Welcome to the Women's Ministry at

The Youth & Family Institute

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Women’s Ministry at TYFI is provided in association with Finding Our Balance, an organization dedicated to creating safe and authentic opportunities for women to explore their lives, encounter their strengths, and encourage one another in community. 

The Youth and Family Institute and Finding Our Balance have teamed up to provide you with opportunities to meet other women who are looking to connect with one another by sharing common experiences, discovering new tools to navigate this sometimes crazy and often chaotic life, and taking time to be amazing, beautiful, and powerful women together. 

What is Finding our Balance?

After a lot of discussion, a couple of sleepless nights, a five-day headache, and a very expensive massage, Finding Our Balance got its name.  Here’s a brief summation of what Finding Our Balance means: 

Finding, because Balance isn’t something we find and then have, or keep, for the rest of our days.  Finding reminds us that the search for balance in our lives is a constant journey, effort, and challenge in order to discover, rest in, and rediscover what Balance means for each of us. 

Our, because if I was to say your, one might assume I have some extra Balance to give or bestow to someone else, which I do not, and cannot.  Our, because as women we co-discover and communally engage what it means to look for and crave balance in and for our lives. 

Balance because my friend, Tracy, brought the concept to light for me about ten years ago and I was so profoundly struck by her hope for, and vision of, a life in balance.  Balance because I’m just barely old enough to know that life throws some amazingly stunning, and often incapacitating curves, as well as inescapable joy and breathtaking beauty at us; and I’m just barely young enough to still believe I can do this “living” thing without too many compromises. 

What will you encounter through Finding Our Balance?

At Finding Our Balance, you will bump into spectacular, real, relatively normal, and sometimes crazy women who want to provide you with opportunities that engage your own life in new and empowering ways.  We provide adventure trips, weekend retreats, one-day women’s gatherings (sometimes called seminars, but not in our case because seminars sound formal and, well…we aren’t), and service opportunities. 

At Finding Our Balance, you can participate in an afternoon gathering at a local winery to discover why Jesus turned the water into wine (and not beer), a two-day luxury spa adventure retreat, a three-day intro to backpacking course on the Superior Hiking Trail in Northern Minnesota, a four-day desert yoga backpacking trip in Utah, a spiritual renewal retreat at a biosphere reserve in Mexico, or a self-designed course for you and your girlfriends. 

With each event, whether one-day or seven, we strive to incorporate the following components: 

• A physically, emotionally, and spiritually safe and encouraging environment
• An opportunity to give yourself permission to ask for what you need and to have your voice heard
• Real and authentic conversation
• Space and time to breathe deep and engage your spiritual self
• An excessively large dose laughter and play 

And with each event, we guarantee:

• A well-trained, organized, and professional staff, whose primary concern is your safety and well-being
• Home-made (when possible) healthy food and snacks
• Access to timely and accurate information and resources that will help you arrive prepared and ready to go

Come.  Be who you are.  Bring your friends, or meet some new

ones.  And give yourself permission to show up for yourself. 

This is your life!