The Clearing

Who it is for

Women standing at a crossroads.

You can build a successful career. Raise a family. Be the one everyone relies on. From the outside, your life can look full. Then one day, something just feels off. Not because everything has fallen apart, but because you've changed.

Maybe the career that once excited you doesn't fit anymore. Maybe you've spent years putting everyone else first and can't remember the last time you asked yourself what you wanted. Maybe you're standing at the edge of a new chapter and quietly wondering if you've still got what it takes.

Sometimes the crossroads is obvious: returning to work after years away, starting a business you've talked yourself out of for too long, leaving a career that no longer feels like yours. Sometimes it is much quieter. The role you built your whole life around doesn't fit the same way it used to. No two women arrive for the same reason. What they often share is a feeling that's hard to explain: life isn't falling apart, it just doesn't fit quite the way it used to.

The Clearing was created for women in moments like these. Not to tell you what your next step should be, but to give you the space to hear yourself before you take it.

Why a mountain

There are seasons in life when more information isn't what we need. Sometimes the thing that's been missing isn't another insight. It's space.

We've read the books, listened to the podcasts, filled journals with good intentions, and still the same questions keep showing up. What's often missing is space. Space away from the pace of everyday life, and away from expectations we've carried so long we stopped noticing the weight.

A mountain has a way of changing the conversation. There's no rush, no signal, no endless list of things demanding your attention. Just one step, one breath, one foot in front of the other. Somewhere along the climb, people stop performing. The conversations become more honest. The silence becomes less uncomfortable. And things that have felt tangled for months, sometimes years, begin to make sense. Not because the mountain has the answers, but because, for the first time in a long time, you've had the space to actually think.

What begins to shift

When life slows down, you notice what usually gets buried.

Without the meetings, the school runs, the notifications and the endless decisions, there's room to notice things that usually stay hidden: the ways we've been shrinking ourselves, the conversations we've been avoiding, the version of ourselves we've outgrown but keep trying to squeeze back into because it's familiar.

This isn't about relaxing. It's about finally hearing the parts of yourself you've been too busy leading, managing and holding together to listen to. Throughout the expedition we create space for those conversations, not to find the "right" answers, just to become a little more honest.

Alongside those conversations, gentle somatic practices help us notice what the body has been holding onto. Sometimes we understand something long before we're ready to feel it. Sometimes the body knows before the mind catches up. Neither is wrong, and the mountain gives both a chance to meet. We won't tell you who to become. We simply create the conditions where you can hear yourself a little more clearly.

The journey

Break down. Rebuild. Re-enter.

The climb is not the achievement. It is a deliberate breakdown, and the breakdown is the point. Most women arrive having built themselves around everyone else's needs. On the mountain, day by day, that falls away. This is the journey we take you on, and every part of it is designed.

One · The breakdown

You begin in comfort and climb into the thin air, and the mountain quietly takes away the roles, the managing and the holding-it-together. By the higher camps there is nothing left to perform, and that is where the honest work with your leaders begins. It can feel like coming apart. It is meant to.

Two · The rebuild

You do not summit and fly home. After the top we bring you down into five-star comfort and open the most important days of the trip: retreat, reset and re-entry. With Shereen and her co-leader you rebuild, deliberately, around the woman you actually are and what she wants next. What the climb stripped away, you put back on purpose, or you leave on the mountain.

Three · The re-entry

You go home rebuilt, not raw. No woman is sent back into her life still in pieces. You re-enter as yourself, out loud, with the work integrated and leaders who stay with you afterwards.

Your leaders

Meet all our coaches →

The expedition

Twelve days on the ground.

The Clearing runs one day longer than the men's expeditions, giving even more room for the integration work that makes the change hold. The route follows the same acclimatisation-first path up Kilimanjaro, with the summit and a full reset built in before you fly home. Shereen and her co-leader are with you throughout, with guided sessions and exercises each morning and evening.

What is included

Everything from the moment you land to the moment you leave.

A fully held, five-star experience wrapped around a serious climb. One price covers the coaching, the comfort, the mountain and the care.

The coaching

Two women leading you for the whole journey, not a briefing at the start and a handshake at the end. Daily coaching sessions and guided exercises, morning and evening, on the trail and in camp, structured to carry you through the breakdown and the rebuild. A full aftercare programme continues once you are home.

The comfort

Nights in five-star lodges before and after the climb: proper beds, spa facilities, fine dining and deep rest, so you arrive acclimatised and unhurried and leave restored rather than wrecked. Time to relax and be properly nourished, so the only hard thing you do is the part that matters.

The mountain

The full guided ascent of Kilimanjaro, all park, rescue and conservation fees, all meals and drinking water on the mountain, and the retreat and integration days built into the itinerary.

The care

Delivered on Vertical Sky's mountain operations: fairly paid, wilderness-first-responder guides, supplementary oxygen and twice-daily health checks around every climber.

The investment

$14,995 per place

• 20 percent deposit secures your place
• Balance of 80 percent due ten weeks before departure
• Payment plans available on request

Travel insurance with cancellation cover is a condition of joining, so the risk sits with your policy rather than your deposit.

The cohort

Two leaders, a circle of women.

The Clearing runs with two women leading from the start, so the group is held closely throughout. Places are limited to keep it intimate. This is a small circle who will know each other honestly by the summit, and who tend to hold each other long after the mountain.

Held on the mountain

The Clearing is transformation through challenge and fellowship, not therapy. It is delivered on Vertical Sky's mountain operations, with fairly paid, wilderness-first-responder guides, supplementary oxygen and twice-daily health checks around every climber. You are pushed, and you are looked after. Both are the point.