20 hours of intensive coaching with two experienced midlife specialists who provide dual perspectives and accelerated breakthroughs
This 4-day intensive coaching retreat is structured to create maximum transformation in focused time. Here’s how it typically unfolds.
You arrive in McMinnville’s beautiful Willamette Valley setting and meet Susan and Sandy in the afternoon for a welcome drink. The first session begins with understanding where you are now and what brought you here. They ask questions that cut through surface answers to what’s really happening underneath.
You begin articulating what you haven’t been able to say clearly before. What’s actually wrong. What you’re afraid of. What you secretly want but haven’t admitted. Susan and Sandy create such safety that you find yourself being honest in ways you haven’t been, even with yourself.
The second day dives into what’s keeping you stuck. Through systemic work, you start seeing the family patterns, cultural conditioning, beliefs you inherited that aren’t actually yours. The “should” messages running your life. The limiting beliefs create barriers.
Interactive exercises help you feel these patterns in your body, not just understand them intellectually. You might do creative exercises, movement work, or experiential activities that reveal what talking alone can’t access. Breakthroughs happen because you’re experiencing concepts differently.
Afternoon brings health and wellness time. A one hour massage, a walk through vineyards, gentle movement, breathing exercises. Space to integrate what’s emerging before the early evening session continues the work.
With clarity on what’s been holding you back, day three focuses on what you actually want. Not what you should want, what you genuinely desire for this next chapter. Susan and Sandy guide you through exercises that help you envision your future beyond limiting beliefs and fears.
You design your next chapter based on your values, not others’ expectations. What matters to you now? What lights you up? What would make you feel alive again? The coaches help you get specific, concrete, and realistic while still honoring what feels scary or impossible.
Final day translates insights into action. You create a practical roadmap for moving forward. Susan and Sandy help you identify first steps, anticipate obstacles, plan for when motivation wanes. You leave with clear direction and tools for sustaining momentum.
The closing session includes reflection on what shifted during these four days. Many women report feeling lighter, clearer, more hopeful than they have in years. Not because problems are solved, but because they finally see a path forward and trust themselves to walk it.
Two Expert Coaches Working With You
Susan and Sandy both work with you throughout the retreat. Two perspectives, two sets of expertise, twice the insight. They read what’s happening for you and adapt in real time, one coach picking up what the other sees. This dynamic creates breakthroughs that wouldn’t happen with just one coach.
Intensive Coaching Gets Results Fast
Four days of deep, focused work accomplishes more than months of weekly sessions squeezed into busy schedules. When you’re rested, relaxed, and completely focused on your own growth, transformation happens faster. No distractions, no rushing back to regular life between sessions.
Interactive Exercises, Not Just Talk
Susan and Sandy’s non-traditional coaching style uses creative, interactive exercises that help you explore concepts and feelings more deeply than typical coaching conversations. You’ll do exercises that surprise you, reveal patterns you hadn’t seen, and create insights that stick.
Systemic Approach to Midlife Patterns
Sandy’s systemic integrative training helps identify family patterns, cultural conditioning, and generational beliefs keeping you stuck. Understanding where your “should” messages came from helps you release them. This isn’t just about you in isolation; it’s about you in the context of all the systems that shaped you.
Specialized Midlife Expertise
Susan specializes in guiding women through midlife challenges and opportunities. She’s certified as a Professional Retirement Coach and has decades of experience helping women navigate this exact phase. This isn’t generic life coaching; this is expertise specific to what you’re facing.
Practical Tools You Can Use
You don’t just gain insights, you leave with practical tools, exercises, and action steps you can use in daily life. The retreat includes materials you take home, practices for maintaining clarity, and strategies for when you get stuck again.
This private retreat is exclusively designed for you and with you!
The first time we meet, you will be on a pre-retreat Zoom Call two weeks before you arrive. We will discuss the retreat, you can share all your preferences and wishes and we’ll get to know each other a little bit.
Day 1—On your arrival day, we will welcome you to McMinnville in the afternoon with a Welcome drink. Together we will set the intention for your days with us and you will have time to settle into your Hotel or Airbnb.
