member and facilitator
Handbook, Guidebook and Retreat Guide
handbook
The Women’s Forum Handbook captures the issues women care about – relationships, character, family, vocation, and practical and sacred matters. Rather than telling you what you already know or giving you answers regarding these important topics, the Handbook invites you to reflect on what you think and believe.
With questions on more than 50 topics for personal review and group discussion, the Women’s Forum Handbook brings your life experience into sharp focus. As you work the book, you will explore your past, reflect on what’s present for you today, and make choices to move your life forward.
“The content is thoughtful and compelling, with beautiful quotes and graphics and so many ideas, but what I love is the white space. Month by month, writing on these pages, the Handbook is becoming about me - my questions, my truth and experience, my story in my words.” - Amy
guidebook
Facilitating a group successfully requires attention and skill. The Facilitator Guidebook provides group leaders with evidence-based resources, skills, and practices that we have used in our women’s groups for more than a decade to facilitate powerful and sustainable groups.
With information on group principles and best practices, facilitation skills, meeting outlines, facilitation resources, meditations, and poetry — the Facilitator Guidebook contains everything you need to run and manage a successful group that is meaningful to participants.
“It seems every need and question we have about how to create trust and make our meetings worthwhile are addressed in this book. As a companion to the Handbook, the resources in The Facilitator Guidebook will take our wForum to the next level. I can also see myself using some of these exercises with work and client teams, to create buy-in and focus our discussions.” - Debra
DIY Retreat Guide
When you do it yourself, designing and leading a women’s retreat is both a privilege and a big responsibility. While it’s more fun than difficult, retreat planning requires focus, organization, and attention to detail. The DIY Retreat Guide is your go-to guide that saves time and makes planning a fun and special creative experience.
The Do-It-Yourself Retreat Guide is a unique compendium of practical tools based on decades of experience designing and facilitating retreats for women.
This one-of-a-kind guide for women offers dozens of group activities, creative exercises, and discussion guides. You can plan a retreat for one, two, or three days. Too much material for one retreat, the DIY Retreat Guide will be a resource for years to come!
We hope you will enjoy the gorgeous imagery and colorful format of this special book.
As a course in women’s studies, the DIY Retreat Guide explores the ways that feminine values, cultural norms, and individual experiences shape a woman’s consciousness, voice, and impact in the world.
As a guide for group inquiry, the DIY guide outlines relevant and provocative themes, each with a sample agenda to ‘surprise and delight” participants with something different.
As a guide for group play, the variety of quick activities serves a wide range of energy levels, from active to quiet, from sensual to whimsical, from morning to bedtime.
As a platform for a discussion, the themes, questions, and experiences make for intriguing conversations that are designed to honor all perspectives so that each one feels heard, seen, and safe.
“I just wanted to echo the gratitude 🙏 for such an amazing retreat guide. It’s incredibly helpful to have such a wide variety of ideas from the meditations to activities to frameworks. Thank you, Jana for authoring and sharing this wonderful gift and to Adelaide for her vision in sponsoring this unique resource. We can’t wait for our next retreat!” Stacy
ENHANCE your women’s forum EXPERIENCE
The Women’s Forum Handbook provides years’ worth of learning material for groups that meet monthly. Its value increases over time, as it maps the journey you and your wForum take together.
As a workbook, the Handbook serves as an inventory of your strengths, beliefs, and choices. Over time, it becomes a record of your life experiences, insights and lessons learned.
As a course in women’s studies, the Handbook explores how feminine values, cultural norms, and individual experience shapes a woman’s consciousness.
As a guide for group process, the Handbook outlines the principles and practices for a healthy and dynamic group relationship at all stages of your group’s development.
As a platform for group discussion, the Handbook takes the conversation to a deeper, more meaningful level in which you feel more connected to yourself and to others.
The Women’s Forum Facilitator Guidebook is a supportive tool for peer facilitation and for those who are interested in beginning their own chapters across the country. The Facilitator’s Guidebook will help you to:
Align members to a shared purpose for meetings.
Develop a close and healthy group relationship.
Provide prompts and exercises for meeting variety.
Generate meeting outlines for specific group needs, such as integrating new members.
Learn from the experience and wisdom of previous wForum facilitators.