The Kid-Friendly Motherhood Retreat We All Need: Mind the Mom in Portugal.
Before going on the Mind the Mom retreat, I think I imagined it would be something quite different.
Beautiful, yes. Restorative, hopefully. A few days somewhere warm, with yoga in the mornings, nourishing food, time by the sea, and the gentle promise of a pause from the usual pace of motherhood. I knew my son would be with me, and that was one of the things that drew me to it most. The idea of going on a retreat without having to leave him behind felt unusual, easy, and almost quietly radical.
But still, I don’t think I fully understood what that would mean until I was there.
Because this was not just a trip with my child. And it was not just a retreat for me. Somehow, it became both. It gave us the rarest combination: time together, and space apart. A chance to bond more deeply, and a chance for me to take a step back. To breathe. To think. To do some soul searching. To remember, somewhere between the yoga mat, the brunch table, the workshops, and the long Portuguese afternoons, that I am not only a mother. I am also still a woman in need of care, rest, and a little quiet space to come back to myself.
By Alice Codford, in Partnership with Mind the Mom Retreats.
Discover Mind the Mom here. The next retreat will take place from October 25th–30th in Lagos, Portugal. Luminary Mothers readers can receive €150 off when booking with the code LUMINARY150.
Photo Credit: Bruna Balodis
The retreat took place in Lagos, in the Algarve, where time seems to move differently. There is something about southern Portugal that already invites a slower rhythm: the cliffs, the beaches, the blue of the water, the warmth in the air. But what made this retreat special was not only the setting. It was the way every detail had been thought through so that mothers could, perhaps for the first time in a long time, stop carrying everything.
That is the invisible weight of motherhood, isn’t it? Not just the doing, but the thinking. What will they eat? Have I packed enough? Is everyone okay? What time do we need to leave? Have I remembered the wipes, the water bottle, the snacks, the bedtime toy, the spare clothes? The constant, quiet mental load that follows us everywhere, even to the most beautiful places.
At Mind the Mom, that weight began to lift. As soon as I unpacked our belongings for the week in our beautiful room, and looked out at the view of the sea and the garden, that specific weight mothers carry on their shoulders started to feel a little lighter.
The mornings were for us. Each day began with yoga, breath, movement, and a little more space in the body. While we practised, our children were close by with the childcare team, playing, exploring, being held in their own rhythm. This was what made the retreat work so beautifully: the children were not an afterthought, and neither were the mothers. Both were cared for. Both were considered. Equally.
Photo Credit: Bruna Balodis
There is a particular kind of exhale that comes when you realise your child is happy and safe, and you are allowed to focus on yourself.
After yoga came workshops, conversations, and brunches that stretched softly into the day. Around the table, with other mothers, something opened. One of my favourite parts of the week was the way we talked. We talked in the way women talk when they are finally given time and permission: honestly and tenderly, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with emotion. There is a relief in being around other mothers who understand without needing everything explained. We all got it. We all understood. And there was no judgement around whatever each of us felt or said. The tiredness. The love. The guilt. The desire to be present. The desire to disappear for five minutes. The strange ache of wanting space, and then missing your child the moment you have it.
It is one of the most powerful things about a retreat like this. It does not ask you to separate yourself from motherhood in order to reconnect with yourself. It does not suggest that your child is the problem, or that rest can only happen in their absence. Instead, it creates the support around you that makes presence possible again.
Photo Credit: Bruna Balodis
By the afternoons, I noticed something had shifted. After a morning that had been mine, I came back to my son differently. I felt lighter. I was more patient, more available, and more excited for whatever we had planned. We spent time together without the usual background noise of everyday life. No cooking to think about. No cleaning. No errands. No schedule pressing in. Just time by the pool, walks by the beach, slow afternoons, little conversations, shared meals, and the blissful simplicity of being together.
That, for me, was the unexpected gift of the retreat. I thought the break would come from having moments away from my child. In some ways, of course, it did. But the deeper break came from being with him without having to manage everything else around us. I could enjoy him. I could see him. I could meet him in the moment, rather than through the fog of everything that still needed to be done. And what a beautiful thing that is, to be given the conditions to simply enjoy your child.
When I asked Juliana, the founder of Mind the Mom, what first inspired her to create the retreat, her answer felt deeply personal. She spoke about moving to Portugal with two young daughters, leaving behind a long career in hospitality and corporate events, and entering a phase where she felt she was in survival mode. She was not the mother or woman she wanted to be. Something, she realised, had to change.
Juliana Herrmann, founder of Mind the Mom Retreats | Photo Credit: Bruna Balodis
At first, she looked for a retreat for herself. Then she came across the idea of retreats for mothers and children together, and something clicked. With her background in hosting and organising, and with Portugal’s nature and climate around her, she began to imagine creating something of her own.
What stayed with me most from Juliana’s story was her belief that we do not need to be away from our children to reconnect with ourselves. The problem, as she sees it, is not loving them too much, or being with them too much. The problem is trying to carry everything alone.
That thought became the quiet centre of the week for me.
Photo Credit: Bruna Balodis
Modern motherhood so often asks women to be everything at once: loving, patient, ambitious, organised, emotionally available, socially connected, healthy, grateful, fun, calm. The list goes on. We are told to enjoy every moment, but also to keep up. To be present, but productive. To rest, but only once everything else is done. Which, of course, it never is.
So when a mother arrives somewhere and the meals have been planned, the children are cared for, the day has rhythm but not pressure, and someone else has thought about the logistics, it is not simply convenient. It is profound. It gives her back a piece of herself.
Juliana described permission as one of the things mothers need most when they arrive: permission to ask for help, to rest, to be vulnerable without shame, to put down what they have been carrying. I felt that. There is a strange discomfort, at first, in being allowed to stop. Many of us are so used to doing that rest can feel almost unfamiliar. Even indulgent. But by the end of the week, it began to feel not like a luxury, but a necessity.
Photo Credit: Bruna Balodis
One of the phrases Juliana has printed on the retreat tote bags is: “Rest is my revolution.” It sounds simple, but after becoming a mother, rest really can feel revolutionary. Not the kind of rest you squeeze in once everyone else is asleep, or the kind you earn by exhausting yourself first. But real rest. Rest without apologising for it. Rest that allows you to return to yourself.
The beauty of Mind the Mom is that it understands something essential: mothers do not only need escape. We need support and community. We need to be fed, literally and emotionally. We need spaces where our children are welcomed, not just tolerated. We need to be reminded that being a good mother does not mean disappearing into motherhood completely.
Travel, at its best, changes the way you see your life when you return to it. This retreat did that for me. It was a journey somewhere beautiful, yes, but also a journey inward. I came home with memories of my son by the sea, of yoga in the mornings, of conversations with women I had only just met but somehow felt close to, of delicious food I did not have to make, of sunlight, of softness, of being looked after.
Photo Credit: Bruna Balodis
But more than that, I came home with a feeling I want to hold onto: that I am allowed to take up space inside my own life. That motherhood and selfhood do not have to sit on opposite sides of the room. That rest does not make me less devoted. That being cared for helps me care better.
I went to Mind the Mom expecting a retreat with my child. What I found was a retreat back to myself, with him beside me.
Photo Credit: Bruna Balodis
