The Art of Grieving 4 Day Retreat
Join us for the first-ever Art of Grieving InterPlay Expressive Arts and Art-Making Retreat, a unique gathering designed to help you explore creativity as a path through grief and life transitions.
Together, we’ll create a supportive circle where we can honor our heartbreaks, our joys, and all that life has handed us. Using InterPlay—an improvisational approach to storytelling, movement, and voice—alongside hands-on artmaking, we will discover the spiral path of growth and insight that a transformed grief bestows.
Over 3 days in this nurturing mountain setting, we will:
- Engage in InterPlay practices — gentle, playful movement, storytelling, and voice that help us access the wisdom of our own bodies, and share in a supportive community, stories and memories of who and what we have loved.
- Create with our hands — through mosaic art, watercolor, and other creative modalities we will give form and color to what lives in our hearts.
- Hold rituals of remembrance, offering creative ways to honor loved ones who have died, and exploring new ways to stay connected to them.
- Enjoy spacious time in nature, walking among trees and streams that help us remember that we too are part of the cycles of loss and renewal.
- Build a compassionate community, so we do not carry our stories alone.
- By weekend’s end, you’ll carry home new art pieces, deeper insights, and connections with a circle of kindred spirits.
This retreat is for people who:
Are grieving someone they love, or a life chapter that has ended, and want to honor that through creative expression.
Feel called to explore their creativity, whether they’re seasoned artists or complete beginners.
Are looking for new ways to process the complex emotions of living in these times—grief, beauty, uncertainty, hope.
Long to be with others who understand that grief is not something to be “gotten over,” but to be companioned, witnessed, and transformed.
As Francis Weller writes:
“Soul activism is what we are called to in this extreme time.”
Through the expressive arts of InterPlay and artmaking, we engage in that very activism—tending to what is most tender, personal, and profound.
The retreat takes place in the gorgeous Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania, easily reached by car from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. It will be facilitated by Dr. Sheila K. Collins, Author of The Art of Grieving: How the Arts and Art-Making Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives & Christine Gautreaux, MSW, Co-author of Stillpoint: A Self-Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, Time to Breathe & Reclaim Joy.
Art Making in Collaboration with:
Touchstone Center for Craft — 150 wooded acres with fully equipped studios and trails to wander.https://www.touchstonecrafts.org/
The Ruins Project — a stunning outdoor mosaic installation on the Great Allegheny Passage, where art emerges from the bones of a coal mining past.https://www.pbs.org/video/ruins-project-pkcrve/
When: Thursday evening, September 11 through midday Sunday, September 14, 2025
Where: Mountain View Lodge & Touchstone Center for Craft, Farmington, PA
Nearest airports: Pittsburgh International, Arnold Palmer (Latrobe), Morgantown, WV
Registration: Opens July 7th—space is limited to 10 retreatants - $300 holds your space - Deadline August 8th to let us know if you’re coming.
($875 total for lodging, meals & programming)
