Payton Kennedy

I don't know about you but I grew up with the image and story of an imposing male God and of course, his son Jesus. My family wasn’t overly religious but we adhered to that narrative.

It never felt quite right for me.

I've done my own seeking over the years. I've surrendered to a higher power.

🌿Nature is my truest connection.🌿

🍃Nature is my higher power.🍃

As a little girl, running around the forest or exploring the vast fields and dense bush of my Grandparents farm.

As a woman, drawing peace and strength from the trees, mountains, rivers and the ocean; from the extraordinary animals and plants I've shared my existence with. In every place I have lived, and every place I have visited, nature has always delighted and grounded me.

At the end of 2023, I fell upon a beautiful property in Northern Costa Rica. The energy and sacredness of the land, in the green of the forest, in the peaks of the surrounding mountains captivated me.

So much so that I'm hosting a retreat for recovering women at La Anita in November 2024. Cacao, heart of palm, cardamom, tropical fruits and vegetables, medicinal plants and variety of exotic tropical flowers will be your companions, along with a group of amazing women!

A week of 💫 Sharing & Integration Circles 💫 Ceremony 💫 Yoga & Qigong 💫 Meditation 💫 Excursion options in nearby Rincon de la Viejo National Park, including hiking and wildlife, hot springs/mud baths 💫 Healing Intuitive Massage & Bodywork opportunities are also available 💫

Come be wild and grounded with us. 🌱

Expand BEYOND your recovery! ✨

Check out the link in the comments. 👇 Or send me a DM.

New Journal post up today! Are you sober? Does your life feel like it's on fire? You are not alone!

The Days of our Sober Lives (and what I do when life is on fire.) My son wakes up at either 2am, 4am or both every night. Each time I guide him back to his bed and tuck him in. He is up again at 6am and I go into his bedroom to sleep the last hour with him so he stays in bed. When he went off to school today I knew I would get a call to come and pick him up. His i...

What? 🧐 A 7-day retreat for recovering women in an incredible, bio-diverse location in Costa Rica!

When?🧐 November 23-30th, 2024!

Why?🧐 An opportunity to connect and commune with like-hearted/minded women in recovery, on a journey of expansion and growth!

Those are the FACTS.

What is challenging to describe is the magic that happens when women gather to reset and reaffirm their recovery...no matter where they are on their journey or what they are recovering from! Connected to nature and to each other, a circle of women engaging in radical rest, self-love and rejuvenation, is like nothing you've ever experienced!

If you are looking for connection, for clarity, and to feel alive, grounded, and embodied on your journey, join us in Costa Rica at the end of November. Wrap up 2024 with an incredible experience of expansion and growth and watch what unfolds in 2025!

✨✨Expand Beyond Recovery ✨✨

https://www.wetravel.com/trips/expand-beyond-recovery-la-anita-rainforest-retreat-payton-aguas-claras-04992909

📣New Program Alert📣

The Embodied Book club begins in April with a fabulous selection...

The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power by Katherine Morgan Schafler. This book is life-changing!

Join us for discussion and sharing, movement and embodiment, inspiration and connection. Reframe perfectionism so that you can release rigid ideals and unrealistic expectations. Soften the edges, replace "doing" with "being" and "perfect" with "human". 💛

Learn more by hitting the link in the comments!

The PERFECTION of these two flowers stopped me in my tracks. Naturally, I had to take a picture.

This month, my journal is on …

👉🏻perfectionism👈🏻

Do you identify as a perfectionist?

Hit my “Journal” in my bio for a glimpse into my experience.

Would love to hear yours!

WOTY Vision Board for 2024! ✨🤎✨

Just one of the ways we are integrating and anchoring our intentions for the year in my Empowered 2024 group program. I’m usually a scissors, glue and magazine kinda girl but this year I created it digitally.

Totally as fun 🤩 and magical 🪄 Love seeing it on my screensaver throughout the day!

I'm excited to offer a new online program in January...focused on helping women in recovery (from whatever!) to align, embody, and integrate your specific intention and Word of the Year into 2024.

How are we going to do that?

With trauma-informed yoga & mindful movement; journaling & self-inquiry; connection & community! Saturday zoom sessions for 10 weeks, along with guided work you can complete in your own time.

Empowered 2024 will help you to anchor into what is most meaningful so that you can live intentionally and purposefully throughout 2024, no matter what life brings.

