Romancing the Crone, the very first Gateway Elderwomen Retreat, will take place on the weekend of Friday 6th November to Sunday 8th November 2026.
The waitlist for this retreat is now closed, as we have three times as many women interested as there are places. However, if you would like to join the waitlist for 2027 and be informed as soon as the dates are set, please email me at jody@gateway-women.com
I’m calling in a group of potent, powerful childless crones to co-create this together. If you’re a childless-not-by-choice woman, fifty-five or older, post-menopausal, grief-initiated and willing to embrace your childless elderhood, let’s stir the cauldron together.
When I was in my forties and living in the ruins of my dreams of motherhood, I brought us together to grieve and transform at the Gateway Women Reignite Weekend. I’ve run that weekend over fifty times, and my team of licensed facilitators around the world continue to do so.
Through my fifties, I continued to pass through the transformations of post-menopause as the last of my youth faded in the rear-view mirror. The vague sense that what had got to me ‘here’ wasn’t going to get me ‘there’ solidified into a full-scale WTF as I realised that once again, I was entering territory where there seemed to be no role models, no guidelines and no support–that of elderhood without motherhood in a culture that saw me as having no value to the patriarchial project. I couldn’t even claim a part in the ‘grandmother hypothesis’ of post-menopausal women.
Now in my early sixties, and having been developing my Gateway Elderwomen project for almost 7 years, including my series of free (and award-winning!) essays on Substack, co-hosting the ‘Childless Elderwomen’ group in the Childless Collective (formerly GW) online community, and having hosted more than twenty ‘Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen‘ webinars with the NomoCrones from around the world, it feels like I’m just cooked enough to stand in this fire alongside you.
Romancing the Crone will be a powerful initiation into our Cronehood, through the co-creation of a powerful field of truth-telling, consciousness-raising, creative earth-honouring rituals and sacred community grief-tending.
- It’s time to claim our identity as ‘NomoCrones’ (not-mother crones) and to be justifiably proud of it.
- We will roar, we will laugh, we will cry, we will learn, we will tend, we will give back, and we will be changed.
- Let’s show ourselves, each other, and, in time, the world, what women like us have to offer.
- Let’s prove that neither menopause nor older women without children are ‘nature’s mistake’.
- Together, let’s humbly take our place in the lineage of childless elders who’ve gone before us.
- Together, let’s tend to the wounds that hold us back from sharing our gifts with the world.
- And then we will each return to our daily lives, initiated into the sacred gifts and responsibilities of elderhood, and ready to dedicate our lives to serving our beautiful, yet broken, world and the generations to come.
Because childless women can be Good Ancestors too.
Cost: Including either lunch or supper over 3 days, snacks & beverages and all materials, sliding scale from EUR €450-650. Booking opens 1st May 2026.
Practical Stuff:
Dates/Times: Friday 6th November 2026, 4pm onwards, including a shared early supper, until Sunday 8th November 5pm, including a shared lunch.
Location: A private home by the Atlantic in West Cork, Ireland. 10-minute drive from Courtmacherry, 20 minutes from Clonakilty, 30 minutes from Bandon, 45 minutes from Kinsale, 1 hour from Cork City (and airport). Full address, transport, and accommodation suggestions & support will be given when your booking is confirmed.
Food/Drinks: Tea/coffee/snacks and either a home-cooked lunch or supper each day will be provided (and we’ll do our best to accommodate your dietary requirements)
Cost: Sliding scale from EUR €450 – €550 – €650 depending on your budget (and whether you are travelling from outside Ireland/EU/UK), and includes a home-cooked lunch or supper on each of 3 days, all snacks, beverages and materials (but not accommodation or travel).
Payment plans: We can offer payment plans for the balance amount, at no extra cost to you, if that makes it possible for you to attend. Full payment will be required before the workshop; however, we can arrange smaller, regular payments to suit your budget. Please let us know if you wish to discuss a payment plan on your intake questionnaire.
Number of places: a maximum of 12 childless crones.
Prerequisites for attendance: You will be at least 55 years old at the time of the workshop and post-menopausal. You will be a non-mother due to infertility or circumstance (not by choice) and will, ideally, have already attended a Gateway Women Reignite Weekend, or have engaged profoundly in other reflective ways to attend to the primary grief of your involuntary childlessness.
