I was standing in a hallway at work when it happened. A dear friend and colleague took one look at me and knew something was wrong. My grandparents were failing, my family was leaning on me, and at work we were in the middle of massive change. I looked at her and said the truest sentence I had said in months: “I think I have dropped a ball, but I am juggling so fast I do not even know which one it is.” Then I broke down in the hallway.

She pulled me into a conference room and told me to breathe. And she said something I have never forgotten: it is okay to not have all the answers.

If you have ever been the glue, the fixer, the one everyone comes to, you know that moment. Maybe you are living in it right now. Which is exactly why I am writing this post, because this October, something is happening that I built for you.

Meet my co-conspirator

Paula Shannon spent 30 years in public education, rising from a Teach For America classroom to deputy superintendent of a district with 40,000 students and 7,000 employees. She was the person with the answers. The fixer. Then one day a mentor told her, “When you stop being a lifeguard and start being a swim coach, you will be a much more powerful leader.”

It took a pandemic, an 80-hour-a-week habit, and a line of people outside her office door before that lesson landed. Paula realized she was the common denominator. She had trained her team to bring her their problems. When she finally climbed down from the lifeguard stand and started coaching from the sideline, letting her people struggle, fail, and find their stroke, she gained 40 hours a week back.

But the lesson came at a cost. At the end of her career in public education, Paula was diagnosed with clinical burnout. Emotionally numb. No energy. No hobbies. No play. She has spent two and a half years recovering, and she will tell you plainly: that was the price of not saying yes to herself sooner.

Paula and I met this spring at a women’s leadership retreat in Cabo, two women from completely different industries and different states, telling the same story. We decided on the spot that we were going to build the experience we both needed years ago.

Introducing the Audaciously Unapologetic Retreat

October 15 to 18, 2026, Paula and I are co-leading a retreat at CIVANA Wellness Resort and Spa in Carefree, Arizona. Four days and three nights designed around three things every woman in leadership is starving for: clarity, confidence, and connection.

We refused to make you choose between a wellness retreat and a growth experience, so we built both into the same four days. Every day includes at least three wellness activities, from sound baths to yoga to desert stargazing, alongside deep, structured work. I will help you realign your core compass, the truth of who you are and what you will and will not accept. Paula will guide you through building an immunity map, a process that surfaces the hidden fears and big assumptions quietly driving your behavior, so you can finally release them.

Everything is included: meals, signature cocktails, private dinners, three private experiences, and your room at a world-class resort. You also get a pre-retreat workshop to ground you before you arrive and an integration call a month after you leave, so the transformation does not evaporate on the flight home. And you leave with something I wish I had during my corporate years: a personal board of directors, a circle of women who understand exactly what you carry.

The question that changes everything

When I first considered attending a retreat myself, I told myself it was a sign of weakness. I was a powerful, bold woman. I did not do sappy. So I went year after year in the same exhausting pattern, because nothing was ever going to pull me out of it while I stayed inside it.

So here is the question I want you to sit with: what is the pattern you have created costing you? Not in theory. In hours, in presence, in health, in the version of yourself you have been postponing.

Enrollment is capped, and October is coming fast. You can come solo, the way Paula and I each did when we met, or call your best friend and share a room. Apply at audaciouslyunapologetic.com, and if you want help thinking it through, book a discovery session with me at lynseymulder.com. You are the one everyone leans on. It is time someone held you up.