Higher Ground · A Take Shape Adventures Retreat
A retreat to get yourself back.
So you can lead from there.
Co-led by
Tracey Wright · Susan Delroi
An applied psychologist and a sitting CEO
A beautiful week — and a way of being that lasts.
Why this, why now
Time and space to focus on yourself.
In whatever shape that needs to take — your career, your life, your health, your mind.
Wellness retreats give you rest. Leadership programs give you tactics. Conferences give you inspiration. None of them give you the one thing you actually need at this point in your life: time and space to focus on yourself — held in a small room of women who understand what it costs to lead, with two facilitators who have lived it from both sides.
Eight days of restfulness, quietness, stillness, and active movement. A reminder of who you are. A precise vocabulary for what your strengths actually are. Your inner why articulated and verbalised. The boundaries you need to hold. And a plan for the future you actually want to create — written in your own handwriting, posted to you four weeks after you return.
That’s what we built. That’s why we built it.
You will come home refocused, refreshed, motivated, and excited about the future — not because you’ve escaped your life, but because you’ve come back to yourself, and to a plan that’s genuinely yours.
What you actually build
This is real leadership-capacity work, not a pause. Across the eight days you build the things that change how you lead when you get home:
- Ways to buy back your time — what to stop carrying, delegate, or let go of entirely
- The confidence to lead without the impostor’s whisper — quietened at the root, not papered over
- Ownership of your real strengths and your own leadership style — named, claimed, deliberate
- Clear pathways you can take straight back to your workplace and your personal life, to perform at a higher level
- The clarity and the nerve to step into the next role you’ve been circling — the bigger remit, the board seat, the raise — with a plan to actually claim it
An invitation
Who were you before you became who everyone needed?
There is a moment, somewhere between forty and sixty, when the woman who has held everything together stops in the middle of a meeting, or in the car, or in the kitchen at eleven at night, and realises she has lost the thread of who she actually is.
She is doing well. From the outside, nothing looks wrong. She runs the business, leads the team, holds the family. She is the one everyone leans on.
And quietly, she knows: something has shifted. The energy isn’t there. The decisions she’s been postponing are stacking up. She’s tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. And she can’t quite see, from inside her own life, what to do about it.
This retreat is for that woman. Eight days, far enough away. A small group of women at the same altitude. Two facilitators who have actually sat in the seats she sits in. And a method, not a holiday.
What she takes home
Not a feeling. Things she can use.
Eight days that produce a beautiful feeling and nothing else are not worth $8,000. Eight days that change something she can name and use are worth twenty.
A name for the pattern
She arrives with a vague unease. She leaves with precise vocabulary — energising strengths versus learned competencies, the roles she’s been playing, the parts of herself she put down.
What she wants — said out loud
By Day 6 she will have verbalised what she actually wants for her role, her body, her life — without justification or permission-seeking. Probably for the first time in years.
The boundaries to hold it
What she’ll say no to in order to say yes to herself. Articulated, practised in the room, ready to walk home with her.
Her elevator pitch — the real one
The thirty seconds that answer who she actually is now. Written on Day 7. Spoken on Day 8. Used for years.
A different relationship with her body
A working understanding of why she’s been tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix — and what to do about it. The single piece of knowledge that probably saves her five years of depletion.
A letter from herself, four weeks later
Each woman writes herself a letter on the final morning — what she learnt, what she’ll do differently, what she’s good at, the plan for return. We post it to her four weeks later, when the post-retreat glow fades and the reminder lands exactly when she needs it.
Six weeks after you return.
This is what it actually changes.
-
Within the first week home.
You will have one conversation you’ve been postponing — with a partner, a co-founder, a board chair, an employee, or yourself. You will have it because Vietnam gave you the language for it. The fear that’s held it back will not have disappeared; you’ll just be larger than it now.
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By the end of the first month.
Your week will have physically restructured. Something will have come off your plate — a meeting, a recurring commitment, an obligation that wasn’t yours to carry. Something else will have moved on. You will have stopped performing competence for at least one room of people. The cohort will be quietly holding you to it through the four-week check-in.
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Within six weeks.
You will have used the elevator pitch you wrote on Day 7 at least three times — at an event, in a meeting, on a podcast, or in a moment of self-introduction you would normally have fumbled. People will respond to you differently. You will notice the response. That feedback loop becomes its own evidence that the work has held.
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Three months on.
Your energy will be different — not because you’re sleeping more, but because the nutrition and midlife capacity work has reshaped how you fuel and recover. You will know what drains you and what restores you with a precision you couldn’t articulate in March. You will have stopped apologising for needs you used to push through.
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By Christmas.
You will have stepped toward something bigger you’d have talked yourself out of in March — put yourself forward for the next role, claimed the bigger remit, named your number, taken the seat at the table. It will surprise the people around you and not surprise you. Eleven other women will know the backstory and will have witnessed the arc. Some of them will become the most important conversations in your year.