Day 2, 3 & 4 – We will start working together around 9 am.
We offer daily intensive coaching sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon/early evening. The duration of each session depends on your personal needs and can be between one and three hours.
Between the coaching sessions, you will have time to relax, process, take a walk, or do whatever it takes to help you reconnect with yourself.
We take a 1.5-hour lunch break around 12:30 pm and resume the coaching process again around 2 pm.
Every daily schedule is subject to change depending on what you need in the moment.
We invite you to our table as friends & family – light lunch, water, tea, and coffee, as well as healthy snacks like fruit and nuts, are included in your booking.
We know and love the best health food places in town and during your retreat days we invite you to explore fresh, regional, mostly organic food with us.
We will adapt to your dietary wants and needs, whether you are vegetarian, vegan, GF or you have other wishes.
As a lifelong counselor and life coach, Susan embodies her craft. As a Professional Certified Retirement Coach in the later chapters of her own life, she understands the urgency of taking inventory of what still matters most.
“This is the time to ensure there are no regrets—to feel fulfilled by caring for your unfinished dreams,” she says.
Susan is always looking for opportunities to support others in believing in themselves. She has a natural and passionate interest in what makes people tick—what makes each person uniquely who they are. In her coaching work, she hears and senses patterns that both support and obstruct self-development.
She sees her role as guiding people into their essence and authenticity, the most effective place from which to live and make decisions. With a Master’s degree in counseling and years of experience in education and business settings, Susan easily relates to people from diverse backgrounds.
She helps clients chip away at their own interior sculpture, revealing and shaping what’s been waiting within. Susan is a passionate life teacher.
Sandrina Weller offers a unique global perspective informed by her experiences living and working across cultures. As a bi-national citizen and fluent English speaker, Sandy is always translating through the lens of language, culture, and meaning.
She recognizes that even people speaking the same language constantly assume meaning through what is being said, yet often miss what is actually being communicated. Sandy uses this insight to slow down communication with her clients in profound ways, creating space for deeper inquiry and reflection.
As a Systemic Integrative Coach and Breath Work Coach, she helps women break free from limiting patterns and uncover new perspectives on life. Her coaching tools help clients “jump the system” of chronic thinking and behavior patterns, opening a wider view of the various systems they belong to.
Sandy’s playful, curious approach and wide-ranging life experiences make her a compassionate and inspiring guide for women navigating change. She is deeply committed to the challenges and dilemmas facing women today.
Making special memories in McMinnville!
Nestled in the heart of Willamette Valley, McMinnville was just nominated as the friendliest small town in Oregon!
With an inviting climate that’s temperate year-round, McMinnville is a great place to visit in any season. Hospitable, welcoming, and very friendly, the town is an ideal destination for a weekend getaway or a longer break to unwind, explore, and choose your own adventure.
Whether you’re in the mood to sip local wines, enjoy the Pacific Northwest scenery, or simply stroll the cozy streets of this historic Oregon college town where you can browse galleries, family-owned businesses, and unique boutiques, McMinnville offers a variety of experiences to make your visit unforgettable.
With art, culture, history, and some visiting UFOs, McMinnville is truly an out-of-this-world destination, and our Coaching to Connection workspace is right downtown on 3rd Street!
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR:
“Redefine Midlife” Private Transformation Retreat
McMinnville, Oregon, USA
Open all year, on demand, 2026
4days/3 nights, one person retreat
Trip leader: Susan Cook & Sandrina Weller
McMinnville in the heart of Yamhill County, Oregon is a perfect place to unplug and re-connect with yourself.
Our one-on-one retreat is “all about you” – you’ll get the luxury of more than 72 hours focussing just on YOU, with as much personal life-coaching sessions you need.
• Approximately 20 hours of personalized life-coaching with two experienced coaches in a private coaching setting
• Welcome drink during our check-in meeting
• Water, tea, coffee, and healthy snacks served throughout the day
• Daily schedule is personalized to your needs
• Course Manual – personal notes, inspiration, personalised exercises
• Pre and post retreat support session on Zoom
• Transportation during the retreat related to the coaching work sessions
• Free parking available onsite
• Wifi connection
• Accountability post-retreat coaching package at reduced rate.
