“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” -Joseph Campbell
Wintering: Tending the Dark Waters of Soul
A Grief Retreat at Haw River State Park
January 16th, 4PM – January 18th, 4PM
Summit Conference Center
Brown Summit, North Carolina
Life’s water flows from darkness.
Search the darkness, don’t run from it.
Night travelers are full of light,
and you are, too; don’t leave this companionship. ~ Rumi
In winter, the ground has gone fallow and we are in the sacred pause. This is Demeter’s season to grieve the loss of her daughter, Persephone. Winter is not only a season of the natural world, but a place that our bodies and psyches often find themselves, a season that recurs again and again across a life. In winter, there is a seasonal invitation to slow down, to tend our losses, and rest.
With the support of the shortened days, we invite 24 participants to seek the uncluttered quiet of the winter landscape of Haw River State Park, to reverently tend to what lies in the dark waters of our souls. With the company of northern cardinals, bare silver maples, white oaks, and the magic waters of the Haw, we will honor the sacred pause and engage in deep rest and self care. And just as the trees shed their leaves in winter, to become the rich humus of the forest floor, we will unburden our hearts and work with our sorrows to compost them into fertile soil.
Grief has always been communal in our long story as a species. This weekend we will enter the original healing matrix and offer one another a refuge safe enough to allow multiple layers of grief to be touched and released. Over the course of our three days together, we will use the tools of breathwork, movement, writing, and ritual to:
• honor our resistance to our own vulnerability and the seasonal invitation to slow down
• share our emotional selves to bring us into the arms of the sacred
• deepen our trust in our emotional and body wisdom
• cultivate poetic imagination to encourage our entry into the well of grief
• explore grief’s allies, such as anger, emptiness, and numbness
• make a refuge for gratitude and rest
As we practice the courage to be with the authenticity of our hearts, we grow our ability to embody our aliveness and compassion. The beauty of this work is its capacity to expand into our communities and the world. This is a form of soul activism and what we are called to embody in this extreme time.
COST:
$725 for single
$625 for double
$525 commuter
Registration closes January 5th.
REGISTER HERE
What past grief retreaters have said about our retreats:
"I cannot say enough about how powerful this experience was for me!! Hands down, it was the most powerful engagement of my entire life! Our culture deals with death/grief/loss/rage COMPLETELY WRONG and we, as practitioners, instructors, teachers, mentors, families, parents, etc must do our part to help spread the word that this experience (which we all have) doesn't have to be contained in such a negative, isolated, shameful space. I was definitely taught that this past weekend and now I'm telling everyone I know! "-AR
"It was a beautifully transformative experience for me. Summer and Samantha created a warm, loving, safe space. I am forever grateful for the insight I received and will integrate into my life. I felt loved and accepted by over a dozen people that I just met, and it feels like that is how the world should be. Everywhere we go, we should feel loved and accepted. I connected to some patterns and deep seated grief that are now in my awareness and I can observe them and work with them. I look forward to more retreats... oh and Haw River was the perfect setting. The food was incredible and the staff, warm and accommodating, and the surroundings so serene and full of life." -KP
"This retreat was so far outside of my comfort zone and I had no idea what to expect..I will be forever grateful that I took this leap of faith. My experience was absolutely amazing. My life has been changed for the better with the tools I took away from this weekend. There are not words to describe the love and bond I have with this whole group. Communal grief is an eye opening moment, one that I wish everyone in the world could have. Samantha and Summer are wonderful guides for this journey!" -AH
"Thank you for a truly outstanding retreat. The rich variety of ways you engaged us, your willingness to be vulnerable in our midst, and especially the way you trusted us to become a learning community for one another, was a great gift. You offered a very deep dive into a transforming pool and it seemed to me that all fifteen of us plunged right in!"-JB
"I’m so grateful for it. You created a safe pop-up village in which to explore parts of ourselves we may not feel comfortable with. I struggle with not feeling heard and seen. In that environment it almost felt as though that didn’t matter - that being being seen and heard was implicit and I was free to be myself without judgment." -RBH
Our Statement on Diversity and Cultural Appropriation:
As facilitators, our intention is to create an inclusive space that honors all cultures and ethnicities. However, as white-bodied, cisgender women, we recognize the privilege and systemic advantages inherent in our identities. We acknowledge the racial lenses and gendered systems that have shaped our experiences and perspectives, understanding that they differ significantly from those of BIPOC individuals. We are dedicated to actively listening, learning, and unlearning, and we are committed to ongoing growth in this area.
In our work, we approach any rituals, songs, or practices from non-dominant cultures with deep respect and gratitude. They have been shared and gifted with blessings to aid in our collective healing. We are committed to acknowledging and honoring the sources of these practices, recognizing the responsibility that comes with engaging with them. May our collective grief cry serve as a catalyst for change and liberation, as we work towards dismantling oppressive systems and creating a world where all beings can thrive.
Important Note on Timing and Readiness
If you’ve experienced a significant loss or trauma within the past six months, we invite you to reach out to the facilitators before registering. Community grief retreats can be deeply meaningful, but they often require a certain level of emotional stability to be beneficial. For some, especially in the immediate aftermath of a profound loss, it may feel too soon. As a general guideline, attending a retreat like this is often most supportive six months to a year after a major loss. We’re happy to talk with you and help discern whether this experience feels right for you at this time.
