The Place Where Beauty Starts: A Gathering for Grieving Hearts

In his poem “Not to Make Loss Beautiful,” Gregory Orr writes of making loss the place not only where beauty begins but where the heart truly understands the nature of its journey. Yet in a culture where so many turn to strategies of denial and avoidance to cope with grief, holding our pain as private failings, few are willing to risk a genuine encounter with sorrow. In doing so, we also  miss out on the ways tending our losses invites more beauty into our lives: the beauty of connection, of offering ourselves and each other more compassion, of finding freedom in speaking our truths, of honoring our divinity even in the full ache of our humanity and remembering our belonging to the wider web.

How do we turn toward our grief without collapsing? How do we deepen our capacity to be with this very human experience and trust in the medicine it holds? In this three-day retreat, we will create soulful space to descend into this terrain together, as we were never meant to grieve alone. Our days together will include mediation, contemplation, writing, somatic practices, art- making and time in nature, all held in ritual space with supportive frameworks for navigating grief. Whatever you are carrying, from your personal heartbreak to the collective grief of living through these turbulent times, there is room for you here. We will express, bear witness to, and practice being in sacred relationship with everything that arises, letting our feelings be evidence of our aliveness and deep love for ourselves, each other and the world. Join us. Your grief matters and you belong.