cheerful smiles swept through her house, flinging open curtains she hadn’t touched in months, letting in light that felt less “uplifting” and more “blinding bright.” Her teenage daughter’s bedroom door stayed firmly shut. Music leaked out in tinny bursts—bass-heavy, clearly curated to say, Please do not attempt conversation.

Sarah did what she did best.

She made lists.

LISTS.

Her desk gradually disappeared under Post-it notes, each one a bright yellow badge of competence.
“Ring pension advisor.”
“Research flats near Sophie’s school.”
“Update will.”
“Cancel joint account.”

The coffee flowed freely—too freely. Her mouth permanently tasted faintly revolting. She woke at 4 a.m. every morning, heart already sprinting ahead of her brain, and reached for her phone to add more tasks to the ever-expanding catalogue titled How to Dismantle a Life in Manageable Steps.

“I’m fine,” became her standard reply. At the school gates. In the Tesco queue. When her sister rang and used that careful voice—the one that pretends it’s just calling for a chat but is absolutely calling to check if you’re still vertical.

And to be fair, Sarah looked fine. She showed up. She got Sophie to counselling appointments. She dealt with the house sale. She started a new job—because nothing says emotional stability like proving you’re still useful. She even joined a gym. Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Reinvent yourself. Sweat out the grief. Become a shinier, better-toned version of whoever you were before everything fell apart.

What she couldn’t remember was the last time she’d finished a proper meal. Food had become something you grabbed in the car between appointments, or inhaled standing at the kitchen counter at midnight. Sitting down felt dangerously close to admitting defeat. Her clothes hung differently now. Her wedding ring—removed, but still leaving a pale ghost on her finger—had once fit perfectly. Now, when she wore it on her right hand (for reasons involving sentiment and confusion), it slid around like it no longer quite belonged to her.

Six months in, during a completely ordinary Tuesday meeting about utterly forgettable budget reports, Sarah’s vision narrowed. The fluorescent lights went from too bright to too dim in the space of a heartbeat. Her colleague’s voice slowed and stretched, like a cassette being eaten by a tape player. She excused herself, made it to the toilets, and sat on the closed lid shaking so violently her teeth rattled—utterly unable to explain, even to herself, what on earth was happening.

The GP called it a panic attack. Prescribed pills. Suggested “stress management.”

But it wasn’t just stress.

Sarah had been stress-monitoring herself for months, bulldozing through every warning sign her body sent her way. Exhaustion was weakness. Insomnia was normal. That growing sense of being slightly detached from her own life? Oh, that was “just part of the divorce.”

She’d burned out so slowly, so quietly, so competently, that she mistook the flames for warmth.

The Takeaway

Sarah’s story illustrates the central problem: during massive life upheavals, burnout doesn’t announce itself with a bang. It whispers through symptoms you attribute to the situation itself, whilst you keep performing competence until your nervous system simply refuses to cooperate anymore. The very strength that helps you survive the initial shock becomes the thing that prevents you from recognising you’re running yourself into the ground.

Why Life Transitions Can Perfectly Disguise Silent Burnout’s

When “Normal” Stress Becomes Incidious Exhaustion

Major life transitions, whether it’s divorce, bereavement, serious illness, career upheaval, or even positive changes like relocation or remarriage, create a unique environment where burnout thrives undetected. Here’s why:

Your baseline shifts. When everything in your life is changing, you lose the reference point for “normal.” You can’t tell if you’re more exhausted than usual because everything is unusual. That persistent tiredness? You attribute it to the emotional weight of what you’re going through, not recognising it as your body’s distress signal.

The stakes feel too high to stop. During a crisis or major transition, there’s often a sense that if you pause, everything will fall apart. Court dates don’t reschedule themselves. Ill parents need care regardless of how you feel. House sales march forward on their own timeline. The pressure to keep functioning overrides your body’s attempts to slow you down.

