Relax, Learn, Connect and Have Fun !!!

Are you ready to immerse yourself into 4 days and 3 nights of self-care, rest and relaxation? To give your mind, body and soul the nourishing it needs after surviving breast cancer. If this sounds like you, then we would love to have you join us at our Reclaim Your Life After Breast Cancer Retreat

Our retreats are all about supporting women surviving breast cancer. They are held in beautiful spaces where you can completely immerse yourself in rest and relaxation.

You will learn..

• Valuable self-care practices that you can incorporate into your daily life

• Be inspired with daily movement, mindfulness and meditation, to balance your body and centre your mind

• Meet and make connections with others who have walked a similar path as you

• Feel energised, have fun and laugh out loud in our workshops

• Enjoy delicious, healthy locally sources food

• Opportunities to reflect, reconnect and rediscover YOU

If this sounds like you, then we would love to have you join us at our Reclaim Your Life After Breast Cancer Retreat.

At The Joy Connection

We teach women who have survived breast cancer.

How to connect with themselves and their HEARTS!

So they discover the freedom to live a strong and beautiful life with

JOY !

Connecting Hearts | Creating Joy

Helping you discover your new normal.

After breast cancer, there’s a season that often surprises people. The treatment ends, the outside world relaxes, and everyone expects you to “get back to life.” You may look well. You may even be functioning like you were before, but inside, everything can feel different.

This is often referred to as your "new normal", where healing is real, but so are the aftershocks: fatigue, brain fog, sleep changes, anxiety, neuropathy, body image shifts, and the quiet fear of recurrence. It can be hard to explain to loved ones, especially when they just want life to return to how it used to be.

This retreat offers a spacious reset - time away to rest, reflect, and feel steady again.

Reclaim Your Life After Breast Cancer Retreats are a beautiful, deeply nurturing experience designed for women who want to rest, reset, and feel understood without needing to perform wellness or force positivity.

It’s time away from appointments, responsibility, and the emotional labour of “being fine.” Time to exhale.

Imagine slow mornings, gentle guidance, and a calm rhythm to your days. A sanctuary where you’re cared for—body, mind, and heart. Where there is space to talk (or not talk), to reflect privately, to be in luxurious surroundings, and to connect with women who truly understand the landscape of life after breast cancer.

Over the retreat you’ll be held in an intimate circle of survivors, supported with counsellor-led guidance and thoughtful practices that help you reconnect with yourself.

We create space to name what’s been hard, make sense of the changes, and begin to feel steady again within your body and within your life.

Many women describe the greatest luxury as being with others who “get it.” When someone says, “I know exactly what you mean,” the weight lifts. Your nervous system settles. You can breathe again.

This is not about fixing you. This is about supporting you - beautifully, gently, and completely.

Come as you are. Leave feeling nourished, steadier, and more like yourself.

We teach women who have survived cancer how to reconnect with themselves, their hearts, and their community so they discover the freedom to live a strong and beautiful life.

"Great location, peaceful, beautifully appointed and clean, large enough that you didn't feel like you were on top of each other and plenty of places to chill and relax."

"The food was top notch, and making the pasta from scratch helped me to enjoy cooking again."

"I think you did a fantastic job to organise and run this retreat. Everything went so smoothly and I felt very free to choose the level of involvement I had in each activity. Lesley, you are great at spoiling people, helping others to believe in themselves and imparting knowledge, oh, and having fun of course!"

"There are not enough compliments I could give!!! Amazing Amazing Amazing! And fun! Everyone was so kind, appropriate re: letting us talk and give us space. Spoiled us. Laughed with us.  Just wonderful."

Question 34 from retreat participant survey. Did you feel that the retreat was well priced?

100% responded - Yes, I got what I paid for.

 This weekend, you are allowed to be a breast cancer survivor. You are encouraged to embrace your womanhood as you take the opportunity to reflect, reconnect, and rediscover You! 

For many women, our retreats are the first time since their diagnosis they have had to completely immerse themselves in rest, relaxation, learning, and to grow strong connections with other extraordinary women.

You will leave this retreat feeling recharged, inspired, and equipped with a deeper understanding of how to care for yourself in positive and healthy ways.

Cancer changes how people look and how they feel about their body. When someone receives a cancer diagnosis, they might feel like their body has betrayed them, or they disassociate from it because it has become ‘a stranger’. 

Often, cancer can even affect body image through the physical changes of treatments like chemotherapy, with hair loss and weight gain.

People who have breast cancer or have already undergone treatment might think differently about their body after a mastectomy. This is a dramatic, permanent change that leaves the body visibly different afterwards. 

A major focus of the retreat is to understand it is still possible to love your new body as much as before, despite the changes. If you have experienced any of these feelings, the retreat will help you build a new and positive relationship with your body.

Our facilitators Lesley and Kylie are both very experienced counsellors and will gently and respectfully teach and guide you throughout this workshop.

We often hear the negative impact cancer can have on intimacy and sexual wellbeing and we are extremely aware of how sensitive and private this topic can be to talk about. 

We have found a way to delve into this sometimes tricky subject during the retreats, where you will feel vulnerability slide into curiosity. Nervous giggles will evolve into belly laughs as you find there is a whole wide world of ways to improve your sexual intimacy.

Grief is natural response to loss, and there are several reasons why someone may have these feelings during their cancer experience. 

It can be about the loss of their old life. Loss of time spent being ill or in treatment. Loss of a healthy body or even the loss of life opportunities and the things cancer made someone miss out on. For some, treatment might have caused the loss of fertility or, in the case of breast cancer, one or both breasts. Feelings of grief can happen at any time during or after the diagnosis and treatment process.

During the Reclaim Your Life After Breast Cancer Retreat, we discover ways for you to reclaim some of those loses. We will show you ways to reconnect with your core self and without effort or persuasion, reinvent yourself. 

If this sounds like something that you need to do for yourself, but you would like to have a chat with me first, I would love to hear from you. 

As I am often in session, please phone my assistant Tanya Rabe on 0431991461 and she will make an appointment for us to have a phone call.

Alternatively, if you are ready to book into the next retreat, we will be in touch to let you know that we have received your booking. 

Well done for taking this empowering step for yourself. It can be a hard decision to make but I know it will be one that you will never regret.

I am really looking forward to spending time with you. 

Much love.

Lesley x

Registered Counsellor (ACA, ARCAP & CCP)

Welcome to our stunning new retreat space at Cedar Springs, set among the rolling landscape of Jerrara on the New South Wales south coast. 

Nestled in Saddleback Mountain, this peaceful and luxurious sanctuary is purpose-built for wellness retreats, a special place for deserved rest and meaningful connection.
 

Thoughtfully appointed and deeply peaceful, Cedar Springs is as calming inside as it is outside. Each room with magnificent views of the mountains, the ocean, or both!

There will be some free time to enjoy the local wineries, beaches, walking tracks and shopping that Kiama and the surrounding area has to offer or simply enjoy time on the property. There is a tennis court, a saltwater pool with sweeping views out to the ocean and surrounding mountain ranges. A wharf-style deck extends into the pool—perfect for sunrise yoga or meditation. For the brave, there is a cold plunge pool made easier by the view :). You might like to grab a book from the estate library and curl up on a lounge for an hour. The choice is yours.

Full Itinerary Coming Soon

Full Itinerary Coming Soon

Full Itinerary Coming Soon

Full Itinerary Coming Soon