What this is
Not a retreat to escape your life.
A retreat to get yourself back — so you can lead from there.
There are wellness retreats. They give her rest. She comes home and Monday is still Monday.
There are executive coaching programs. They give her tactics. More to do, not less.
There are conferences and summits. They give her inspiration. It fades within a week.
None of them fix the actual problem.
The actual problem
Successful women in midlife have spent fifteen-plus years adapting to what everyone needed. They are running on competencies they built out of necessity rather than strengths they’re energised by — and they cannot see the pattern from inside their own lives.
Everything else is a symptom. The exhaustion. The lost clarity. The postponed decisions. The quiet questioning of whether she still wants the life she built. All of it traces back to leading from adapted behaviour for too long, with no time, no distance, and no witness to recognise it.
Our work
We do three things, in this order:
Recognition. The strengths that are genuinely yours versus the ones you built just to cope. The pattern you’ve been living. The parts of yourself you put down so long ago you forgot they were yours.
Rebuild. What leadership looks like when it comes from who you are, not from who everyone needs you to be. How you decide, hire, structure your week, stop carrying what isn’t yours.
Return. How you take it home and make it hold. A post-retreat integration call. An option to keep going — through ongoing advisory, or by bringing the work to your team.
The sequencing is the method. No goal-setting until the recognition has landed. This is non-negotiable for this work.
Who is leading
Two women. Two seats.
An applied psychologist and a sitting CEO — holding the room together.
This is the part that makes this retreat impossible to copy. Most leadership retreats are run by people who have studied leadership but not lived it, or lived it but not studied it. Here, we are both.
Portrait coming
A matched editorial portrait of Tracey is being arranged.
Tracey Wright
Applied Positive Psychologist
- Master of Applied Positive Psychology
- Master of Nutrition
- PhD in progress — researching how to build leadership capacity in women through evidence-based methods
- Founder of three businesses (sold one — a women’s gym) including Impact Adventures and Take Shape Adventures
- 25 years coaching and supporting women’s wellbeing
- Nature-based facilitator. VIA Strengths, PsyCap, Self-Determination Theory.
Portrait coming
A matched editorial portrait of Susan is being arranged.
Susan Delroi
CEO, Albury Wodonga Health
- 25+ years senior executive across for-profit, purpose-driven and public sectors
- Former CEO, HealthShare Victoria
- Former Deputy Secretary, Victoria Police — negotiated the largest police EA in history
- CPA. Accredited executive coach.
- Top 50 Women in the Victorian Public Sector, 2018
Why this matters in the room
Tracey brings the method, the evidence base, and the lived experience of being a founder. Susan brings the seat — the credibility of someone who, this week, is also running a board, an exec team, and the day-to-day pressure you are. That is not coaching from the outside. That is peer recognition from someone whose pager is also going off.
Together, we close the dismissal gap. A psychologist alone can be dismissed as academic. A CEO alone can be dismissed as corporate. Neither of us can be dismissed when we hold the room together. And that is what allows the recognition work to actually land.
This isn’t theoretical. Susan and I have been co-facilitating leaders retreats and workshops together for some time — different formats, different groups, the same essential work. Across that work we’ve watched the same pattern surface in room after room: senior women who don’t get space to ask what they actually want next. The Vietnam retreat is what we’ve built in response. The deeper, longer version of work we already know holds.
The eight days
Hoi An, slowly.
A deliberate arc. Recognition before action. Rest in the middle.
i.
Arrive. Decompress. Settle.
No content. A gentle welcome, a shared meal, the slow easing-out of operating mode. The one question is named — Who were you before you became who everyone needed? — and left to sit overnight.
ii.
What’s here. What’s in the way.
Morning session at the resort — each woman names to the cohort what’s brought her here and what she’s quietly hoping for. Afternoon in the Vietnamese countryside — village, cycling, a home-hosted dinner. Late session: what’s holding you back — the inner critic, the recurring story, the fear underneath the postponed decision.
iii.
The recognition session.
Strengths and learned behaviours — the emotional core of the retreat. Your VIA assessment results, story-led, structured pairs. Which strengths are genuinely yours, and which were built from necessity. The afternoon and evening for it to land.
iv.
Wildlife and wide horizons.
An early start to Son Tra peninsula — wildlife walking, jungle, Da Nang Bay, the Marble Mountains. No formal workshop. The walking conversations and the drive home are the work today. The embodiment of yesterday’s recognition.
v.
The body knows.
Cham Island in the morning — boat, snorkel, beach lunch. Afternoon workshop: midlife capacity — nutrition, energy, perimenopause, menopause. How your body is also how you lead.
vi.
What you want. And what you don’t.
