RETREAT - Working with grief and deep sorrow- The Withness Retreat
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Working with grief and deep sorrow find Healing and Hope on our three day Withness retreat in Bristol - WITHNESS, a return to life
A Three-Day Retreat for those who carry grief, being held in community and co-creating ritual. Informed and Inspired by Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol - 27, 28 & 29 November 2026
(Further retreat dates - Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol - 12, 13 & 14 March 2027)
Grief asks something particular of us: to acknowledge what has been lost while continuing to inhabit a life changed by that loss.
Some sorrows are clear — the death of someone we love, illness, separation or the ending of a relationship. Others are harder to name: the loss of health, identity, belonging, a hoped-for future, a stage of life, or something important that was needed but never received.
And some sorrow has been carried for a very long time.
Withnessing: Returning to Life is a three-day retreat offering time and space to turn towards grief in the company of others — not to overcome it or leave it behind, but to discover how it might be with us differently.
At its heart is a simple idea:
Human beings were never meant to grieve entirely alone.
Grief is something traditionally held within community. There is wisdom in witnessing, shared experience and ritual. Sorrow can isolate us, yet across cultures and generations people have gathered around those who grieve. The loss could not be removed, but it can be supported.
Contemporary life has lost much of this communal language of mourning. We can find ourselves alone at precisely the moment when we most need to belong.
Withnessing seeks to recover something of that communal experience.
For three days we will create a precious community with room for sorrow, remembrance, reflection, silence, conversation, creativity and companionship — and for the possibility of turning again towards life.
The many faces of grief
The retreat draws inspiration from Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow and his description of the Five Gates of Grief:
grief for what and who we have lost;
the places within us that have not known love;
the sorrows for the world;
what we expected and did not receive;
ancestral grief — the losses and wounds carried through families, communities and generations.
This wider understanding is important because sorrow does not always announce itself as grief.
It can appear as exhaustion, anger, numbness, loneliness, restlessness or disconnection. Sometimes it is simply the feeling that something essential is missing. We may grieve a person, but we may also grieve a childhood, a relationship, health, home, identity, belonging, opportunity, the future we expected or the person we once imagined ourselves becoming.
There can also be sorrow for the world around us: for conflict, division, environmental loss and the suffering of people we may never meet.
Each may need somewhere to be acknowledged.
The soul work of sorrow
We use that language deliberately, but not religiously. By soul work we mean the deeper human work that begins where ordinary explanations are no longer enough: questions of love and loss, meaning and belonging, mortality and impermanence, what matters to us, what we carry, and how we choose to live knowing that the people and things we love cannot be held forever.
Our inner worlds
The retreat will draw gently on contemporary psychological understandings of our inner lives, including Internal Family Systems (IFS).
Loss rarely produces a single emotional response.
Different parts of us may have very different relationships with what has happened. One part may long to remember while another desperately wants to move forward. One may need to speak; another may need silence. We may carry anger alongside love, relief alongside sadness, gratitude alongside regret.
A part of us may even fear that returning fully to life somehow means betraying what or whom has been lost. There is room for all of these responses.
Rather than deciding what grief should look like, we will approach what is present with curiosity, kindness and respect for the ways each of us has learned to carry our own story. Through connections and understanding of all these parts of us we look for a gentler healing.
Withness rather than fixing
Grief is not a problem to be solved. Nor is this retreat about forcing disclosure, catharsis or a particular emotional experience.
Across the three days there will be facilitated group work, reflection, carefully held ritual, poetry and story, creative exercises, time outdoors, conversation, silence and simple human companionship. Nobody will be required to disclose more than they wish.
We will explore what becomes possible when sorrow is witnessed rather than hurried or resisted; when uncertainty and impermanence can be held without demanding immediate resolution; and when a community is willing to remain present to grief rather than turn away from it.
There will also be food, laughter, rest, nature, creativity and connection.
These belong here too.
Because returning to life is part of grieving.
Returning to life
The movement of Withnessing is not towards closure.
Some losses do not close. Nor would we necessarily want them to. The person we loved, the relationship that was precious, the life we expected or the experience that changed us may remain woven into who we are.
