“She's Not In It for Profit”: How Kim Fields Created a Family Reunion Through Wellness Travel

She stood in the center of the boat lobby, festive with Christmas decorations, and raised one leg atop the receptionist desk. With her signature silly charm, Kim Fields looked straight into the camera, freezing a moment that would mean more than any posed portrait. Behind her, fifty people—mostly African American—laughed and smiled, not at a celebrity - not Regine from Living Single or Regina from The Upshaws , but at their friend Kim, celebrating the culmination of something rare: a wellness retreat that felt like coming home.

For some aboard the Soulful Experience riverboat gliding through the Netherlands and Belgium, this was their first Refresh by KF experience - a wellness lifestyle space geared to replenish the soul through the inspiration of health & wellness, interior design, travel, music, and style. But for most, they were repeat retreaters who had fallen in love with the experience in Tucson, Arizona, and quickly signed up to do it again—this time, not knowing what to expect, with a soulful experience woven throughout European cities like Amsterdam, Brussels, and Rotterdam. What they found wasn't just another wellness retreat. It was a choice to be together, to discover rest and community with each other at a time when so many forces fight to keep us apart.

Refresh By KF

In an industry built on celebrity branding and premium pricing, Kim Fields has quietly created something subversive: a wellness movement that prioritizes accessibility over profit, authenticity over polish, and collective healing over individual transformation.

When Wellness Meets Cultural Identity

I didn't know about Refresh by KF when I boarded the riverboat. It wasn't until I noticed an invitation on my itinerary—welcoming everyone on the boat to attend any Refresh session they'd like—that I understood someone clearly had left me off this memo. Nevertheless, throughout the week, when my schedule allowed, I attended sessions like the Men's Refresh Chat, salsa dance classes, the MasterPeace paint workshop, Chef Carla Hall's culinary experience where we learned from Food Network royalty about the connection between history, culture, and our food (watching her create a dish with collard greens and oyster shells that somehow worked to perfection), a pajama jam where we hit the dance floor in our Christmas PJs, meditations, reflections, champagne yoga (I'm still upset I missed that one), sound healing, and a fireside chat with Kim herself.

Carla Hall gives a culinary presentation.

This year, Refresh by KF—which Kim Fields launched in Tucson, Arizona—partnered with AmaWaterways to include the Soulful Experience riverboat cruise through Europe. It was a clever convergence: wellness travel (something Black people need) meeting cultural travel (something Black people love) on a European riverboat cruise (something most Black people would never consider for themselves). By weaving wellness into cultural exploration, the retreat offered participants something rare—the chance to discover ancestral strength while standing on the same shores where our people shaped global history. The itinerary included the Black Heritage Canal tour in Amsterdam, tastings of salted fish that connected Trinidadian descendants to Dutch colonizers, a visit to the Africa Museum in Belgium, and quiet moments in canal-side cities where some of the narrow brick buildings carried statues of Black faces like the “De Moriaan" or "Moorkop.” When you understand what your ancestors overcame, what they built, how they persisted—it arms you with the mental fortitude to face your own challenges. If they did extraordinary things under impossible circumstances, why not you?"

Tarryn exploring Rotterdam.

Tarryn Sampson, who has attended every Refresh By KF, described this European iteration as an elevated experience. "This was a whole other spin to what Kim was doing initially," she said. "Our other retreats were just Refresh-focused. This partnership with Soulful Experience gave us all the excursions. When's the next time I'm coming out to Amsterdam? So you want to do all the things. the experience I got from learning that history was the refresh for me.”

She paused, then offered what might be the Refresh thesis statement: "I've always said, and I still believe, and this also adds to my belief, that travel is the best educator."

The Absence of Celebrity Flair

One of the most striking aspects of Refresh By KF is what it refuses to be. In an era where celebrity retreats command five-figure price tags and influencer wellness brands sell aspiration over access, Kim Fields has built something fundamentally different. Retreaters speak not of exclusive perks or VIP treatment, but of genuine connection.

Shariat Lynch, a travel advisor who attended her first Refresh by KF in Tucson, described the cognitive dissonance of discovering the retreat's pricing. "I initially thought it was a scam because I thought, why are the prices so low?" she said. "She's not doing this for a profit and it was amazing. She brings in the best people. She loves on everybody. It doesn't even feel like a retreat. It feels like a family reunion because that's how it is. And so, I'm going to keep coming."

