FACILITATORS

Guiding gladsome...

One of the strengths of the gladsome experience is that the facilitation of retreat activities is done collaboratively.  Many different perspectives, wisdoms, and talents are shared with participants by the diversity of facilitators.  These are women who have helped to create the gladsome experience. 

Information about facilitators for 2017 will be updated as the schedule of sessions is finalized.

CLAUDINE
Claudine is a pig-tailed, breastfeeding Mama of four who pursues creativity in as many ways as possible, most often through photography, art, poetry, baking and parenting.  She's decided to become a badass at the age of 45, one way in which she is doing so is by hiking all 200+ miles of trails in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park during her 45th year.

Claudine spent twenty years working with college students on leadership development, collaboration, event planning and finding one's voice. She currently consults for strategic planning and operations, leadership development, and pursuing creativity.

Usually close at hand is a cup of coffee and Moleskine notebooks full of dreams and hurriedly scribbled poetry.  Claudine lives in the greater Cleveland area with her husband and their children.


GINA
 Gina is a mother of three and professional woman who has never thought of herself as creative, though Claudine insists that she is.  She enjoys giving new life to old or broken projects and views this as her creative niche.  You most often find Gina flexing her creative muscles in her work with college students in which she hopes to serve them by guiding them to find themselves, their way, and their potential.  She finds renewal and comfort in her daily meditation practice.

Gina is thrilled to be working again with Claudine on the gladsome retreat.  An opportunity to bring women together who consciously wish to rest and breathe in a creative and positive space is surely a respite from the busy-ness of our day-to-day, a gift Gina is honored to share with you.  Gina lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and their children. 


JENNIFER
Jennifer Price Davis is a multi-passionate artist at Messy Hands Studio She paints what pops in her soul and demands to come to life.  Jennifer writes about love, art, business, and faith - not necessarily in that order and sometimes all at once :)

Jennifer has an MA in art therapy counseling.  When not arting (why, yes, she can make up her own vocabulary) she teaches 3-6 year olds at the best school ever. Prior, she was a career counselor and marketing professional.  Jennifer is the author of "100 little happinesses."

What you really need to know is that Pat Benatar is her totem person and she [used to] want to be Chaka Khan and Debbie Allen.  If you understand leopard print, you understand Jennifer.  And... she spent her formative years in a house filled with navy blue carpet and blue and golden yellow room accessories.  The couch was light blue crushed velvet.  They had a slide top stereo that played 8 tracks.  There was also a white crushed velvet arm chair.    This should explain everything. 



ANNIE
Annie is a mother to two boys, a wife, a sewist, a writer, and a perennial dreamer of what could be. She loves to bring thoughts into being on the page, and finds joy in a hot cup of tea held close, crisp frosty mornings, and the feel of a book in her hands.

Annie lives with her family in a small old house, with visions of returning it to the working homestead it once was, and where she has just begun the ever-interesting challenge of homeschooling her boys. She is always in the midst of one project or another, be it sewing, knitting, dinner, taming the laundry or the boys, or learning some new skill; the list is (happily) endless.

Introvert though she may be, the thought of several days worth of uninterrupted reflection, creating, connecting, and all around being nourished in the company of other women seeking the same makes her a bit giddy.



MELANIE 
Melanie lives in a small town nestled among the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains. On any given day she can easily be found making stone totems along the Shenandoah River, or lost in the best way on the Appalachian Trail, or searching for her missing coffee mug (which she reheats at least 5 times a day,) or even thinking she's a total failure and prepping her 4 homeschooled children for a new, better version of a mother. They spend a lot of time learning to embrace their own crazy, and understanding their individual selves in order to ask for what they need. In trying to create a life of radical self-acceptance, Melanie has created a life of radical authentic voice.
She likes full moons, tarot cards, herbals, yoga by candlelight, meditating in cob houses, asking difficult questions, staying quiet in those awkward silences, births, deaths, and the cheese off of pizza. Most especially, Melanie loves brewing something warm for friends and hearing their stories as they sit in her kitchen.