Coming Home to Love:
A Grief Tending Retreat
What if grief is not a problem that you need to fix or get over? What if the pain that you are feeling is actually a kind of medicine for your heart? What if grief provides a pathway to restoring community and bringing more love into the world?
You are warmly invited to this spacious weekend retreat where grief and loss, sorrow and suffering will be welcomed, witnessed and held. As the wheel of the year turns towards autumn, this is an opportunity for releasing and composting the past, creating space for more beauty, and opening to the transformative power of love.
The trauma-informed grief-tending-in-community approach provides a safe place for you to allow your feelings to emerge and to flow without being plunged into overwhelm. Through working creatively with grief in this way, in the sacred space we create together, we have found that it is possible, not only to grieve well, but also to access the joy, connection and peace that lie on the other side of our pain.
No previous grief tending experience needed, simply bring your curiosity, your willingness to meet whatever comes up, and your openness to being moved by grace and beauty.
This is an alcohol and drug free event, facilitated by Jackie Stewart, Liz Day and Shona Sundhari.
See below to read more about the journey, the venue, who it is for, and testimonials from our 2024 retreat - or go straight to the booking link for practical information and to reserve your place.
The Journey
We will be working with tried and tested practices – including circle time, ceremony, song, dance, time in nature, nervous system soothing, and work in pairs and in small groups – to create a strong group container. We will also be calling in support from the land itself, from our teachers and wisdom streams, and from our spiritual connections.
There will be plenty of time for relaxation and integration, as well as dancing, feasting and celebration. Everything is optional and we encourage everyone to prioritise self care throughout the weekend.
Who is it for?
Join us if you... are grieving the death of a loved one and want to be with people who understand instead of feeling alone with your pain or thinking that you should be feeling better by now.
Join us if you... feel broken-hearted, rage or despair about ecosystem collapse, climate change, natural disasters, destruction of habitat and species loss and don’t know what to do with your pain.
Join us if you... are struggling to come to terms with grief about a health issue, a difficult medical diagnosis, or are exploring the link between unmetabolised grief and chronic pain.
Join us if you... feel sorrow, horror and outrage about the suffering of others as conflicts rage around the world. Many of us are feeling this collective pain but it is too much for any of us to hold alone.
Join us if you... feel the weight of ancestral grief passed down through your family, are grieving childhood losses or trauma, or rupture with your family of origin and need a supportive space to be witnessed.
Join us if you... feel the long-term grief that’s been suppressed in our culture including the pain of broken spiritual lineages and the heavy legacy of oppressive systems which can leave us feeling disconnected from our roots.
Join us if you... are grieving the end of a significant relationship, the pain of divorce, separation, children leaving home, or the breakdown of a good friendship.
Join us if you... feel grief about transitions and changes including ageing, loss of your sense of identity, home, career, dreams, purpose, or other life circumstances and want to witnessed by people who get it.
Join us if you... have grief that is stuck or frozen, and you feel numb, heavy or disconnected from life yet deep down you know there must be more to life than this.
Join us if you... want to deepen your relationship with grief as a positive force for personal and cultural transformation, healing and renewal.
All of this and more is welcome.
The VENUE
We’ll be staying at Letton Hall, a beautiful country house with huge windows overlooking parkland and ancient trees. The spacious programme will allow time to enjoy the autumn colours and explore the grounds. There’s also a fire pit in a woodland grove where we will spend some community time together.
Letton Hall has hosted many rural retreats, groups and celebrations over the years, and they are offering us a warm and loving welcome. We’ll be enjoying delicious nourishing home-cooked vegetarian meals with vegan options, and sleeping in quiet, comfy beds with beautiful views.
Reserve your place at the button below, or continue reading to hear what people said about our 2024 retreat.
Testimonials
Participants often tell us that they feel lighter, more alive, peaceful, hopeful, joyful, less alone, and more connected – with themselves, with others, and with the natural world – after attending one of our group journeys. Here are some words from participants who came to our 2024 retreat.
