(not so) Average Jane Retreat
The (not so) Average Jane Retreat is an immersive, women-centered experience created specifically for female combat veterans. Over several intentional days, participants step away from the noise of everyday life and into a space where they can explore holistic healing practices, reconnect with themselves, and build relationships with women who understand the weight and complexity of service.
Women Who Understand
A retreat environment designed around the lived experiences of female combat veterans.
Multiple Paths to Healing
Participants experience a variety of holistic practices rather than being asked to fit one prescribed approach.
Connection That Matters
Shared experience creates space for understanding, trust, belonging, and renewed resilience.
A retreat built around the women who served.
Female combat veterans often carry experiences that are difficult to explain to people who haven’t lived them. The (not so) Average Jane Retreat creates an environment where explanation is not always necessary.
Participants are surrounded by other women who served in combat environments and by a team intentionally focused on creating a respectful, trauma-informed, women-centered experience.
- Designed specifically for female combat veterans
- Small-group, immersive retreat setting
- Women-centered environment
- Multiple holistic healing modalities and practices
- Intentional opportunities for reflection and connection
- Community that extends beyond a single activity or session
There is no single path to healing.
Every retreat is intentionally designed to introduce participants to a variety of practices, experiences, and conversations. No single modality defines the retreat. The value is in giving women space to discover what resonates with them.
Holistic Healing Modalities
Participants may experience practices involving equine connection, breathwork, movement, mindfulness, resonance-based approaches, creative expression, and other complementary modalities. Offerings may vary from retreat to retreat.
Creative Expression
Art, music, songwriting, storytelling, and reflective exercises create opportunities to explore experiences and identity in ways that do not always require finding the perfect words.
Connection & Community
Some of the most meaningful moments happen simply because women are surrounded by others who understand. Shared meals, conversations, activities, and unstructured time all contribute to building genuine connection.
Identity, Purpose & Self-Care
Retreat programming creates space to reconnect with identity beyond military service while exploring practical tools related to communication, purpose, confidence, wellness, and everyday self-care.
Sometimes healing starts with being understood.
Many female combat veterans know what it feels like to be surrounded by people and still feel as though no one fully understands their experience.
The retreat intentionally creates space for women to connect without having to minimize, translate, or defend their stories. That sense of recognition and belonging is not incidental to the program—it is one of the reasons the retreat exists.
What begins as a few days together can become something much larger: a reminder that you are not the only woman carrying what you carry.
We aren’t only asking how women feel. We’re studying what changes.
Operation Juliet is committed to evaluating the retreat experience through structured research. Our studies are still developing and sample sizes remain small, so findings should be interpreted as preliminary rather than proof of effectiveness. What we are seeing, however, is encouraging.
Preliminary 2025 retreat data showed a median reduction in reported depressive symptoms.
Preliminary data showed a median reduction in reported anxiety symptoms.
Preliminary analysis showed a median reduction in reported post-traumatic stress symptoms.
Perceived stress measures also showed an encouraging trend toward improvement.
Connection improved immediately. Resilience remained elevated one month later.
A parallel study followed participants before the retreat, immediately afterward, and approximately one month later to examine connection, support, isolation, loneliness, shared reality, and resilience.
Participants reported feeling significantly less misunderstood or alone in their experiences immediately after the retreat.
Perceived support from friends increased significantly immediately following the retreat.
Participants also reported a significant immediate increase in perceived family support.
Resilience increased significantly after the retreat and remained significantly higher one month later.
These findings are preliminary. Approximately 20 participants completed immediate post-retreat measures and 17 completed the one-month follow-up. With a study of this size, results should not be interpreted as proving that the retreat caused these changes. The findings identify promising patterns that warrant continued study as additional retreat cohorts participate.
The retreat creates connection. The next question is how we help sustain it.
Early research suggests some of the retreat’s strongest immediate effects may center on connection, support, and belonging, while resilience may continue beyond the retreat itself. Those findings help Operation Juliet continue refining how we support women before, during, and after the retreat experience.
The experience doesn’t have to end when everyone goes home.
Operation Juliet continues exploring meaningful ways to strengthen the connection created during the retreat and help participants carry what they discovered back into everyday life.
Follow-up communication, peer relationships, alumni connection, future Operation Juliet programming, and opportunities to remain engaged with the community can help extend the sense of belonging created during the retreat without positioning Operation Juliet as a crisis or long-term care provider.
Could this retreat be for you?
The (not so) Average Jane Retreat is designed primarily for female combat veterans who are interested in exploring connection, resilience, and holistic approaches to healing in a women-centered environment.
Application details and retreat dates will be posted here when the 2027 application period opens.
2027 Application Coming SoonWhen you support Operation Juliet, you help create this space.
Retreat participation is made possible through donors, sponsors, partners, volunteers, and supporters who believe female combat veterans deserve access to meaningful connection, healing practices, and a community built specifically for them.
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