Come home to the woman beneath everything you've been carrying.
Two days at Shortmead House for women who have given everything to everyone else, and are ready to hear themselves again.
Enquire about your placeWhen did your life become a half-life?
You know that feeling of carrying something you can't quite name? It's the weight of everyone else's needs, everyone else's voices, everyone else's version of who you should be. Piled on over years, sometimes decades, until you genuinely can't remember what you sound like underneath it all.
- You feel unseen.
- You feel numb.
- You no longer trust yourself.
You may be standing at a crossroads with no signpost. Your body may have been quietly signalling for years. Life may have gone beige, while a part of you is frightened of what might happen if you actually stop and listen.
But another part of you, quieter and persistent, knows you were not put here for this.
Your voice is the way home.
The real you has not gone anywhere. She is still there, beneath everything that got piled on top. This retreat creates the conditions for you to find her again.
Be heard.
Meet the feelings and unsaid truths you have learned to swallow.
Trust yourself.
Separate everyone else's story from the quiet knowing of your own.
Feel alive.
Return to joy, vibrancy and a strength that is both gentle and real.
Laura will meet you exactly where you are.
Laura Mitchell has spent twenty years discovering that the voice is not just sound. It is the whole emotional and physical history of a person, held in one instrument.
Every unsaid word. Every time you made yourself smaller. Every feeling you swallowed rather than expressed. It lives in your throat, your chest, your belly, waiting.
Laura's work is not about teaching you to sing. It is about listening you back to yourself.
"I'm Laura. Your voice, your medicine."
You don't have to know how. You only have to arrive.
Arrive
Come down the bumpy dirt track. Let Shortmead hold you. Eat, drink, breathe, and discover that there is no rush.
Loosen
Through voice, breath and body, acknowledge what you have been carrying and begin separating other people's voices from your own.
Remember
Build from connection and love rather than fear and depletion. Not a new you. The real you, who was always there.
Not a performance. A homecoming.
This is not a wellness weekend. It is not a workshop. It is not a course.
Over two days at Shortmead we begin with the truth of what you have been carrying. We sit with it, acknowledge it and honour how heavy it has been. Then, slowly and gently, we begin to loosen its grip.
Through your voice, your breath and your body, we give your whole system a chance to settle. Not forced. Not performative. Gentle, deep and real.
We listen to the feelings, the instincts, the spaces and the busyness. We ask the questions that matter: Who has been running the show? Where have you put others first? Where have you stopped believing yourself?
You share only what you choose to share. Nothing is required of you except to arrive.
You leave carrying less, and trusting more.
When you drive back down that bumpy dirt track, something will be different. Not loud or dramatic. Not a transformation you have to perform for anyone else. Something quieter and more solid than that.
A love that does not need justifying.
An inspiration that does not come from striving.
You will have laid the first stones of something true.
The track is bumpy, and that is part of it.
You turn off the road and come up a long dirt track between the fields. The house is five hundred years old and sits on its own, with the river at the bottom of the garden. By the time you park, something in you has already slowed down.
Laura will be at the door. Tea, food and quiet are looked after. You do not have to arrive as anything other than tired.
- Sing in front of anyone.
- Tell the room your story.
- Stay in the room if you need to step outside.
- Decide anything about what comes next on the day.
If you cry, someone will hand you tea and nobody will make it a moment. If you would rather sit and listen for the first hour, that is a perfectly good way to begin.
You can keep waiting to feel like yourself again.
Or you can give yourself two days in which no one else's needs are louder than your own. You are your own medicine. We simply create the conditions for you to remember that.
Sat 21 – Sun 22 November 2026
Shortmead House, Bedfordshire
£250 for the two days, or £400 with a room in the house for the Saturday night. Ten places at most, and six women are needed for the weekend to run.
This is the first time Laura has run it, so the women who come in November are the founding circle, and it will not be this price again.
Tell Laura a little about yourself below.
Enquiring is not booking. Laura will be in touch for a short, unhurried conversation so you can both be sure this is the right weekend for you.