Recognizing the ways your identity, psychology, and physical health intersect is essential to your well-being.
Recognizing the ways your identity, psychology, and physical health intersect is essential to your well-being.
You're an individual with a unique social context, genetic set, lifestyle habits, and goals. Yet up to this point, addressing health symptoms (like burnout, pain, prolonged stress, and unpredictable digestion) has involved cobbling together solutions from disparate practitioners or far corners of the Internet.
Building Your Creative Well-Being Map helps you account for how your complex biography interacts with your biological systems. This practice also insists communal and environmental health are undeniable pieces of the puzzle. It's a challenge to the one-size-fits-all, "just slap another band-aid on it" status quo that ignores this important truth: tucking aspects of ourselves into silos doesn't lead to well-being.
YOU'RE GREATER THAN THE SUM OF YOUR PARTS
scroll on for the details.
attend the retreat
It's about moving away from rigid prescriptions for how to do health "right," so you can honor your uniqueness, live in joy, and adopt a well-being framework that serves you long-term.
During the live, virtual 2-part Build Your Creative Well-Being Map Retreat, you'll shape your intersectional health map and learn how to integrate all parts of your identity and social context into your plan to thrive.
Building Your Creative Well-Being Map is not just another "heroic" self-improvement project. It's a practice of using curiosity and play to reclaim your body's innate healing ability.
You don't need to be "fixed."
Creative Well-Being Mapping centers these four main tenets:
Creative Well-Being Mapping centers these four main tenets:
1.
2.
3.
4.
your values need not reflect popular wellness culture
"Michelle-Marie is knowledgable, resourceful, and compassionate. I appreciate that she looked at me as a whole-being and does not just focus on food...I learned a lot and feel hopeful about making changes to improve my overall well-being."
AMANDA N, ONE-ON-ONE CLIENT
" She looked at me as a whole being."
Our answers to stagnation and isolation are curiosity and connection. Play and creative expression are our methods. Creative Well-Being is about moving beyond popular ideals or theories (like being “anti-diet” but with no plan) and shifting away from self-conscious, half-ditched efforts at “wellness” that only address one goal (like “detoxing”).
It's a curiosity-driven process to leverage our inherent creativity and diverse modes of self-expression, so you can go from feeling "stuck" to making confident choices that serve you.
It's time to ditch black-and-white thinking that keeps us stuck, sick, or siloed.
building your CREATIVE well-being MAP USES a state of PLAY TO ACCESS THE NUANCES OF OUR WELL-BEING, IN CONTEXT, AND MAKE CONNECTIONS THAT MATTER TO OUR HEALTH.
a retreat to generate opportunities for healing and connection
Build Your Creative Well-Being Map
Build Your
Creative
Well-Being Map
you're invited to...
This 2-part retreat is an intimate group experience with other curious people like you. You'll use playfulness and expression to consider all aspects of your well-being (including relationships, pleasure, identity, and physiology), recognize gaps where you'd like to focus your energy, engage in a process to clearly articulate your top well-being commitments for the next year, and so much more.
By design, the Creative Well-Being Mapping process utilizes expansive methods of information gathering. Through strategic prompt sequencing, you'll explore your history, current context, values, needs, and desires. Flexible options allow you to choose which form expression takes. (Don't worry, we'll gather all the juicy, useful nuggets in one place for future reference.)
Something magical happens when you take what you know about your health and put it together in one place. When you disrupt the urgent, non-stop search for answers that somehow always ends up with a need for more info, more evidence, more quick fixes. In our live retreat, you'll gather the pieces you already know (even if they've been long buried) and represent them in relationship on your map.
Here's What You'll Do
Play & Express
Map Your Components
aspect one
ASPECT tw0
There are a lot of things we "know" (understand subconsciously to be true) that haven't served us. To live in health and well-being, it's essential to explore what's true for you. In this retreat, you'll use expressive writing as a way of knowing. We'll move away from being product-driven to being process-oriented. This is a practice you can use continuously as you and your desires evolve.
Tap Into Your Truths
aspect four
You'll adopt a systems thinking lens to chart your well-being and identify gaps. This approach understands health as produced through psychological, social, behavioral, environmental, and physiological factors. Systems thinking is essential for determining your well-being commitments, taking effective action, and working with - not against - your identity. We'll build the foundation of a practice, not just another protocol.
Use Systems Thinking
aspect three
LET'S BREAK it DOWN
Move from "what's the point?" to a sense of fulfillment and momentum.
How does this sound?
Map a "health story" that reflects your lived reality & guides your next steps.
01
02
the results of building your creative well-being map:
the results of building your creative well-being map:
Recognize patterns that may be limiting your capacity, joy, and health.
03
Access more ease, pleasure, and connection right away (not "some day").
04
Shift from "hyper-vigilance" (scanning to check "Am I OK?") to calm presence.
