Loss, Trust, Change - A Grief Retreat

Nature knows how to process loss, there’s nothing new to invent. Many of us live outside naturally directed cycles. Long work weeks, industrialized food and computer moderated communities can make it hard to remember we’re part of nature. 

This shows up brightly in the ways we’ve come to manage grief. We struggle to trust in systems we haven’t designed and cannot control. It makes it easy to feel lonely and afraid a lot of the time.

In our experience we’ve found, with help, support and encouragement, we can make our way back to being held and guided by this big, trustworthy thing we never left and that will never leave us. It isn’t easy, but it’s simple and quite possible. We feel lucky to get the chance to try with all of you.

We’re excited to gather in the complex wellness of the woods and water at Breitenbush, in the presence of our individual and communal grief, to practice moving with, learning from and trusting the system we belong to.

We’ll spend the weekend exploring what it feels like to let go. We’ll work closely with the river to find ways to let feelings, habits, and stories that have gotten stuck in us in troubling ways be loosened and washed out.

To help us let go, over the weekend, we will work with:

•     Sharing and witnessing
•     Silence
•     Meditation
•     Movement
•     Yoga
•     Sound
•     Touch
•     Gentle tending

Our goal will be to watch this process as it unfolds in the river and learn from it. To become more intimate with this particular movement in the non-human guided world. To see how other beings trust it and how we, as part of this balanced system, might find our way to trust.

The schedule for this retreat can be viewed here.