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Annie O'Connor: After attending, it's like being born again into a world where Love is the current that supports my spine, regulates my heartbeat, and is the prayer of each breath. I am sleeping, laughing, crying, connecting, exercising, cooking, and at home in my own being. I have become unstuck from a state of profound numbness and pain, and I'm living again. I feel safe, whole, held, and open to the great mystery of life.
Thank you for such intentional, loving, and generous work to bring these practices into our modern world! I feel utterly transformed. Reconnected with myself and the full spectrum of human experience. I experienced release, relief, restoration, and recovery. This is what healing is meant to be. None of it would have been possible for me without the experience of being in community, and the container and process our expert facilitators created and held.
I did not expect to feel such connection to my own soul, and to literally feel it healing. I was not prepared for how absolutely essential the beautiful community we formed was to my own personal healing journey. I did not expect to have such a profound and healing experience that feels as though my life is now defined by the before and after.
Erin: I feel lighter. I feel rooted. I feel that the sacred is holding me. I feel deeply connected. I feel in flow and enlivened and grateful about being a human on this planet. I feel I can trust being alive in this time and place.
What a joy to find a group of tender-hearted-like-minded-and-bodied-in-tune people to share with. I felt like I found the place that was a homecoming and in tune with me! The care, the facilitation, the container, the invitations, the ceremony, the rituals, the breaths, the songs, the circle, the community, the clear intentions, the wild inside and out, the grief, the release - all went well!
I was deeply touched and in awe of the facilitation and care. The container and safety and invitations and love was inspiring and nourishing and beautiful. I wish we all could have collective experiences such as this - it was comparable to when I gave birth; the experience of being danced by the great sacred source.
I was nourished by the somatic practices and by the singing and songs. Also, the water-river-walking-drumming ceremony I found deeply moving. And the dancing. The dancing!! And the grief ceremony; no words, just deep, deep nourishment, birthing, energy-moving, transcending, pure life-force goodness!
Here's to the joy of wilding, tending, eldering, earthing, watering, burning, dancing, witnessing, embodying, feeling and triumphing human grief!
Anon: I have experienced the profound feeling of being part of a loving village of practical strangers but not feeling 'strange.' My grief feels easier to hold. I know what it feels like to spend more time tending to grief with community, how this can move so much in such a short time. I feel lighter, more alive. I feel hope is returning, and I'm more able to face the challenges now.
There are many things on the other side of grief, including joy. It's a beautiful place to co-create a loving village to cry and laugh with. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. I have been part of many group retreats and workshops, and never before have I felt so deeply changed, so deeply loved, so carefully (full of care) held. The world needs more of this.
I feel the whole weekend was lovingly held and I felt so grateful to have been able to experience it. The little touches meant SO MUCH! For example, being greeted like a new dawn on arrival, the bookmark and welcome note on the pillow, the ways all facilitators made sure to kindly welcome each of us, the 'welcome' message in the hummus, the mugwort pillows, the prayer and praise bowl containing seeds we could take with us. All these things and more touched me so deeply.
Jo S: It's hard to convey how the magic of it all - the rituals, tenderers, song, villagers, dance, elders and ancestors - came together to bring a deeply spiritual container allowing me to go bone deep in my grief and out the other side in full colour. I feel more alive than I have been for years. I feel courageous and have more space to be myself.
I felt nourished by the amount of love, kindness, generosity, compassion, wisdom and vulnerability brought by the facilitators; holding space with such strength and tenderness. I am grateful and feel blessed to have been able to go on this sacred journey with you all.
KD: I don’t think I’ve ever felt so seen, safe and accepted or felt so much love in one room! The whole event was beautifully held with such care and attention. Having the space to feel, cry, laugh, dance, sing, all of it... Thank you, thank you! I feel lighter, more connected and open-hearted.
I loved how it all flowed, I loved the music, the dancing, and the beauty. The beginning of the ceremony felt like entering into something special and sacred. The grief ritual was like nothing else, it was as though we all flowed together - I wasn’t aware of anything else other than what was going on in that room.
I was surprised at how quickly I felt at ease with all the beautiful, kind-hearted people in the group, and also how quickly the sense of village was formed. This real, connected, loving space felt like such a gift.