Booking process: As there is a strong demand for this event, we are releasing potential places in tranches of 12 (starting 1st May 2026) to those already on the waiting list. Once you have received your email invitation to apply from Jody, please respond within 7 days with your completed questionnaire and deposit payment of EUR €100 (you’ll be invoiced later for the balance). Jody will then contact you to arrange your no-obligation 30-minute Zoom intake chat. Only after that will she be able to let you know whether your place is confirmed (and if it is not, she will refund your deposit fee). Should any of the first tranche of 12 not wish to go ahead, Jody will contact those next on the waitlist. If you receive an email invitation from Jody to begin the booking process and you know that you will NOT be applying, please let us know ASAP so that we can offer your spot to another woman on the large wait list. We hope to run this event annually.
Prerequisites for attendees: As this Romancing the Crone retreat may be an intense experience at times, it is crucial that only those who feel willing and able to sit with strong emotions (both your own and others) apply at this time. Please note this is why the prerequisite of having already tended to your primary grief about your childlessness is so important. If you’d go deeper into your childless healing in preparation for a future Romancing the Crone retreat (in 2027), please consider attending a Gateway Women Reignite Weekend in the UK or Australia.
Disabled access: Step-free access throughout (including bathrooms), and in the car parking area.
Allergies: We’re sorry, but if you are allergic to cats/dogs, this is a private home, and we will not be able to keep them 100% away from the areas we’ll be using for the retreat. We will also ask you to refrain from wearing perfume or using strongly scented body products during the retreat.
Transport & Parking: plentiful, free and safe parking directly outside the property. As it is a very rural location, public transport is sketchy, so we’ll help you with advice on bus timetables, car share info, taxis, daily lifts to the venue, etc. The nearest airport/train station is Cork. We will get you here!
Accommodation: There are a variety of accommodations available locally, and once your place is confirmed, we will provide you with a list and support/advise you as needed. However, whatever accommodation you do book, please make sure it is refundable in case the workshop has to be cancelled for public health or other unforeseen circumstances, or if your own circumstances change and you are no longer able to attend.
Public Health Issues due to Coronavirus, etc: We follow HSE (the Irish Health Service Executive) recommendations. Should the workshop need to be cancelled for public health reasons, we will refund 100% of the retreat fee, including your deposit. However, you will be responsible for your travel and accommodation costs, so please make sure any bookings you make are fully refundable.
IMPORTANT: Cancellation/Refund Policy:
- Your EUR €100 deposit holds a potential place for you on the retreat, but is not confirmed until after your intake interview with Jody.
- In the unlikely event that you or we sense that this isn’t the right time or retreat for you, we will refund your booking deposit.
- Once your offer of a place is confirmed (by email from Jody, within 24 hours of your Zoom chat) and accepted by you, the balance owing for the retreat is due within 14 days, or by an agreed payment plan. If you do not keep to the agreed payment schedule, your place will be offered to someone on the waiting list, and you will lose your deposit.
- The full retreat fees are refundable (including your deposit), should the event be cancelled by us because of Covid, Public Health recommendations, or other unforeseen circumstances at our end.
- It is not our policy to refund if you change your mind at a later date, or circumstances mean you can no longer attend. However, we do appreciate that life happens, and so if you give us at least six weeks’ notice, we will do our best to fill your place with someone from the waiting list; if we manage to do so, and solely at our discretion, we will refund your fees, minus your deposit.
- We are unable to reimburse any costs for travel or accommodation; please make sure that all bookings are refundable, and consider travel insurance as a backup.
FACILITATOR: JODY DAY (UK/Ireland) will be 62 by the time of the retreat. She founded Gateway Women in 2011, and is the author of ‘Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children’ (PanMacmillan 2016/2020). One of the four original founders of AWOC (Ageing Without Children) in the UK in 2014, she began her Gateway Elderwomen project in 2020 with the first Fireside Wisdom webinar bringing childless elderwomen together, as part of her role as an Ambassador for World Childless Week. Her award-winning essays on ‘Elderhood without Motherhood’ are published on her Substack, Gateway Elderwomen. Jody is an integrative psychotherapist now specialising in working with older non-mothers, a trained Work That Reconnects facilitator, as well as the creator of the Gateway Women Reignite Weekend, which she has facilitated around the world more than fifty times. She also co-hosts the ‘Childless Elderwomen’ subgroup of our online community. After a lifetime in London, she now lives on the Atlantic coast of West Cork, Ireland, and is managed by a rascally terrier puppy and watched over by a zen ginger cat.
If you have any questions that I haven't covered above (no question is too small), please email Jody at jody@gateway-women.com