The work may instead be to develop a different relationship with what has happened and with the person we have become because of it. Sorrow need not disappear for life to become larger around it.
There can gradually be room alongside grief for curiosity, relationship, creativity, pleasure, beauty and hope. We can honour what has been lost without relinquishing what remains.
Ram Dass described our human journey as “walking each other home.”
We gather in grief. We witness one another in sorrow. And together, we begin the return to life.
Your facilitators
Patricia Stewart is an HCPC-registered Clinical Psychologist, Family and Systemic Therapist and EMDR therapist, with extensive experience of working therapeutically with adults, children, couples and families.
Her systemic perspective brings a particular understanding of how our lives, losses and identities exist within relationships, families and the wider stories to which we belong.
Alongside her psychological practice, Patricia has a longstanding love of poetry, story and storytelling, and of the capacity of words and imagination to give shape to experiences that can sometimes resist ordinary language.
She brings to Withnessing a thoughtful and creative approach to sorrow, meaning-making, transition and renewal — recognising that the stories through which we understand our lives can hold both what has been lost and what may still be possible.
Donna Butland is a Registered Mental Health Nurse, experienced therapist and EMDR practitioner whose career has spanned the NHS and private practice, working with trauma, loss, recovery and the experiences that shape us across a lifetime.
She is also a celebrant and brings a deep appreciation of the place of ritual and ceremony in helping us mark life’s thresholds — beginnings and endings, love and loss, remembrance and change.
Donna’s understanding of ritual sits naturally within Withnessing. Across cultures and generations, people have gathered to give form and expression to grief when words alone are not enough.
Her work recognises the value of creating spaces in which sorrow can be witnessed and honoured, while leaving room for what may emerge alongside it: gratitude, connection, remembrance and a renewed willingness to participate in life.
Philip King is a Registered Mental Health Nurse, integrative therapist and EMDR practitioner, trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), with more than 35 years’ experience in mental health and psychological care.
His work is particularly informed by trauma, attachment, neuroscience and the ways grief and sorrow can become carried in our relationships, our bodies and our inner worlds. He works relationally and integratively, with a longstanding interest in how we make meaning from the experiences that change us.
Philip also works therapeutically outdoors and with horses and has a deep affinity with the natural world as a place in which we can encounter stillness, uncertainty, change and renewal.
For all three of us, Withnessing is rooted in a simple idea: we do not have to resolve our grief in order to live fully. We can honour what has been lost, learn to carry what matters, and find our way back into relationship with the life that remains.
What unites us
Patricia, Donna and Philip have been friends, colleagues and co-creators for more than thirty years.
Across those years we have shared a belief in the importance of relationship, presence and what happens when another person is willing simply to remain alongside us in the difficult places.
Withnessing is an invitation to create a community for three days in which grief can be spoken, embodied, remembered and witnessed — and sometimes simply sat beside.
A place to honour what has been lost without losing sight of beauty, humour, relationship and hope; to allow ourselves to be accompanied in our sorrow; and from there to begin the quiet movement of returning to life.
What to expect
The three days will combine facilitated group experiences with quieter periods of reflection and rest.
There will be opportunities for:
shared reflection and conversation;
poetry, story and creative expression;
simple, carefully facilitated ritual;
exploration of the Five Gates of Grief;
gentle psychological exploration informed by IFS;
time in nature and outdoors;
silence and individual reflection;
remembering and honouring;
connection with the community that forms over the three days.
Participation is always invitational. There is no expectation that you tell your story publicly or disclose anything you would prefer to hold privately.
This is a retreat rather than therapy. The emphasis is on creating a thoughtful, well-held guided community in which each person can find their own way of engaging with the experience.
Who is it for?
Withnessing is for adults drawn to spend time exploring grief, sorrow and the question of how we continue living after life has changed.
You do not need to have experienced a recent bereavement. You may be grieving a person, a relationship, health, identity, belonging, a stage of life, a future that did not happen, something you never received, or something that remains difficult to name.
The retreat may also particularly resonate with therapists, counsellors, psychologists, healthcare professionals, palliative-care practitioners and others whose work regularly brings them alongside sorrow and loss.
