Spark of Life

Maybe Joleisa

Two weeks ago I attended a grief "recovery" retreat through an organization called Spark of Life. I learned of this foundation through my church. It was spiritual and open to people of any (or no) faith along with any type of loss (children, parents, widows, divorcees, etc...) While it was called a retreat and held at a lovely resort, a lot of heavy grief work was done over those 4 days. Each retreat usually has about 16 people, but ours was a bit larger.

Thursday: We arrived, met for dinner and then went to a private conference room and went around the room and told our stories and what brought us there. When we checked in we got a notebook of materials and 2 books: Tear Soup and The Grief Recovery Handbook.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Aside from eating breakfast/lunch/dinner (great food!), we headed to the conference room for discussions; broke into small groups to go over our "homework" assignments; and would listen to stories.

Trust me, it was way more exciting than my brief description. Our twin boys were born & passed away on 1/26/14 and I attended the retreat February 20-23. I was angry at God (still am at times) and actually was hoping for more churchy-religious type healing. It wasn't a "church retreat" at all, so don't let that scare you off if that is not your thing....they are very welcoming. The foundation got started back in 2007 after the founders' son and DIL delivered a stillborn child. The leaders are all trained in grief recovery and just the warmest most wonderful people ever for making this their mission in life. Over 400 people have gone through their retreats so far.

The retreat (lodging, food, materials) are of no cost to you--you just have to get yourself there. Please let me know if you have any questions...

www.sparkoflife.org

schulme2

Thank you for sharing! Sounds like a wonderful program!

ikrystal

Yes, this is great.   Thank you so much for sharing the resource.