Anam Cara: Friending as a Long Life Practice

According to Celtic belief, your Anam Cara (or “soul friend”) is a compassionate guide or partner who assists you in achieving your own self-realization.

Our soul friends help us realize ourselves. They shape our souls.

I want to have friends like that. I want to be a friend like that.

I’m not entirely sure how to do it… yet. But I know how to find out.

I’ll get by with a little help from my friends.

(Which is where you come in.) 

My goal is to bring incredible people together to better understand how to create deep, life-sustaining friendships.

Not a business network, research group, investment network, or self-help network. This isn’t about making professional connections or working on ourselves. Turns out networks aren’t that helpful – except when they help us make friends.

Based on all of the research I’ve done over the past year, friends are the one thing we need more than anything else in our lives.

Investing in our friendships is literally the best thing we can do for our mental, physical, and spiritual health.

In fact, studies show that the quality of our relationships is the single biggest determinant of our longevity!

Yet It seems like it’s harder than ever to make time for friendship in our busy lives. 

This gathering will be an opportunity for you to explore the idea and practice of friending and understand yourself more deeply as a friend – both in terms of how you befriend others and how you befriend yourself.

You’ll make new friends and cultivate “long life” relationships that will change your world for the better. You may even increase your love quotient.

We will go deep – but it won’t feel like work. We will also have fun and do some adventuring together. Because that’s how friendship bonds are forged and strengthened. 

This gathering is invite only and the only people I’m telling about it are individuals I’ve felt a soul-spark or sense of kinship with.

As you can imagine, my life and work with MEA has given me the opportunity to meet a lot of incredible people over the years – and it would be my joy and honor to share you with each other.

Together we will explore questions such as: Are there ways of speeding the friendship process? How can we move beyond the superficial and forge soul-deep relationships that enrich our lives? Are there ways of deepening trust and connection through the uses of ritual and experience?

I want to dive into it all with you. 

We will spend time getting to know each other, sharing experiences and thoughts about friendship. Together we will have a blast – laughing, eating wonderfully, moving our bodies, getting in the ocean – and getting gotten.

You know… friend stuff. And I would love it, more than anything, if you were there. 

What’s Included

Your experience includes all group activities and communal meals at MEA El Pescadero retreat center (which will be amazing) as well as snacks and drinks, including wine and margaritas.

Please note the cost doesn’t include massage and transportation to and from the airport. Some additional costs may apply for those who decide to participate in off-campus excursions such as surfing. 

Who can come

Please feel free to bring another person with you. A friend, life partner, perhaps your own Anam Cara. If you have more than one person you feel drawn to share this experience with, let us know and we will do what we can to make it happen.

Also be sure to consider bringing people in different age groups. I strongly believe age diversity will enrich us even more as we explore what it means to be a good friend.

Need child support? Let us know. We want you there – and if the only way you can come is with the kids, we will do what we can to accommodate your family’s needs. The sessions and experiences will be adult focused, but we will find ways to keep the kiddos happy, engaged and cared for while you engage in the important practice of friending.

Feel generous? Pay for someone else to come as well

If you’re able to pay more than the listed rate to help offset the cost for others, please reach out to let me know as there are people on my invite list who would be an incredible addition to the group but may not have the funds that those of us in midlife may have managed to grow over the years.

Contact me at [email protected] to learn more.

NOTE: This event is limited to 40 participants only

Any more than that and I worry that intimacy and cohesion within the group will start to break down.

Spots are available on a first-come, first-served basis and doors will shut as soon as all spots have been taken. So please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to come.

Come prepared to friend.

Many of the invitees are used to teaching or being keynote speakers or the person at the front of the room. This isn’t that kind of event. Everyone coming will be expected to play as a fully engaged participant, including me. Everyone coming will share.

One way you can make the event as powerful as possible ahead of time is to send me your friendship ideas and experiences in advance of the workshop.

I would love to receive any and all of your ideas, insights, research, wisdom, anecdotes, writings and stories that you have about friending. Please mail me directly at [email protected] as I would love to keep evolving this content into a greater resource.