Contact your facilitators
Samantha DiRosa
Summer Estes
About the location
This event is located at the beautiful Haw River State Park Summit Conference Center, in Brown Summit, North Carolina. When we are not meeting in the lovely Heron’s Roost or Fox Den for our group time, there are many beautiful trails to explore.
The closest airport to us is Greensboro (GSO). Participants flying in can also look into Charlotte or Raleigh airports. We are happy to help connect folks who might be interested in carpooling from an airport or somewhere else in the region.
LOCATION
Haw River State Park, 27214
To learn more, click here…
Facilitators
Samantha DiRosa, MFA, RYT, is a university art professor, yoga instructor, ritualist, and budding art therapist based in Greensboro, North Carolina. She brings 20 years of facilitation and teaching experience in the realm of higher-education, alongside an artist’s sensitivity and depth of insight, to her work with groups. Having trained with Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, and Joanna Macy, author of Active Hope, she believes in the power of ritual and ceremony to transmute sorrow and loss into the healing of individuals, communities, and the Earth. Samantha lives with her daughter and her pack of non-human companions in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, the occupied lands of the Keyauwee and Saura Peoples. When she is not teaching, she maintains a small private coaching / consulting practice and spends time connecting with her Celtic and Sicilian ancestral roots.
To learn more about Samantha click here
Summer Estes is a psychotherapist, group facilitator, and founder of Embodied Intelligence, a body of work devoted to tending the thresholds of the human experience—grief, transformation, and opening to presence. With nearly 20 years of guiding groups, retreats, and healing spaces, she creates transformative containers where people can bring what they carry and be met with presence, reverence, and warmth. In addition to private clinical practice, Summer has served on faculty and is a facilitator with the wisdom school, The Second Breath Center.
A lifelong student of consciousness and the soul’s unfolding, Summer integrates perennial wisdom teachings with somatic inquiry, breathwork, and contemplative practice. Her work is rooted in the recognition that the body and the earth hold an innate intelligence—an ever-present field of support—waiting to be remembered.
She is curious about human development, wisdom ways of knowing, and consciousness. She continues her own inner work through the Diamond Approach founded by A.H. Almaas, where she loves working with spiritual practice of inquiry. Summer has been a student of the Enneagram under the teaching of Russ Hudson since 2010 and completed her training through the Enneagram Institute in 2019.
She is deeply influenced by the grief-tending vision of Francis Weller, whose teachings on the “Five Gates of Grief” inspire her seasonal grief rituals and retreats. She views becoming apprentices to our grief as essential to reclaiming our authentic hearts and cultivating more life-honoring ways of being.
Her ongoing studies and inspirations include the wisdom of Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Tara Brach, Russ Hudson, Richard Rohr, Maya Luna, Malidoma Somé, Phillip Shepherd, Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Linda Thai, and mystics across traditions.
Summer lives in her native North Carolina with her husband Kevin, their three children—Abby, Levi, and August—and a beloved menagerie of animals. Whether guiding a grief ritual, facilitating embodied inquiry, or simply walking beneath the trees, she remains devoted to the mystery of love made visible through presence.
To learn more about Summer click here
Beth Farrand is a spiritual coach, group facilitator, breath facilitator, retreat leader, homebody-adventurer, flower lover, artist, and mom to 3 sons & 1 golden retriever named Millie. Beth is a graduate of the Shalem Institute’s Spiritual Guidance Program and has been a spiritual coach for 13 years. She loves holding presence and space for others as they seek to listen to their own inner wisdom. Beth brings her decades of experience with internal work, her supportive presence and her ability to hear beneath the surface, to her sessions, groups and retreats. When she is not coaching or facilitating, you will find Beth hiking and exploring nature around her home in the beautiful North Carolina mountains.
Sandy Blocker is the University Accompanist at Elon University who plays world percussion instruments for modern, ballet and African dance classes. He was trained from an early age as a classical dancer. At age 18 he moved to Virginia to study ballet with the School of Norfolk Ballet before receiving a scholarship to move to New York to study with the Joffrey Ballet School. He felt the call to world percussion drumming in an African dance class at UNCG, which led him to many trips over the Atlantic to study various forms of drumming. Sandy is a versatile world percussionist, proficient in playing African, Middle Eastern, and South American rhythms on a variety of percussion instruments, including the riqq, djembe, and conga drums. He has drummed with Malidoma Somé and will be accompanying our grief ritual Saturday evening.
Veda Spidle is a certified Yoga Therapist who focuses on breath work, meditation, sound healing, and gentle yoga. She has over 4,000 hours of teaching experience and holds certifications in a variety of holistic modalities, which includes 800+ Hours in I AM Yoga Therapy, Advanced I AM Yoga Nidra, Kundalini Yoga, and Reiki. Veda’s passion for teaching gives her an open-hearted, knowledgeable, and intuitive approach that allows her to instruct people of all ages and ability levels.
To learn more about Veda, click here.
How to Apply
- Register and pay now to reserve your spot!
- If you have any questions please contact us.