Charlette and Michelle are the co-founders of Incite Agency for Change, a social enterprise inspiring hope, encouraging individual and collective action, and creating change for healthy communities where all people can thrive. Emerging from vastly different professional backgrounds, Charlette’s in nursing (RN, CCRN) and Michelle’s in public health (MPH, CHES), we have a combined four decades of experience in injury and violence prevention and health promotion. About 5 years ago, we started our business together. Now, often called a dynamic duo, we refer to ourselves as best friends, business partners, and sisters from another mister!

We came together around our shared passion for building community capacity to positively impact systems, structures, and as many lives as possible. The focus of our work is mental wellness, suicide prevention, and intersecting topics like substance use prevention and houselessness/housing insecurity. We recognize the significant importance of “upstream” life protectors such as building individuals’ strengths and resilience in order to weather life's challenges, and we also weave this approach into all of our work. We are certified trainers in a number of evidence-based suicide prevention trainings that we provide throughout Oregon. 

We both also have lived experience that makes us passionate about this topic and about offering retreats that provide an environment for healing, skill building, hope, and transformation. Charlette is a suicide loss survivor who started her healing journey at Breitenbush 20 years ago attending organized and personal retreats. Michelle also has lived experience and found a sense of hope by empowering individuals and communities to navigate difficult times. We have both supported children, loved ones, and countless others through life’s complexities, including suicide crises, and we are committed to creating a positive ripple affect with the individual and collective impact of wellness experiences like this retreat.  As well, Charlette has the lived experience of raising a child, now 24, with medical needs including open heart surgery at age 13, followed by significant and sudden mental health concerns, including suicide ideation and behaviors, time spent in a pediatric psychiatric unit, and methamphetamine and heroin addiction and recovery. 

We have both come through turbulent times, even in the past couple of years. Now, along with many many others in the world, we are facing even more turbulence for ourselves and our loved ones. We are excited to create a restorative space for all individuals where you can rest and rejuvenate in the healing waters of the hot springs (which we do as often as we can!), and experience a retreat that can help you both sit in the mud and move towards hopefulness. We often say “no mud, no lotus.”