The family reunion analogy surfaced repeatedly in conversations with retreaters. Derrick, a bus driver and photographer from Philadelphia, echoed the sentiment: "The Refresh to me feels more like a family reunion. I can put it like this—everyone is very welcoming. This is our second. I had a great positive experience in Arizona."

Derrick having fun in the dance competition.

What Derrick said next reveals how the Refresh disrupts assumptions about who wellness spaces are for. "I thought it was a women's thing, and then Kim announced that men were welcome. So I went and captured the experience with my camera in hand. I was so moved I decided to create a magazine to lock those moments in time. I'll keep coming back to the Refresh."

Making Space for Men to Heal

It's not easy to get men together to focus on mental and emotional wellbeing. The cultural scripts that define Black masculinity—strength, stoicism, self-reliance—leave little room for vulnerability. Yet the Refresher manages to do exactly that, creating space for both young and seasoned men to process what they carry.

During one session, a group of us sat around a table at the captain's lounge, taking a break between tours and wellness activities to talk about what triggers us as men. Around the table we went—not sobbing or looking for pity, but sharing our experiences, giving each other permission to release the things that held us captive in our emotions so we could show up better for our families, communities, and ourselves.

The conversation wasn't facilitated by therapists or motivational speakers. It was simply men, creating the conditions for honesty in a world that rarely rewards it. In that room, the retreat revealed how it refuses the commodification of healing while insisting on its necessity.

Where Parallel Stories Converge

The genius of pairing Refresh By KF with the Soulful Experience riverboat cruise lies in how it layers personal healing with historical reckoning. As the boat docked in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Rotterdam, retreaters fresh from a salsa dance class or breath-work session, with the sounds of river water still soothing their minds and bodies, would now walk the same cobblestones their ancestors walked—standing in the cities where African ingenuity, labor, and culture shaped the architecture, cuisine, and wealth that still define Europe today. To see the canal houses and understand that Black hands built this beauty, to taste the spices and recognize the routes our people traveled, to hear the stories and realize 'my ancestors were here, they survived this, they created this'—that knowledge becomes fuel. It connects you to a legacy of strength, creativity, and resilience that runs through your veins. When you know your history—not just the suffering, but the brilliance, the survival, the impact—you see yourself differently. You walk differently. You dream bigger.

Tarryn described the impact of this convergence. "When we went to the city market and they had the tasting, they had salted fish. Well, my family's from Trinidad. We had salt fish all the time. We also call it Bacalao. And then I saw the name, the Dutch version of the name, and it was just like, wow. You're learning so much and you're becoming educated in a greater way because it's the minutiae. We had the overall story, but these little details—this presented information that I didn't expect to learn. So it was refreshing to learn about us on this side of the world."

What Profit Cannot Buy

Shariat Lynch's initial suspicion— Refresh by KF low prices signaled a scam—reveals how conditioned we are to equate value with cost. In wellness culture, transformation is expensive. Healing is premium. Access is gatekept. But Kim Fields has rejected that model entirely, prioritizing community sustainability over individual wealth extraction.

The retreat operates on the belief that wellness should be accessible, that healing is collective, and that the most valuable experiences are the ones you return to—not because of scarcity or exclusivity, but because they genuinely feed your spirit. That's why retreaters keep coming back. That's why Derrick was moved to create a magazine. That's why Shariat and Tarryn speak of the Refresh not as an event they attended, but as a community they belong to. It’s kinship in the best way.

The Last Day

On the final day of the cruise, they gathered again in the festive lobby for one last photo. Kim stood in the center, leg raised on the receptionist desk, smiling that silly smile that had become shorthand for safety. Around her, fifty people who had arrived as strangers and rekindled as family crowded into the frame.

This moment—captured in laughter and proximity—held the blueprint for what Black wellness travel can be when it refuses capitalism's scripts. It showed what happens when celebrity becomes service, when profit becomes secondary to people, and when travel becomes education and contribution.

As the boat docked for the last time and retreaters prepared to return to their lives across the diaspora, they carried with them something more valuable than relaxation or inspiration. They carried proof that another world is possible—one where wellness is a birthright, community is the currency, and coming home to yourself means coming home to each other.

Kim Fields stood in that lobby because she's not in it for profit. She's in it for us. And that, more than any retreat package or celebrity endorsement, is what keeps people coming back.