Everyone expects you to be struggling, so they miss the signs too. Your support system sees your exhaustion and thinks, “Well, of course she’s tired, she’s going through a divorce.” Nobody questions whether you’re beyond normal stress and into dangerous depletion because the context seems to explain everything.

You’re running on adrenaline disguised as strength. In survival mode, your body pumps out stress hormones that keep you moving. You feel like you’re coping, maybe even thriving under pressure. This can last weeks or months. Then the system crashes, often at the most inconvenient moment, and you’re bewildered because you thought you were doing so well.

The Ripple Effect: Beyond Personal Collapse

Understanding burnout during transitions isn’t just about individual survival, it’s about recognising how your state affects everything and everyone around you.

When you burn out during a major life change, the impact cascades. Your children don’t just deal with divorce; they deal with a depleted parent who’s physically present but emotionally absent. Your colleagues don’t just cover your workload; they absorb your irritability and disengagement. Your friends don’t just support you through crisis; they eventually step back because your capacity for reciprocity has vanished.

But here’s the transformative truth: catching burnout early, acknowledging it, and addressing it properly can shift the entire trajectory. Instead of limping through your transition in survival mode, barely making it to the other side depleted and diminished, you can navigate change whilst building resilience. You can model for your children that it’s possible to face hard things without destroying yourself. You can maintain the relationships that matter because you’re not running on fumes.

In my 15 years of hosting retreats along the Camino de Santiago, I’ve watched dozens of people arrive burnt out from major transitions, unable to see it themselves until they’re removed from the machinery of their daily lives. The transformation isn’t dramatic; it’s subtle. They start sleeping properly. They notice they can focus on a conversation again. They realise they haven’t felt genuine joy in months, maybe years. And in that recognition, they find the space to rebuild differently.

This isn’t just personal recovery. When one person in a family system, workplace, or community stops operating from depletion and starts functioning from a place of sustainable energy, it changes the entire dynamic. It gives others permission to do the same. It breaks the cycle of glorified exhaustion that so many of us have normalised.

Five Mistakes That Intensify Silent Burnout During Transitions

Mistake 1: Treating Symptoms Instead of Addressing Depletion

You take sleeping tablets for the insomnia but don’t question why you can’t switch off. You drink more coffee to power through the fatigue rather than asking why you’re so consistently exhausted. You pop paracetamol for the tension headaches without recognising they’re your body screaming for respite. Burnout isn’t a collection of inconvenient symptoms to manage; it’s a systemic breakdown that requires systemic change.

Mistake 2: Believing You Can “Push Through” Until Things Settle

There’s a pervasive myth that if you just hold on a bit longer, get through this court date, this house move, this treatment cycle, then you can rest. But transitions don’t have clean endings. One phase bleeds into the next. If you’re waiting for permission to stop depleting yourself, you’ll wait forever. The time to address burnout is now, messy middle and all.

Mistake 3: Comparing Your Capacity to Your Pre-Crisis Self

“I used to manage fine on six hours’ sleep.” “I used to be able to juggle work and family without falling apart.” “I used to enjoy seeing friends.” Your previous capacity is irrelevant. You’re operating under entirely different conditions with a nervous system in chronic activation. Stop measuring yourself against who you were and start working with who you are right now.

Mistake 4: Isolating Because You’re “Too Much” for Others

When you’re burnt out, you often withdraw because you feel you have nothing to offer, or you’re afraid of burdening people, or you’re simply too exhausted for social performance. But isolation worsens burnout exponentially. You lose perspective, support, and the reality checks that help you recognise when you’ve normalised the abnormal. Connection, even an imperfect connection, is protective.

Mistake 5: Waiting for External Validation Before Taking Action

You tell yourself you’ll rest when the divorce is final, when you’ve recovered from surgery, when you’ve secured the new job. Or you wait for someone, a doctor, a friend, a partner, to give you permission to stop grinding. But burnout doesn’t respect external timelines, and waiting for validation means you’re prioritising everyone else’s assessment of your needs over your own internal knowing. Trust yourself. You don’t need permission to stop running yourself into the ground.