My Son sanctuary in the morning — Cham ruins, ancient music, pottery, river boat back. Afternoon workshop, led by Susan: verbalising what you actually want — for your role, your body, your life — and the boundaries needed to hold it.
vii.
Your leadership voice.
Morning herbal healing journey — gardens, infusions, meditation, vegetarian lunch on the farm. Afternoon workshop: your elevator pitch — the thirty seconds that answer who you actually are now. The practical artefact of the entire retreat.
viii.
The letter. The return.
The closing morning: each woman writes herself a letter — what she learnt, what she’ll do differently, the strengths she wants to remember, the boundaries she’ll hold. We collect the letters and post them to her four weeks later. A closing ritual. Lanterns lit. Hugs. Each woman books her post-retreat call before she leaves.
What’s included
Everything on the ground.
All-inclusive once you arrive in Hoi An. You bring yourself and a flight.
- Accommodation for 7 nights at the Almanity Resort and Spa, Hoi An — twin-share or solo (single supplement)
- All meals: breakfast daily, plus lunches and dinners as per the daily program
- All in-country transfers, excursions and entrance fees
- Daily morning yoga (Hatha or Yin, gentle and accessible)
- Eight days of facilitated program with Tracey Wright and Susan Delroi
- VIA Character Strengths assessment (pre- and post-retreat)
- One private 1:1 coaching session with Susan during the retreat (30–45 minutes, scheduled into your week)
- Two onboarding calls before the retreat (preparation, intention-setting)
- The letter you write to yourself on Day 8, posted to you four weeks after you return
- Post-retreat integration call, four to six weeks after returning home
- Two cohort check-in calls at four and twelve weeks post-retreat
- A documented professional development program with stated learning outcomes and a completion certificate
Not included: international flights to Vietnam, travel insurance, personal expenses, single supplement (if applicable), and any optional spa or activity outside the program.
Founding Cohort Investment
$7,995
SAVE $1,005
Twin-share, all-inclusive on the ground.
Locked in for this first-ever cohort only.
Single supplement +$995 (own room, limited).
Future cohorts at $9,000 twin-share.
Reserve your place — 14–21 April 2027
A note on investment
This is a self-funded retreat. It’s deliberately not a traditional leadership program — it’s something most workplaces don’t yet have a category for, which means we don’t expect employers to sponsor attendance. That’s a feature, not a bug: it means every woman in the room has chosen this for herself, with her own resources, which is part of what makes the cohort work.
That said: the retreat is structured and documented as a professional leadership-development program — with named competencies, a written agenda, pre- and post-assessment, and a completion certificate. Many participants put some or all of it through their business as a PD expense, and it is the kind of program the ATO has recognised as deductible when its dominant purpose is professional. As with anything tax-related, worth a conversation with your accountant. We can provide all the documentation you need.
Payment
$1,500 deposit secures your place. The balance is split into two payments — 60 days and 30 days before departure. Payment plans available on request. Founding cohort spots are limited to 12 and offered on a first-confirmed basis.
For those who can’t get away
A domestic version, in Cairns.
August 2027. Six days, Far North Queensland. Same recognition work, closer to home — for women whose lives don’t yet allow eight days in Vietnam.
If Vietnam isn’t the right time for you, or if eight days overseas feels like more than you can clear right now, the Cairns retreat is a closer-to-home entry point. Same method, smaller commitment, different cohort. Send us a message and we’ll share the detail.
Is this for you
Who we built this for.
This retreat is deliberately small. We are not for everyone, and we are honest about it. The cohort is the product, and the cohort works because the women in it are at the same altitude.
This is for you if
- You are a founder running a business with 5–50 staff, or a senior leader inside an organisation
- You are aged roughly 42–58 — in the stage of leadership where the cost of carrying everything is starting to show
- You are successful by external measures and quietly aware that something needs to shift
- You sense there’s a bigger version of your leadership ahead — a next role, a next level — and you want to step into it, not just steady the ship
- You can clear 8 days in April and arrive ready to genuinely arrive
- You want to be in a room with peers, not below them or above them
- You have the financial capacity for this to be a considered choice, not a stretch
If you’re reading this and quietly recognising yourself, we’d love to talk. Every place starts with a 30-minute conversation — not a sales call, a mutual conversation about whether the room is right for you and you are right for the room.
How to enquire
Start with a conversation.
We don’t sell places to this retreat through a checkout. Every spot is offered after a 30-minute conversation with Tracey or with Tracey and Susan together. That conversation is the gate — it’s how we make sure the cohort is right, and how you make sure we are right for you.
Send your enquiry
Reserve your place below, or email us a little about you and what’s drawing you to this.
Book a conversation
We’ll arrange a 30-minute call to talk it through. No preparation needed.
Decide together
If we’re a fit on both sides, we’ll confirm your place. You have 48 hours to confirm.
Ready to join the founding cohort? Reserve your place below, or email hello@takeshapeadventures.com.au to talk it through first.