ABOUT US
We are reimagining how to care for the people who care for the world.
We envision a future where sanctuaries are woven into the fabric of everyday life. Not as escapes, but as waypoints. Places to pause. Places to begin again. Places to remember what matters most.
WHY REST
Rest is not separate from changing the world.
Rest can sound small. Soft. Like something you get to once the important work is finished. We don’t believe that. Rest is as strategic as policy, programming and organizing.
The social sector has built an entire identity around sacrifice. We call it passion. We call it commitment. Women are praised for giving everything and quietly penalized for needing anything back. If we keep treating burnout as personal, we will keep losing the very people we most need.
Sanctuary is not an act of kindness on the side of the real work. It is a repair to the foundation itself.
OUR ANCHORS
What rest returns.
Renewal
For what was drained.
The space and time to do the things that allow you to reclaim, recharge and rest.
Reconnection
For what was severed.
With oneself, place, community and nature.
Reciprocity
For everything that only ever flowed one direction.
Centering mutual care, shared wisdom and giving back.
FOUNDER STORY
The Sanctuary Experience is the culmination of my life’s work, and of everything I learned the hard way.
I began as an occupational therapist, and learned that care is not soft. It is skilled, practical and deeply human. The Peace Corps showed me how much of a woman’s health, safety and opportunity is decided long before she walks into a room. I spent nearly two decades inside some of the biggest philanthropies and institutions in the world, and they taught me where the money goes, and where it never arrives. We funded the campaigns, the research and the policy fights. We almost never funded the people carrying them.
I was one of those people. I burned out, and I kept going, because that is what we are taught to do. It took a cancer diagnosis to stop me. For the first time in twenty years, I was not moving. I was not producing. I was just still. And in that stillness, I finally saw what I had spent two decades too busy to see.
So I built this, though not alone, alongside amazing women. Two sanctuaries, a Fellowship, and a model designed to reach the women who need it most. Because being is enough.
Hi. I’m Sarah.
Built alongside amazing women.
OUR COLLECTIVE
Nionne
I’ve spent my career working for nonprofits as the quiet force in the background, optimizing systems, juggling details, and balancing books, creating calm in chaos and order in the overwhelm.
The Sanctuary Fellowship is what I always needed but never received: a space to exhale, to be seen, and to remember that we are worth of care, not for what we do, but for who we are.
seema
I’ve spent my career working in television, building campaigns, family offices and organizations, and supporting artists and activists throughout it all.
The Sanctuary Fellowship grew from a deep belief that rest is our origin story. We’re to mirror the pace of nature. It is designed to help others, and myself, continue to learn and live this truth.
OUR PARTNER
Wild Seed Liberation Land
The Sanctuary Experience stewards the land. Wild Seed Liberation Land, a 501(c)(3) organization, receives charitable gifts and funds the programming that happens on it. Together the two make something neither could alone: permanent places to rest, and the means for women to get there.