Intention Setting Exercise: The Energy Audit

This isn’t about adding another task to your list. It’s about clarity.

Step 1: Get a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle.

Step 2: On the left, list everything currently requiring your energy. Include the obvious (work, childcare, legal proceedings) and the invisible (worrying about your daughter, managing other people’s emotions, maintaining the illusion that you’re fine).

Step 3: On the right, note which items are truly non-negotiable right now versus which you’re doing out of habit, obligation, or fear of judgment.

Step 4: Circle three things you could reduce, delegate, or eliminate in the next seven days.

Step 5: Write this at the bottom: “I am allowed to function at reduced capacity during this transition. Survival is enough. Everything else is optional.”

Step 6: Put it somewhere visible. Read it when guilt creeps in.

The power of this exercise isn’t in perfect execution; it’s in the permission it grants you to assess honestly what’s actually necessary versus what you’re forcing yourself to do because you believe you should.

Further Reading: Five Books on Burnout and Transition

1. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

I chose this because the Nagoski sisters brilliantly explain why “just relax” doesn’t work. They detail the physiological reality of stress and offer practical strategies for completing the stress cycle, not just managing symptoms. Essential for understanding why you can’t think your way out of burnout.

2. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

This transformative book explains how trauma and chronic stress live in the body, not just the mind. During major transitions, understanding this connection is crucial. Van der Kolk’s research illuminates why burnout during crisis feels so all,consuming and why traditional talk therapy often isn’t enough.

3. Lost & Found: A Memoir of Grief, Love, and the Brain by Jules Montague

A neuroscientist’s exploration of how the brain processes loss and identity shifts. Particularly valuable for understanding why major transitions scramble your sense of self and deplete cognitive resources in ways that look and feel like burnout.

4. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

Odell makes a compelling case for reclaiming attention and energy in a culture that demands constant productivity. When you’re in transition, the pressure to “use this time productively” can accelerate burnout. This book offers philosophical and practical permission to simply be.

5. Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

Hersey frames rest as a radical act, especially for those conditioned to prove their worth through productivity. During transitions, when you feel you must earn your place in your new life, this book challenges the entire paradigm and offers liberation from the grind.

P.S. My book, Embracing Change, in 10 Minutes a Day, offers daily practices specifically designed for people navigating major transitions. It acknowledges the reality that you don’t have hours for self-care routines whilst your life is in upheaval, but you can find 10 minutes to anchor yourself.

The Role of Structured Support: Purpose Pivot Protocol

During a recent storytelling circle, part of my Purpose Pivot Protocol online course, a woman shared that she’d been “coping brilliantly” with her husband’s terminal diagnosis until she found herself unable to remember her daughter’s phone number. Not because of grief, but because her cognitive resources were completely depleted.

The Purpose Pivot Protocol creates structured space for exactly this kind of recognition. It’s not therapy, and it’s not life coaching in the conventional sense. It’s a framework for people in major transition to identify what’s actually happening (including hidden burnout), understand the patterns keeping them stuck, and build a sustainable path forward.

The protocol addresses the reality that during upheaval, you need both practical strategies and deeper work on meaning and direction. You need to understand why you’re burning out (the practical) and who you’re becoming through this transition (the existential). Most approaches offer one or the other. This integrates both.

Five FAQs: What People Are Really Asking About Burnout and Transitions

How do I know if it’s burnout or just normal stress from what I’m going through?

Normal stress ebbs and flows. You have hard days and better days. Burnout is relentless. The key indicators: you can’t remember the last time you felt rested despite sleeping, you’re increasingly cynical or detached from things that used to matter, and you’re getting things done but feel completely disconnected from your own life. If rest doesn’t restore you, it’s likely burnout.

Can I recover from burnout whilst still in the middle of a major transition, or do I need to wait until things settle?

You must address it now. Waiting for circumstances to improve before taking care of yourself is like waiting for the storm to pass before fixing the hole in your roof. You’ll be standing in water up to your knees by the time conditions are “right.” Recovery during transition looks different, it’s about sustainable coping rather than thriving, but it’s absolutely necessary and possible.