05
snag a
pre-sale spot
How It Works
We'll meet for about 2 hours each day to dig into the framework and use curiosity & creativity to make connections.
join live on june 1 & 2
You'll get a Notion dashboard to revisit key concepts and populate a template with the insights from your map.
access the dashboard
Bonus: you're invited to attend any live training & implementation session for 3 months to integrate Creative Well-Being into your life.
come back again
In the past, my instinct was to go full tilt. To take something on and get it done completely, perfectly the first time.
If I couldn’t achieve my goal with these parameters intact, it wasn’t “worth doing” at all. But, for me, the reality of living with chronic pain meant this all-or-nothing approach eventually led to me withdrawing from the things that mattered in my life.
It’s easy to get locked into the “should” of a situation - the way a person “should” act, the way a thing “should” be. But then we lose sight of the way things could be. This pattern limits possibilities for pleasure and connection. And the science tells us mental rigidity actually intensifies our experience of symptoms like pain and exhaustion.
It often means we've subconsciously decided we're not worthy of happiness until some arbitrary goal is met. I don't know about you, but some idea like "I'll be happy when I've mastered a 5am yoga routine" probably means I'm gonna be unhappy for a very long time.
let me pause for a minute to introduce myself.
hi, i'm michelle-marie!
You probably have a good idea of what you want healthcare to look like...
You probably even fantasize about a future where a cultural shift has happened that disconnects a human’s worth from how “productive” they are. You want people to be valued for their complexity, not reduced to data points for the function of monetization. Unfortunately capitalism, and the other -isms that have created the current reality, aren’t going away tomorrow.
So, as I see it, you have a choice:
1) Continue waiting for these systems to improve...OR
2) View your health in the context of your lived experience and develop a personal practice that aligns with your values and meets your well-being needs.
Just because you're aware of how our current healthcare system and dominant cultural values fall short (or even cause harm), doesn't mean you get to "opt out." You deserve to thrive!
What I mean by that is, it's easy to think "there's no point" because the systems are broken, or to enter a state of analysis paralysis. But here's the thing: “Opting out” of the typical solutions without a strategy in place keeps you a victim of a flawed system and misguided culture.
This isn't a call to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps." Quite the opposite: we're in this together. It's an invitation to claim your self-efficacy and not allow a culture that serves the interests of a select few determine your right to well-being. I designed the Build Your Creative Well-Being Map retreat to support you in this process.
There are gaps in your healthcare. And it's on you to identify and bridge them.
Even though they're everywhere, false dichotomies are stealing your joy and coming for your health.
But we don't have to take on this way of being. I believe we get to choose to acknowledge our complexity, value our interconnectedness, and adopt a sense of optimism when it comes to our personal and communal well-being. The Build Your Creative Well-Being Map retreat is an intimate, supportive space to explore limiting cultural messages we may have internalized and make commitments that increase our health, pleasure, and connection.
Orientation to Core Concepts of Building a Creative Well-Being Map
Dominique gets acquainted with the retreat's central ideas and understands current health & wellness cultural norms in historical context. She meets other "mappers" and feels a little surprised to actually want to connect with these people (she's done enough corporate-y ice breakers and isn't a fan, but this feels different).
Interactive
day 1
See How This Process Works for Dominique
Exploration of the Role of Curiosity & Creativity in Health
Dominique is a visual artist, so she didn't need to be convinced of the value of art for art's sake. But she's excited to use these informal techniques for curiosity-led creativity. She feels inspired by the cognitive science underpinnings and gets introduced to a rich philosophical tradition of "writing as a way of knowing."
Creative Activity
day 1
Expansive Data Collection & Well-Being Timeline Creation
GuidedActivity
day 1
Dominique begins to plot health events in sequence. She gets guidance on how to ask questions to allow significant moments to "surface." She knows she can return to this activity in the coming weeks and months, utilizing the dashboard to prompt her along the way and to organize her notes.
Mapping Health & Well-Being to Make Useful Connections
Dominique learns the ways different parts of her identity and experience interact and influence each other - like how her habit of working through lunch is actually causing back pain to flare which results in less total time engaged with her art. She makes a visual representation and gets guidance on how to make insights.
Guided Activity
day 2
Curiosity-Driven Activities for Defining Values & Commitments
Dominique engages in expressive writing to explore the values she holds for herself, her community, and her future. She realizes she was withdrawing from her art practice because of a "productivity" mindset she doesn't actually believe in. She is guided to make well-being commitments that support her desire.
Creative Activities
day 2
Repeating A Process, Engaging More Deeply, Making Commitments
Dominique is invited to return to future retreats for 3 months. She deepens her understanding of the concepts, integrates supportive structures into her life, and updates her evolving timeline and map. She has a dashboard where she can get curious about her health and her values, record her latest insights, and articulate her top well-being commitments.
next month
An Ongiong Practice
Orientation to Core Concepts of Building a Creative Well-Being Map
Dominique gets acquainted with the retreat's central ideas and understands current health & wellness cultural norms in historical context. She meets other "mappers" and feels a little surprised to actually want to connect with these people (she's done enough corporate-y ice breakers and isn't a fan, but this feels different).
day one
See How This Process Works for Dominique
Exploration of the Role of Curiosity & Creativity in Health
Dominique is a visual artist, so she didn't need to be convinced of the value of art for art's sake. But she's excited to use these informal techniques for curiosity-led creativity. She feels inspired by the cognitive science underpinnings and gets introduced to a rich philosophical tradition of "writing as a way of knowing."
