Battle to Balance: A Body Peace Retreat for Women Veterans

Created by Women Veterans. For Women Veterans. Launching 2026.

How This Retreat Came to Life

In November 2025, something extraordinary happened at the Melissa Washington Small Business Award ceremony. For the first time in the history of the award, all three finalists were nonprofit founders serving in the veteran wellness and healing space. Three different missions, one shared purpose.

Instead of seeing each other as competitors, the finalists came together as collaborators:

• SEA WAVES, Inc. — Leah Stiles (Navy Veteran)

• Reveille and Retreat Project — Dakota Olson-Harris & Kim Liszka (Army Veterans)

• Arabella Wellness Center, Inc — Natesha Smith-Isabell (Army Veteran)

Within minutes of meeting, it became clear that each organization had been carrying a piece of the same vision: creating a safe, restorative space where women veterans could breathe, reconnect, and finally feel at peace in their own bodies after years of stress, service, trauma, and silent battles.

Right there on the spot, the three organizations decided to combine a portion of their award funds to create something bigger than any of them could build alone.

Our Shared Mission

Battle to Balance is a healing retreat designed specifically for women veterans — a population who often carry immense strength, responsibility, trauma, and expectations in their bodies.

This retreat is not about “loving your body” or forcing positivity.

For many women, especially those with trauma histories, that can feel unrealistic or even inaccessible.

Instead, our goal is simple and deeply meaningful:

To help women veterans find peace with their bodies —

peace in how they see themselves,

peace in how they treat themselves,

and peace in returning to a body that has carried them through everything.

What This Retreat Will Offer

Your support helps us provide women veterans with a compassionate, trauma-informed space where they can:

• Reconnect with their bodies in a gentle, non-judgmental way

• Explore practices that promote safety, grounding, and self-respect

• Learn tools for nervous-system regulation and stress relief

• Build community with other women who “get it”

• Create moments of rest, reflection, and renewal

• Experience healing through movement, mindfulness, and peer support

• Access culturally informed programming led by veterans and clinicians who understand the complex realities of service, injury, trauma, and transition

This retreat is about coming home to yourself — at your own pace, in your own way.

Why We Need Your Support

While the three organizations have committed half of their award funding to launch this retreat, early supporters and sponsorship partners will make it truly accessible.

Your contribution will help us provide:

• Scholarships for women veterans with financial need

• Travel assistance for those coming from underserved or rural areas

• Licensed facilitators specializing in trauma, eating disorders, body image, and veteran mental health

• Wellness programming, materials, and trauma-informed activities

• Safe lodging, meals, and healing spaces

• Accessibility accommodations

• A retreat experience that centers dignity, care, and community

Your Impact Starts Here

By supporting Battle to Balance, you aren’t just funding a retreat —

you are helping women veterans reclaim the parts of themselves they’ve had to bury to survive.

You’re helping create a space where strength doesn’t mean silence, and healing doesn’t have to be done alone.

You’re helping build a movement that honors every woman who has served.

If you feel called to partner, sponsor, or match our contributions, we would be honored to connect with you.

Thank you for seeing, supporting, and standing with women veterans.

Together, we rise. Together, we heal.