Is it selfish to prioritise my burnout recovery when other people need me?

This question itself is a symptom of burnout. You’ve been conditioned to believe your needs are less important than everyone else’s. But here’s the reality: you cannot support others from depletion. You’re not choosing between yourself and them; you’re ensuring you can actually be present and helpful rather than collapsing entirely. It’s not selfish. It’s structural integrity.

What’s the difference between burnout and depression during a major life change?

They often overlap and can trigger each other. Burnout is typically tied to chronic stress and overextension, your body’s response to doing too much for too long. Depression is a mood disorder that affects how you think, feel, and function, often with feelings of hopelessness and loss of interest in everything. You can have both simultaneously. If you’re unsure, see a GP, but don’t dismiss burnout just because you think you’re “just depressed.”

How long does it take to recover from burnout during a life transition?

Frustratingly, there’s no standard timeline. Mild burnout might shift in weeks with proper rest and boundary,setting. Severe burnout can take months or longer, and recovery isn’t linear during ongoing stress. The goal during transition isn’t full recovery to your previous state; it’s building sustainable practices that prevent further deterioration whilst gradually increasing your capacity. Think of it as stabilising rather than curing.

Conclusion: The Wisdom in the Warning

Burnout during major life transitions isn’t a personal failing. It’s information.

It tells you that you’ve been operating beyond your capacity, that the strategies you’ve relied on aren’t sustainable in this new reality, and that something fundamental needs to shift. Not in your circumstances, those might not be within your control, but in how you’re moving through them.

The people who emerge from major transitions truly transformed, rather than just traumatised, are those who learn to listen to their exhaustion instead of overriding it. They recognise that rest isn’t weakness; it’s the foundation for everything else. They understand that you can’t think your way out of a body that’s shutting down, and they give themselves permission to function at reduced capacity without shame.

As author and psychologist Mary Pipher writes: “We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.” Your burnout isn’t something to hide until you’ve solved it privately. It’s part of your transition story, and acknowledging it honestly is often the first step towards genuine transformation.

Your next chapter can be built from rest, recognition, and radical honesty about what you actually need right now, not what you think you should need.

Take the Next Step: The Crossroads Camino Retreat

Sometimes, the only way to truly step out of burnout is to physically remove yourself from the machinery that created it.

My seven-day Crossroads Camino de Santiago hiking retreats in southwest France are designed specifically for people at major life junctures who need space to catch their breath before building what comes next.

You’ll walk ancient paths that slow you down to human pace. We gather in storytelling circles with my Friesian horses, whose presence invites a quality of honesty you might not access elsewhere. We create space for you to rest properly, perhaps for the first time in months, and to begin discerning what your next chapter actually needs to look like.

This isn’t a holiday. It’s not a wellness retreat with spa treatments and affirmations. It’s serious work in a beautiful setting, with someone who understands that rebuilding a life requires first acknowledging how depleted you’ve become. The combination of movement, nature, community, and structured reflection creates conditions for genuine insight, not just temporary relief.

If you’re reading this and recognising yourself, if you’ve been “handling it” whilst quietly falling apart, if you suspect you need more than a weekend off to address what’s happening, this retreat might be exactly what your nervous system needs.

Private Breakup and Divorce Recovery Retreat -this 2-day/2-night, bespoke, one-on-one break-up and divorce retreat on the Camino de Santiago in the sun-blessed southwest of France enables you to press pause, recalibrate your inner compass, and return to your life with more purpose, intention, and clarity.

If your soul is craving fresh air, meaningful movement, and a chance to reconnect with nature, join us on a Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreat in the southwest of France. This isn’t just a scenic hike – it’s a powerful, natural reboot for your body, mind, and spirit. Imagine quiet paths, rolling hills, cozy evenings, and slow conversations. No fitness requirements. No forced bonding. No pressure to have a breakthrough. Just one foot in front of the other, and a journey that meets you exactly where you are.

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