No particular spiritual or religious belief is assumed or required. Soul work, as we understand it here, belongs simply to being human.
What matters is a willingness to come with some openness — to yourself, to others and to whatever may emerge during our three days together.
The setting
Withnessing: Returning to Life will take place over three days at the Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol, in a peaceful setting with gardens and outdoor space.
Lunch and refreshments are included each day.
Comfortable, reasonably priced accommodation is available separately through the Penny Brohn Centre for those who would like to stay, allowing the retreat to be experienced residentially while also making it possible for those living locally to attend from home.
Cost
£595 per person *
The fee includes the complete three-day facilitated retreat programme, lunch and refreshments.
We recognise that cost can prevent people from accessing experiences such as this. Three half-price supported places are therefore available for people using Penny Brohn’s services or their supporters. Contact us for more details
Accommodation is booked separately.
⸻
WITHNESSING
Returning to Life
Three days to make room for sorrow, honour what has been lost, and return together towards life.
Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol
£595 including lunch and refreshments
Three half-price supported places available
Further information and booking through Anam Cara Therapy:
anamcaratherapy.org.uk
Dates are correct for 2026. 2027 fees subject to change
Our bespoke retreats for counsellors, therapists, coaches, and all mental health professionals
A Three-Day Retreat for those who carry grief, being held in community and co-creating ritual. Informed and Inspired by Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol - 27, 28 & 29 November 2026
(Further retreat dates - Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol - 12, 13 & 14 March 2027)
Grief asks something particular of us: to acknowledge what has been lost while continuing to inhabit a life changed by that loss.
Some sorrows are clear — the death of someone we love, illness, separation or the ending of a relationship. Others are harder to name: the loss of health, identity, belonging, a hoped-for future, a stage of life, or something important that was needed but never received.
And some sorrow has been carried for a very long time.
Withnessing: Returning to Life is a three-day retreat offering time and space to turn towards grief in the company of others — not to overcome it or leave it behind, but to discover how it might be with us differently.
At its heart is a simple idea:
Human beings were never meant to grieve entirely alone.
Grief is something traditionally held within community. There is wisdom in witnessing, shared experience and ritual. Sorrow can isolate us, yet across cultures and generations people have gathered around those who grieve. The loss could not be removed, but it can be supported.
Contemporary life has lost much of this communal language of mourning. We can find ourselves alone at precisely the moment when we most need to belong.
Withnessing seeks to recover something of that communal experience.
For three days we will create a precious community with room for sorrow, remembrance, reflection, silence, conversation, creativity and companionship — and for the possibility of turning again towards life.
The many faces of grief
The retreat draws inspiration from Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow and his description of the Five Gates of Grief:
grief for what and who we have lost;
the places within us that have not known love;
the sorrows for the world;
what we expected and did not receive;
ancestral grief — the losses and wounds carried through families, communities and generations.
This wider understanding is important because sorrow does not always announce itself as grief.
It can appear as exhaustion, anger, numbness, loneliness, restlessness or disconnection. Sometimes it is simply the feeling that something essential is missing. We may grieve a person, but we may also grieve a childhood, a relationship, health, home, identity, belonging, opportunity, the future we expected or the person we once imagined ourselves becoming.
There can also be sorrow for the world around us: for conflict, division, environmental loss and the suffering of people we may never meet.
Each may need somewhere to be acknowledged.
The soul work of sorrow
We use that language deliberately, but not religiously. By soul work we mean the deeper human work that begins where ordinary explanations are no longer enough: questions of love and loss, meaning and belonging, mortality and impermanence, what matters to us, what we carry, and how we choose to live knowing that the people and things we love cannot be held forever.
Our inner worlds
The retreat will draw gently on contemporary psychological understandings of our inner lives, including Internal Family Systems (IFS).
Loss rarely produces a single emotional response.
Different parts of us may have very different relationships with what has happened. One part may long to remember while another desperately wants to move forward. One may need to speak; another may need silence. We may carry anger alongside love, relief alongside sadness, gratitude alongside regret.
A part of us may even fear that returning fully to life somehow means betraying what or whom has been lost. There is room for all of these responses.
