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About the Workshop
Wednesday, January 21 Workshop One: Flourish Anyway with Wintry Rhythms, Rituals, & Retreats
As the year begins, many of us feel pressured to produce or perform, ignoring winter’s natural call to rest and reorient. Our creative energy scatters, and burnout follows.
This workshop offers a slow, reflective space to align your creative and spiritual life with the wisdom of the season. You’ll explore personal rhythms, create simple rituals that support your current season of life, and imagine restorative mini-retreats you can incorporate throughout winter.
You’ll leave with:
A personalized set of rhythms and rituals to sustain your creative and spiritual practices
Permission to rest without guilt and to trust the generative quiet of winter
Tools for renewing your relationship with time, energy, and attention
Participants will find that flourishing comes not from constant output, but from living attuned to one’s inner and outer seasons.
Wednesday, February 11 Workshop Two: Flourish Anyway with a Sustainable Solo Retreat Practice
Many artists, writers, and other creative souls yearn for solitude and reflection but don’t know how to design retreats that truly nourish rather than deplete. Retreats often become one-time escapes instead of sustainable practices for ongoing renewal.
Learn how to build a personal retreat rhythm suited to your season of life, creative goals, and spiritual longings. Drawing from Charlotte’s work in spiritual direction and her Take More Retreats framework, this workshop guides you in crafting an approach to retreating that is affordable, accessible, nourishing, and repeatable.
You’ll leave with:
A customized solo retreat template (for 20 minutes, an hour, a day, or a weekend)
Practical guidance for creating sacred space anywhere
Renewed vision for rest as a form of creative discipline
You’ll discover that your flourishing doesn’t depend on retreating far away—but on learning how to be at home with yourself wherever you are.
Wednesday, February 25 Workshop Three: Flourish Anyway with Lessons from Iconic Birmingham Writers, Artists, & Musicians
It’s easy for writers, artists, and creative souls to feel isolated in their pursuits and disconnected from the artistic lineage and local influences that could sustain them.
This workshop invites you to draw inspiration and wisdom from Birmingham’s own creative heritage. Through stories, readings, and reflective exercises, you’ll explore how local artists have turned constraint into creative possibility, naming what it means to flourish here and now.
You’ll leave with:
Fresh creative inspiration rooted in Birmingham’s artistic legacy
New insights into how place and belonging shape your own art and imagination
Writing and reflection prompts to carry forward into your next season of work
Participants will emerge with a renewed sense of connection—to this city, to its art and music, and to their own evolving creative voice.
About the Trainer
Charlotte Donlon
Charlotte Donlon is a writer, spiritual director, and gatherer whose work centers on helping people explore themes of belonging through art, spiritual growth, and how to Flourish Anyway™, even when life is full, busy, or chaotic. Her work has woven together themes of belonging, art, and soul exploration for more than 25 years. With a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing (2015-2018) and a certificate in spiritual direction (2018-2020), Charlotte guides individuals and communities in fostering sanctuaries of acceptance and connection—her approach warmly welcomes people from all backgrounds, regardless of faith tradition or spiritual inclinations.
A Christian in the Episcopal church who believes the tenets of the Nicene Creed, Charlotte employs a universal framework of belonging and connection in her spiritual direction work that’s welcoming to all and fosters meaningful, soulful conversations.
In 2020, Broadleaf Books published Charlotte's first book, The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. The Great Belonging Project and the Take More Retreats anthology will be published in late January 2026. Her fourth book, Spiritual Direction for Writers, is slated for release by Eerdmans in September 2026.
As the founder of several initiatives, including Flourish Anyway™, Thoughtful Books Etc.™, Belonging through Art™, Spiritual Direction for Writers®, Spiritual Direction for Belonging®, and Parenting with Art®, Charlotte has established herself as a thought leader and an authentic presence at the intersection of creativity and spirituality. Her essays have been featured in prominent publications such as The Washington Post, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, and The Millions, among others. A new essay about art conservation, Joan Mitchell, and mystery is forthcoming with Image.
Learn more about Charlotte and her writing and work at charlottedonlon.com and flourishanyway.com.