Your Facilitator
Rev. Dr. Carolyn Oakes
MA, PhD · Interfaith Minister & Spiritual Director
As a spiritual seeker for as long as I can remember, I have been involved in pastoral care and leadership since my early teens. Born in Dublin, Ireland, I lived in Portsmouth NH for almost twenty years. I am a mother of four amazing children and a grandmother to four beautiful grandchildren. I taught nursing and midwifery at college level for over twenty years, at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and the University of New Hampshire, USA.
Following some major shifts and loss in my life I found myself most unexpectedly at seminary, where I was ordained as an Interfaith minister in 2021. Subsequently I trained as a spiritual director at the Shalem Institute in Washington D.C., graduating in 2023.
In 2022 I began to hear the call to live on Achill, the path opened and two years ago I made the transition to live full time on the island. A large part of that call is to spend time in solitude and contemplation, both much easier to say than to do. The vision to develop a retreat ministry in the west of Ireland has been decades in the making.
The first inaugural An Turas retreat took place in May 2026. It was an immense privilege to see a vision of many decades take shape, unfold and come to life.