• Flight costs
• Travel insurance
• Accommodation • Airport transfer (additional cost) * Breakfast + Dinner
• Additional activities and items not included in the itinerary
• Also not included are items of a personal nature such as, gifts, toll calls, excess baggage, medical costs, the costs of hospitalization and evacuation from remote areas, travel insurance and additional expenses arising from the delay or extension of a trip due to weather, political disputes, sickness, failure of transportation, or other causes beyond our control.
A non-refundable trip deposit of $500 USD is needed to hold your spot in the retreat.
Your final payment of is due 2 weeks before the start date of your retreat. Payments can made by Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, or PayPal and include an additional 3% convenience fee. These payments are made online directly through our website.
Other payment options are “cash” payments by money order, cashier’s check, or Zelle. If you choose a cash payment option, we will provide you with our mailing address or Zelle contact information.
If you wish us to provide you with a payment plan, contact us at info@coachingtoconnection.com
All payments must be paid in full and received by our office no later than 2 weeks prior to the retreat event. We cannot make exceptions to this policy.
If cancellation occurs 120 or more days before departure, there will be no loss of your trip deposit.
Any cancellation made between 90-119 days will result in a total loss of your $500 USD trip deposit. Any cancellation received in writing from 60-89 days will result in in a loss of 50% of the trip price. Any cancellation between 59 days and the trip departure will result in a total loss of funds. We reserve the right to cancel the trip if it does not meet the trip minimum (if we do so, your trip deposit is refunded).
Trip cancellation insurance is strongly recommended if there is a possibility that you might have to cancel your trip. All cancellations and/or any refund requests must be made in writing (no calls) to info@coachingtoconnection.com before the start date of our retreat. Keep in mind that once your retreat payments become non-refundable as delineated in our cancellation policy above, there will be NO refunds, and you will need to report your cancellation to your trip cancellation insurance provider for reimbursement.
Coaching to Connection reserves the right to cancel any retreat prior to departure for any reason whatsoever, including an insufficient number of participants or logistical problems (e.g. acts of God, war, strikes, etc.), which may impede trip operations. The refund of all payments as described in the paragraph below shall release Coaching to Connection from any further liability. A trip cancellation due to insufficient numbers would normally occur at least a month prior to departure, unless acts of God, war, strikes or other events impede our departure causing large numbers of participants opt to cancel participation on the journey in the last days before departure.
Coaching to Connection must make substantial payments to suppliers (including providers of land travel) far in advance of the scheduled date on which we embark. If a trip is cancelled due to forces beyond our control (acts of God, war, labor strikes, earthquake, flooding, etc.), Coaching to Connection will promptly refund the portion of the trip cost not advanced to suppliers. Coaching to Connection will use its best efforts to recover advance payments as promptly as possible, and will refund to you the amount recovered, if any. However, Coaching to Connection does not guarantee recovery of any or all of the advance payments made, and our use of best efforts to recover these payments will not include the institution of any legal proceeding in foreign lands. This policy applies to a trip cancellation by client choice following any necessary increase in trip costs.
This private retreat is exclusivly designed for you and with you!
The first time we meet, you will be on a pre-retreat Zoom Call about two weeks before you arrive. We will discuss the retreat, you can share all your preferences and wishes and we’ll get to know each other a little bit.
Day 1—On your arrival day, we will welcome you to McMinnville with a Welcome drink. Together we will set the intention for your days with us and you will have time to settle into your Hotel or Airbnb.
Day 2, 3 & 4 – We will start working together around 9 am.
We offer daily intensive coaching sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon/early evening. The duration of each session depends on your personal needs and can be between one and three hours.
Between the coaching sessions, you will have time to relax, process, take a walk, or do whatever it takes to help you reconnect with yourself.
We take a 1.5-hour lunch break around 12:30 pm and resume the coaching process again around 2 pm.
Every daily schedule is subject to change depending on what you need in the moment.
Coaching to Connection, www.coachingtoconnection.com McMinnville, OR, U.S.A.