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Episode 42: "How to Receive the Support You've Been Building for Everyone Else"
You can see exactly what everyone around you needs. Recognizing it in yourself is a different skill entirely — and many high-performing leaders never develop it.
Sarah Merwin is Executive Director of Holbrook Farms, a nonprofit retreat community serving military widows, women who have lost a sibling in service, and mothers who have lost a child in uniform. She walked into the first retreat she planned with the itinerary ready and her perspective clear: this is for them. By the time dinner ended on night one, she knew she was one of them. The need she had named and structured for every woman in that room had been living quietly in her the whole time.
This episode is part of the Wilderness Series. The caretaking wilderness accumulates before we can name it — the things we stopped asking for without noticing, the slow drift from measuring what we receive to measuring only what we produce. What Sarah built at Holbrook Farms over twelve years proves that peer support fills a need that nothing else reaches. Getting it without having to explain is its own category of care.
IN THIS EPISODE:
✓ Why the leader who reads the room for everyone rarely gets read in return
✓ What peer support does that clinical care was never designed to do
✓ How Holbrook Farms structures space so healing happens without being forced
✓ The plate tug-of-war — and what it reveals about receiving care
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Caretaking Wilderness Intro
04:46 Holbrook Farms Mission and Place
07:22 Water Based Healing and Retreat Origins
13:57 Retreat Structure Volunteers and Ongoing Support
23:33 Alumni Retreat Connections
25:07 Letting Go to Heal
29:18 Who the Retreat Serves
41:33 Caretaking Wilderness Reflection
FEATURED GUEST: Sarah Merwin — Air Force veteran, Executive Director of Holbrook Farms, a nonprofit retreat community for military widows, siblings, and mothers. Know someone who qualifies? Pass this directly to her. holbrookfarms.org | @HolbrookFarmsRetreat
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