Meet the Founder: Michelle Risinger
Meet Michelle Risinger, Co-Founder and Director of Possibilities for Moonwake Retreats!
In her role, Michelle shapes the vision, curriculum, and coaching experience at Moonwake, weaving together behavioral science, nature-based wisdom, and deep personal inquiry. She guides guests through moments of reflection, integration, and breakthrough, helping them reconnect with their rhythm, reclaim their power, and return to themselves with clarity and intention.
With a background spanning innovation strategy, leadership psychology, wellness coaching, and embodied movement, Michelle brings both structure and soul to the retreat experience. Her facilitation style is grounded, compassionate, and transformative — creating a space where healing feels safe, purposeful, and lasting.
1. Which of the five elements do you most identify with and why?
For me, it’s always been Water. I grew up in the pool - a competitive swimmer since the age of six, a water polo player from the age of twelve. I went on to be the two-time captain of my Division I swim team, later a member of the Scottish National Water polo team, and now an open-water swimmer who finds peace in the ocean’s rhythm. Water has been my greatest teacher. It reminds me that strength can be soft, that you're actually fastest in the water when you are most aligned with it, and that clarity comes when you’re willing to let go.
I try to move like Water, adapting, flowing, and finding the path forward even when the way isn’t clear. Moonwake was born from that same belief: that healing and transformation aren’t about pushing harder, but about returning to flow.
2. What inspired you to create Moonwake Retreats?
For my part, the Moonwake experience was born from the solo trips I took to grieve the passing of my father, journeys where I carved out time for deep healing, reconnected with nature, and began to truly listen to my body again. In those quiet places, surrounded by salt air, moonlight, and the sound of waves, I nurtured my own healing through the purest most unapologetic rest you can imagine. No agenda. No activities. No purpose other than to exist and sit with my grief. It’s not about escape; it’s about remembrance. A return to rhythm, rest, and reverence for the life that continues to move through us - no matter what we’ve lost.
Moonwake was created to offer other women that same sacred pause, a place to lay down what’s heavy, remember what’s true, and let nature hold them while they return to themselves.
3. What's one ritual or practice you never skip?
Once a month, I take the day off of work and do a self-care spa day. Loads of hydrotherapy (revealing in my element), journaling, reading and unapologetically resting. Sometimes I go alone, sometimes I go with friends or my partner, but the goal is to leave feeling completely unbound, so rested and so zen that nothing exists outside of the present moment.
4. What do you admire most about your Co-Founder?
Amanda is so genuinely, unapologetically herself. She radiates an authentic joy that makes you believe that anything is possible, and she can turn the most mundane moment into a chance to play and laugh. Let's just say Amanda has been my "Director of Magick" long before we ever made that title formal.
5. What are you most excited for guests to experience on a Moonwake Retreat?
As a transformational life coach, what moves me most is witnessing the quiet unfolding that happens over the course of the week. There’s a moment that happens on every retreat, you can’t predict it, but you can feel it building. It’s when something long-suppressed finally rises to the surface, and the world shifts for a guest. You see it in her breath, her posture, her eyes. The moment she remembers what she thought she had lost. The moment a guest remembers her own strength, her joy, the power she derives when she listens to nature.
By the end of the retreat, guests have journeyed through something deeply personal. They arrive carrying the weight of the world, and they leave carrying themselves differently. My greatest joy is watching that transformation - the becoming of the woman who’s been there all along, just waiting for space to breathe.
Want to learn more? Check out Amanda and Michelle’s bios here!