Message me for details. If it's a "hell-yes", click the link in the comments! 😀🙌

Please note I've got some sliding scale options for pricing, don't hesitate to reach out to me on that!

Coming Soon! 🤎✨🤎

How do you like to begin a new year?

Do you choose a Word of the Year?

What if it was amplified and empowered by movement and embodiment...reflection & self-inquiry, inspiration and a supportive collective energy?

I'm back this January with a 10-week program to integrate and embody your intention (word) of the year for lasting growth and expansion in 2024.

Pop your name on my mailing list by clicking on my website link in the comments. You’ll get my free Alchemy Guide too! ⚡️

I have a new hairdo. Which is really this month’s blog subject made manifest.

I knew I wanted something new because I was trying way too hard to like what I had. Wasn’t sure. Did it anyway. Still not sure.

Loving myself anyway. ✨

Sound familiar?

Link in my bio to read “When It’s Time for Something New”.

Our time in Maine was magical. Grateful for a wonderful group of women, an amazing retreat house, delicious food, glorious weather, the ocean, a powerful full moon. Doing the work in community with love, laughter, dancing and so much more.

Grace happens…✨🍂🌊

I’ve been pretty quiet on here lately and because of that, probably two people will see this post. 😂

After a few intense months barrelling towards a big event, it is now “after” and I am starting to form thoughts, ideas and words again! I have a new post up on my website called “Ode to Creativity”. ✨

You’ll need to read it in order to “get” the second slide. 😉

Link to my latest content and features (the blog) is in my bio! 👆🏻

Happy Weekend folks, I hope it’s filled with something creative, whatever that looks like for you!

9 years sober from alcohol today. My life isn’t always ✨sparkly✨ but I am grounded in clarity and resilience because of my choice all those years ago.

I have not traveled this path alone and am so grateful for community…the many wonderful humans I have shared this space with. For all of my teachers and the inspiration they have offered, and for all of the work I have had the opportunity to do. 🙏🏻

(More to come I am sure!)

Today is a beautiful day to be alive and present. 🤍

She Recovers is having a summer solstice sale!

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

Did you know that solstice is a time of generosity?

The shifting of the seasons brings about growth and transformation for the natural world...ourselves included. It is a time to revel in community, tell stories, and celebrate...and we'd like to keep the party going right into autumn.

SHE RECOVERS is celebrating the summer solstice with a flash sale!

For three days only, get $100 off your ticket to SHE RECOVERS in CHICAGO | Our Stories. Our Strength. | Presented by Aware Recovery Care & HEAL Behavioral Health | SEPT 29 – OCT 1, 2023 when you use code: SRC-SOLSTICE.

SHE RECOVERS in CHICAGO will sell out, don't miss your chance to take part! Your story matters. You belong here.

Register + learn more > sherecovers.org/chicago-event/

Happy Dad’s Day to my beloved Dad, Cecil!

I wish I could be with him today. 😢 I will have to settle for FaceTime today, and a belated hug and kiss in July when I visit.

Happy Dad’s Day to my love , to my bro and to Greyson’s Dad

Grateful for the Dads. ❤️

Can't wait to be in this space with the amazing Erica Hornthal, Author of Body Aware...and maybe you?!

Join Erica and I online for our Embodied Movement Workshop on July 9th presented by the SHE RECOVERS Foundation. We'll be guiding a journey through redefining movement and exploring how doing so can help you invite more of it in to your life in a way that works for you!

This is movement for reclaiming self-agency, for body liberation, for joy...and as a healing tool for life!

Embodied Movement Workshop EveryBODY has a story to tell, wisdom to share, and healing to experience. Join the SHE RECOVERS Embodied Movement Workshop.

Saturday, May 20th, 3:00 pm…it’s happening! 🤩

The amazing has graciously donated a space so our Ottawa community can have our first official

Sharing Circles are local community containers of support informed by the SRF Intentions & Guiding Principles. They are professionally facilitated, peer-supported, and intended for women and non-binary individuals who identify with women’s communities - who are in or seeking recovery - to connect, learn, heal and share within a group of like-minded individuals. 🤍

Link in my bio to join the Facebook group!

It’s pretty awesome to have a great convo on two of my fav subjects:

🦋 recovery 🦋
⚡️movement ⚡️

Thanks to , and the wonderful

Eternally grateful to 🤍



Repost from
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Listen to Payton Kennedy, SHE RECOVERS team member for events & creator of SHE RECOVERS Dance, talk about all things recovery - including dance / movement as a healing modality and SHE RECOVERS in Chicago.

