Grief retreats offer physical and emotional space to heal

Grief retreats help people reconcile with loss at their own pace and tend to their mental health in spaces free of judgement

- Pooja Singh

It's a hazy Sunday morning. Disha Wadhwani is in her kitchen, baking a sugarless banana cake. It should be ready in the next 20 minutes—6.30am on the dot. Once done, she cuts two big slices, packs them in a box, and leaves her house. A 2km walk later, she arrives at her destination: a green bench in the middle of a park in a Gurugram neighbourhood. She sits and eats a cake slice while watching people on their morning walk.

"The second piece is for my Shibu," says Wadhwani, 39, an architect and a mother of two. Shibu, a street dog turned "youngest son" of the Wadhwani family, died at the age of 5 in September 2023, two months after Wadhwani's grandmother succumbed to cancer. "We were long prepared for dadi (grandmother); Shibu just didn't wake up one morning," says Wadhwani.

For Wadhwani and Shibu, 7am was set for daily morning walks. Sundays were fixed as Banana Cake Day. Both would sit together on the green bench, feasting on their cake slices while watching the world go by. "Those 15-20 minutes used to be our moment."

A year ago Wadhwani decided to continue the Sunday ritual, in memory of Shibu. "After he and dadi passed away, I became a person I didn't even recognise," she recalls. "I was working 18 hours a day, didn't take a single day off from work, and hardly spoke to anyone. Once, I snapped at someone in a restaurant for laughing too loudly; I couldn't stand seeing someone so happy. I knew I was grieving but didn't know how to show it."

Last year, following a friend's suggestion, she started searching online for wellness retreats and came across "grief retreats". She picked one surrounded by deodars and snow-capped mountains in Himachal Pradesh. "Those three weeks (at the retreat) didn't lessen the pain, but the environment helped give some structure to my grief. Does that make sense?" She started to understand how she was grieving, the patterns—like working too much, not interacting with others, getting angry easily.