Expansive Data Collection & Well-Being Timeline Creation
Dominique begins to plot health events in sequence. She gets guidance on how to ask questions to allow significant moments to "surface." She knows she can return to this activity in the coming weeks and months, utilizing the dashboard to prompt her along the way and to organize her notes.
Interactive
day one
day one
Creative Activity
Guided Solo Activity
Mapping Health & Well-Being to Make Useful Connections
Dominique learns the ways different parts of her identity and experience interact and influence each other - like how her habit of working through lunch is actually causing back pain to flare which results in less total time engaged with her art. She makes a visual representation and gets guidance on how to make insights.
day two
Curiosity-Driven Activities for Defining Values & Commitments
Dominique engages in expressive writing to explore the values she holds for herself, her community, and her future. She realizes she was withdrawing from her art practice because of a "productivity" mindset she doesn't actually believe in. She is guided to make well-being commitments that support her desire.
Repeating A Process & Engaging More Deeply
Dominique is invited to return to future retreats for 3 months. She deepens her understanding of the concepts, integrates supportive structures into her life, and updates her evolving timeline and map. She has a dashboard where she can get curious about her health and her values, record her latest insights, and articulate her top well-being commitments.
Guided Solo Activity
next month
day two
Creative Activities
An Ongoing Practice
the next retreat happens on:
June 1 & 2
Normally $250, limited time price of $150
What if I can't make it live? Are the sessions recorded?
To protect the privacy of attendees, I do not record the exploration and practice sessions. You are invited to attend any (or all) sessions held for the three months following your registration.
Frequently Asked Questions
How interactive are the live sessions?
You're welcome to share your experiences, insights, and value statements at different points in the retreat. Participation is voluntary and not sharing won't limit the benefits of the process.
I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. Should I do something else first?
I get it. I humbly offer this: clarity comes from engagement with ideas and practice, not from staying "all in our heads." Because you can return for six months, you get to decide how fast you dive into the lessons and activities. I've also designed the retreat curriculum to minimize overwhelm, foster self-efficacy, and honor your values.
How do I access the Creative Well-Being Map dashboard?
Following the retreat, you'll receive an email with access to a Notion template (at no additional cost) designed specifically for retreat participants. You can make a copy and populate your template privately - no one else can view it.
What if I can't attend live, but really want to build my Creative Well-Being Map?
In the future, the retreat will include a go-at-your-own-pace course with the lessons on Creative Well-Being frameworks and guidance for your mapping process. Also, please share your preferred retreat times for my consideration.
If I register now, will I get the companion course when it's ready?
Yes! All retreat participants will receive the most up-to-date version of the materials, including future go-at-your-own-pace video lessons. This is yours to keep for the lifetime of the program.
Mapping your way to unearthing complicated feelings that have kept you stuck or in a shame state.
Using your innate (you were born with it!) creativity to reignite your body's regenerative nature.
Drawing the connections between all parts of your identity to get an integrated picture of your life, in context.
Releasing your assumptions that weren't truly yours to begin with to make commitments that center your values.
Considering which of your habits or patterns serve you, and which do not.
Feeling a sense of self-efficacy around your health and well-being outcomes to guide your next steps.
By the end of the retreat, you'll be:
count me in!
I'm Michelle-Marie. Nice to meet you.
I'm a women's well-being strategist, health justice advocate, and mom. After years of hacking my way through the chronic pain jungle, I was fed up with the deplorable state of healthcare & a misguided wellness culture that sends the message "deprivation = health." I founded We Get To Be Well to offer a framework for lasting well-being. One that centers pleasure & connection.
hey there!
join june 1 & 2
The Build Your Creative Well-Being Map retreat is normally $250. Now through May 30 or until spots fill up, you can register at the pre-sale price of $150 AND gain access to attend a bonus call early in the new year (date and time TBD by participant preference and a recording will be available).
The June retreat will begin at 10:00 am Pacific Time on Saturday 6/1 and Sunday 6/2, and run for about two hours each day.
As a bonus, you've got an invitation to return to any Build Your Creative Well-Being Map retreat for the 3 months following your initial investment. Retreats are held once a month.
Unable to attend at this time in June, but really want to participate? Please email me at Michelle-Marie@WeGetToBeWell.com to share your preferred times.
Due to the live nature of this retreat, refunds are not granted.
Tucking parts of yourself and your experience into separate compartments doesn't lead to wellbeing...
Let's get creative to gain clarity