The Rise Recover Live Podcast, hosted by Bryce Cobb III and Liz McKean and powered by The Phoenix, puts focus on stories from The Phoenix community and beyond. Like SHE RECOVERS, The Phoenix celebrates the power of community and the journey of recovery in every form and pathway.

Payton's episode is out now wherever you listen to podcasts 🎧 LINK IN BIO

Excited by Payton's approach to recovery? She will be co-facilitating a SHE RECOVERS Through Self-Expression Online Workshop on embodied movement this summer. More details to come!

.beyond.recovery

EVERYTHING in life is subject to change. The only constant is change. I’m sure we all known this to be true.

I’ve had an interesting relationship to change in my life. As a Ta**us, I tend to get very rooted in my experiences. As a mother of a high needs teen who is very challenged by any kind of transition, it’s something my brain is constantly monitoring and preparing for. And that doesn’t always feel good.

Also, I love change! I have pulled the rug out from under my life more times than I can count. I don’t regret a single instance (even the more harrowing changes) because it’s meant that I have continued to evolve. ✨

As a woman healing and recovering in her life, I am approaching change these days with my eyes and heart wide open. I can feel every shift, every turn…I feel the empty spaces created from the letting go. I am approaching change with curiosity. And some trust that where I end up is where I am meant to be.

Change is the topic this month in the Expand Beyond Recovery membership.

Recognizing when it’s knocking at the door, deciphering the truth of it from the fear of it, navigating change with a regulated nervous system…

Finding the expansion and growth that change brings.🦋

Are you going through some changes? Need support, inspiration and community? Join and ditch doing this journey on your own.

Link in my bio or DM me for all the deets. ✨

NEW BLOG POST 👆🏻

The winds of change are blowing hard around here. I’m starting a long, slow goodbye to this precious little abode and it’s a lot more than moving out.

I’m feeling all the feelings and 💭 all the thoughts. And as always, how it relates to this journey of recovery and .

Sharing it in this month’s journal. Hit the link in my bio to read, join my newsletter (blog) and learn more about me! 🤎

When you make a playlist for an amazing woman about to RUN THE BOSTON MARATHON Y’ALL! 🏃‍♀️

I have always loved music. It’s one of my most powerful healing tools. ⚡️🎶🪩

Music can motivate, comfort, be a channel to connect, to heal, to empower ourselves as we do all the mundane and amazing things in our lives.

I make a mean “mix-tape” and I am wishing this one supports .lynn.young on her journey!

✨Run Erica Run✨

Shoutout and vibes to all of the amazing musical artists who share their gifts with us! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Choose P R E S E N C E ✨

The willingness, the course-correcting, the envisioning,
the goal-setting, the committing, the mindset-focusing, the clearing, the starting-again…these are all part of the work of recovery.

One of the greatest gifts 🎁 of any healing journey is the opportunity to engage in this learning.

This month in the Expand Beyond Recovery membership, I am gently setting it all aside…and inviting in presence.

Because expansion and growth don’t happen without it.

Our group will be exploring how to practice presence with our bodies, minds, hearts, energy and spirits, as we go about our daily tasks, our daily challenges and daily moments of joy, peace and serenity. 🤍

May we be especially present for that medicine!

I can’t wait to see what this month brings.

⚡️Presence is Power ⚡️

If you are looking for an intimate community in which to practice recovery, join us! Movement, inspiration, tools & resources, and connection are here waiting for you!

How often do you get stuck in your own story?

If you’re human, the answer is probably YES. We like our stories, whether they serve us or not.

Familiarity. A sense of security. The devil 👿 we know.

A profound lesson in this came to me three years ago when my birth sister found me and a vastly different story of what I imagined my adoption to be, emerged.

It rocked my world. Alchemy. ✨

I believe myself to be a more healed, more whole person because of it. ❤️‍🩹

Stories can shape our experience and how we show up in the world.

Stories and truth are not always the same.

And truth is not singular.

These days when I catch myself rolling around in a story that may not be serving me, I like to ask myself…

Is there another story here in this circumstance I could consider?

A story that can widen my perspective?

A story that’s more spacious and allows for expansion and growth?

A story that doesn’t have me feeling stuck?

I have a little exercise available that might help. Click on the link in my bio and go to my website for your free Alchemy Guide. Carve out some time and space to spend with it. Be open to the possibilities and your ability to create Alchemy in your life.

