A few words on the Inspire Photo Retreat

“Let go of yourself.”

When you speak, you don’t imagine yourself being quoted. Doubly not, when it’s because you’re tongue tied, you’ve gone off script, and the words just rattle out of your head. But Carla Ten Eyck made it a tweet for the world to see.

“Let go of yourself.”

It didn’t mean much at the time, but I think Carla knew something I didn’t.

See, up until September of last year, I had never even heard of the Inspire Retreat, and now for the past three days, I was not only an attendee, but a speaker. And like all things new and foreign, you’re a little bit anxious. Anxious about what you’ll say, what you’ll do, whether you can make it all work. But more than anything, about All. Those. People. Where you’ll eat. Who you’ll talk to. What everyone is going to be like.

Will it be high school all over again? Will there be the cool kids and the outcasts and the rockstars and the egos? The thought sent shivers down my spine.

But that first night, as Carla delivered her keynote, it all came into focus. In brave, bold, and raw words, she showed something beautiful. She cut herself open and let her life spill out for all of us, and it became clear that the conference was exactly about letting go of yourself.

It was not the egos and the cliques and the who is better than who. As I watched and the days passed, I saw this retreat was about community and about love. About letting yourself go, not in the simple, practical way I had conceived of it as I uttered the words, but as nourishment and growth. As letting go of limitation and doubt and as a necessary step to becoming tomorrow’s you.

We are a community on the edge. These are hard times. Budgets have evaporated, the market is overheated, crowded, and full, and so much of the magic has been reduced to formula. It is a fight to survive.

And we are fighting. I heard so many stories of life being lived. Of fights being fought. Of standing up and being counted amidst the challenge of children and family and work and a market that doubts your value more than it ever has.

But it can’t only be a fight. It can’t only be survival. It has to be more.

Inspire was exactly that more.

As small business owners, we live a solitary existence. There is a wonder and brilliance in a life that’s yours. Where you dare to make the world your own. But there’s a loneliness in the day-to-day fights.

Inspire was a sledgehammer to this isolation. There were no sales. There was no show. It was pure giving. A reminder that we are not alone. A lesson that we are all more. That in our similarity, we can find our individuality. It truly was letting go of yourself. Knowing that there was nothing to fear for being who you are. It was permission to find your future free of restraint and restriction. It was the purest of inspiration.

So thank to the entire team. To Enna and Eric and Krista and Carla and Paul. To everyone helping to make it happen. And a special thank you to Mark, who asked me to join. What they pulled off was nothing short of tremendous. For the heart, for the inspiration. For the group of people they assembled and for finding a way to do exactly what they asked of us. In an industry filled with surface, they dared to dig deep and open themselves up for each of us to grow.