Our Story

Room to Restore began with a question.

Where does a woman go when she needs to find her way back to herself?

The woman who's been hurt.

The woman who's lost something, or someone.

The woman who's spent so long looking after everybody else that she barely knows what she needs anymore.

The woman whose life looks perfectly fine from the outside, but doesn't quite feel like hers on the inside.

The woman starting again.

The woman who knows there is more of her in there somewhere. More she wants to feel, do, become, experience, but can't quite hear herself clearly enough to know what comes next.

Or simply the woman who's tired and would quite like somewhere to put everything down for a while.

Room to Restore was created for all of her.

If I'm being truthful, it was created because I've been more than one of those women myself.

And I wish I'd had a place like this to come to.

A note from the host.

Room to Restore didn't begin because I wanted to start a wellness business.

It began because, for a period of my life, I needed somewhere like this and couldn't quite find it.

From the outside, I was functioning. Finding a job. Working. Finding a home. Raising children largely on my own, with one not-so-easy divorce under my belt. Remembering what needed remembering. Getting everyone where they needed to be. Making decisions. Holding things together.

I was very good at carrying on.

But underneath all of that, there were times I felt hurt. Times I felt lost. Times I wondered what had happened to the woman I'd been before, and what I actually wanted the next part of my life to look like.

What I didn't need was another person telling me how to improve myself.

I didn't need a better morning routine or another list of habits I should apparently have mastered by now.

I wanted somewhere I could put everything down for a minute without being judged for any of it.

Somewhere I could hear myself again.

Somewhere that didn't ask anything of me before it offered something back.

That thought became Room to Restore.

The idea grew from there.

I've spent much of my life around hospitality. I also spent years working behind the scenes for high-profile people, in environments where anticipating what somebody might need before they asked was quite literally part of the job.

You learn to notice. To remember. To think ahead. To solve the problem before it becomes a problem.

And somewhere along the way, I realised that perhaps the thing I'd spent so much of my life doing for other people was part of the answer.

What if we took that same instinct for looking after people and applied it to how a woman feels?

Not just Would you like some water?

But:

How are you, really?

What have you been carrying?

What would make today feel a little lighter?

That became the idea at the heart of Room to Restore.

We call it Emotional Hospitality.

The idea that sometimes you don't need fixing, improving or another piece of advice.

Sometimes you need somewhere that has thought about you for a change.

And so, we built the house.

A Journal for when something is on your mind.

Letters for when you'd like something interesting to sit down with.

A Listening Room for when you'd rather somebody else did the talking.

The Sanctuary for when you want to go a little deeper.

And, one day, a Retreat House where we can bring it all to life.

Different rooms for different moments.

But one question behind all of them:

What might she need when she gets here?

Room to Restore is only beginning.

There are rooms we haven't opened yet, conversations we haven't had and women we haven't met.

Whatever brought you here - perhaps you're starting again, finding your way through something, wondering what's next, or simply need somewhere to be for a while - there's a place for you here.

Come in.

We'll leave the light on.

— With Love, The Host.