Want some guidance on finding and starting to live in stories that heal over stories that hurt? Send me a message. 💛

NEW THINGS TO LEARN 📚🤓

Aside from wrestling with sticky March (you can read more about that in my new blog post), I’ve been pausing long enough to bring in some new learnings. (Thank goodness, every good wrestler needs a time out). 😅

As a self-identified - okay not ONLY self-identified - perfectionist, this book by was a must-read. The introduction alone, has blown the lid off what I thought I knew about perfectionism. This is my morning reading at the moment. 💥

And I joined a program called the by which I am really loving. I have long-admired her work and voice. It feels exciting to learn how I can show up as a more helpful, inclusive and authentic yoga teacher. If feels great to be back in “yoga-school”. 😀

How about you? Anything new making your eternal-student-heart happy these days? Share in the comments! Inquiring minds want to know! 🧐🤩

On this day, may we remember how strong-hearted we are. 🤍

May we remember that we stand on the ground of the women who came before us. 🤎

Women who lived and loved, who endured in times where they were not celebrated, not supported…vilified.

May we remember all of the women who struggle to be seen and heard today. ❤️‍🩹

May we remember that we have the power to lift each other up. 🖤

In lifting each other up, we remember. 💛

“I forgive myself for everything. I am doing my best.”

inspiration from this morning. As always, whenever I introduce a new topic in my membership, it shows up everywhere! We are exploring along with the other yamas this month. Full moon astrology is in step. Dream big. Ground. Find balance. Do no harm. ✨💚✨

New blog post is up! ✍️

Two final retreats in Mexico have me reflecting on the power of a group of women in circle. In-person or online, there is no doubt that connection and community enrich our human experience. In recovery, it can be the difference between life and death.

The Foundation provides this kind of connection and community online every day of the week…at no cost. 💛 Sharing circles and trauma-informed movement hosted and facilitated by trained volunteers (and women in recovery themselves). 👼

Click on the link in my bio 👆🏻to access the wonderful supports that offers or go to sherecovers.org

And join my newsletter to receive my blog to your inbox every month!

Women in recovery.

I love you 💚 I love us 💛 Connected. Moving. Sharing. Healing. Blooming. 🪷

Creating shifts, expansion and growth for our individual selves and for the greater good.

The ripple effect 🌀

I have the privilege to be in community with a beautiful group of souls this week and next, in a place that has become very special to me. This land and these women are incredibly inspiring. ✨

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to travel to many different locations to host and gather with like-minded women. No matter where I go, the magic is always unfolding.

I also have a group of amazing women I gather with in my online space, the Expand Beyond Recovery membership. We are creating authentic connection, community and expansion in our lives. Where we are located and the fact that we gather on a Zoom link doesn’t matter…that’s the power of a women’s circle.

If you are on a journey of recovery and wellness, you never have to do this alone. 💕

Head over to the link in my bio for resources and more information!

Vibes to the artist who painted this beautiful woman on the side of a building in 🤩

✨Expand beyond what you think you know about meditation.✨

*******
It’s too hard.
I don’t have time.
You have to sit still and I just can’t.
I can’t do it right.
It’s not helping.
I love it but can’t make it stick.
*******

We are diving into this month in the Expand Beyond Recovery membership!

Now, let’s be clear, I am not an expert, I am a student. A curious one! How can I make my practice more meaningful and impactful?How can I make coming back to ME a trip I want to take every day?

Practice. Discussion. Creation. Movement. Integration.

Special visualization meditation led by

This month we will cover the science, the spirituality, the reality of meditation so we can cultivate a practice that flows as we do. A practice that meets us right where we are.

Join us if you’re feeling it! First zoom session is this Sunday, February 5th on the full 🌕

🔗 in bio!

Gold ✨⚡️💛🔑

How would you like to feel this year?

Would you like to feel more joyful?

How about 80% more joyful?

70% more resilient?

How would you like to trust yourself 60% more than you do now.

These are some of the numbers shared by members in Expand Beyond Recovery after participating in the membership this past year.

These numbers make ME joyful. I’m doing my job. And I am right there, growing 🌱and expanding 💥 in the company of these amazing women.

Even when life gets “lifey” (you know - it has, it does and it will), you can cultivate more of what makes you happy, more of what grounds you, and more of makes you feel empowered and aligned. Promise.🤞🏻

If this resonates, type a ⚡️in the comments. And then click on the link in my bio to join an incredible circle of women in Expand Beyond Recovery!

📷