Rather than deciding what grief should look like, we will approach what is present with curiosity, kindness and respect for the ways each of us has learned to carry our own story. Through connections and understanding of all these parts of us we look for a gentler healing.
Withness rather than fixing
Grief is not a problem to be solved. Nor is this retreat about forcing disclosure, catharsis or a particular emotional experience.
Across the three days there will be facilitated group work, reflection, carefully held ritual, poetry and story, creative exercises, time outdoors, conversation, silence and simple human companionship. Nobody will be required to disclose more than they wish.
We will explore what becomes possible when sorrow is witnessed rather than hurried or resisted; when uncertainty and impermanence can be held without demanding immediate resolution; and when a community is willing to remain present to grief rather than turn away from it.
There will also be food, laughter, rest, nature, creativity and connection.
These belong here too.
Because returning to life is part of grieving.
Returning to life
The movement of Withnessing is not towards closure.
Some losses do not close. Nor would we necessarily want them to. The person we loved, the relationship that was precious, the life we expected or the experience that changed us may remain woven into who we are.
The work may instead be to develop a different relationship with what has happened and with the person we have become because of it. Sorrow need not disappear for life to become larger around it.
There can gradually be room alongside grief for curiosity, relationship, creativity, pleasure, beauty and hope. We can honour what has been lost without relinquishing what remains.
Ram Dass described our human journey as “walking each other home.”
We gather in grief. We witness one another in sorrow. And together, we begin the return to life.
Your facilitators
Patricia Stewart is an HCPC-registered Clinical Psychologist, Family and Systemic Therapist and EMDR therapist, with extensive experience of working therapeutically with adults, children, couples and families.
Her systemic perspective brings a particular understanding of how our lives, losses and identities exist within relationships, families and the wider stories to which we belong.
Alongside her psychological practice, Patricia has a longstanding love of poetry, story and storytelling, and of the capacity of words and imagination to give shape to experiences that can sometimes resist ordinary language.
She brings to Withnessing a thoughtful and creative approach to sorrow, meaning-making, transition and renewal — recognising that the stories through which we understand our lives can hold both what has been lost and what may still be possible.
Donna Butland is a Registered Mental Health Nurse, experienced therapist and EMDR practitioner whose career has spanned the NHS and private practice, working with trauma, loss, recovery and the experiences that shape us across a lifetime.
She is also a celebrant and brings a deep appreciation of the place of ritual and ceremony in helping us mark life’s thresholds — beginnings and endings, love and loss, remembrance and change.
Donna’s understanding of ritual sits naturally within Withnessing. Across cultures and generations, people have gathered to give form and expression to grief when words alone are not enough.
Her work recognises the value of creating spaces in which sorrow can be witnessed and honoured, while leaving room for what may emerge alongside it: gratitude, connection, remembrance and a renewed willingness to participate in life.
Philip King is a Registered Mental Health Nurse, integrative therapist and EMDR practitioner, trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), with more than 35 years’ experience in mental health and psychological care.
His work is particularly informed by trauma, attachment, neuroscience and the ways grief and sorrow can become carried in our relationships, our bodies and our inner worlds. He works relationally and integratively, with a longstanding interest in how we make meaning from the experiences that change us.
Philip also works therapeutically outdoors and with horses and has a deep affinity with the natural world as a place in which we can encounter stillness, uncertainty, change and renewal.
For all three of us, Withnessing is rooted in a simple idea: we do not have to resolve our grief in order to live fully. We can honour what has been lost, learn to carry what matters, and find our way back into relationship with the life that remains.
What unites us
Patricia, Donna and Philip have been friends, colleagues and co-creators for more than thirty years.
Across those years we have shared a belief in the importance of relationship, presence and what happens when another person is willing simply to remain alongside us in the difficult places.
Withnessing is an invitation to create a community for three days in which grief can be spoken, embodied, remembered and witnessed — and sometimes simply sat beside.
A place to honour what has been lost without losing sight of beauty, humour, relationship and hope; to allow ourselves to be accompanied in our sorrow; and from there to begin the quiet movement of returning to life.
What to expect
The three days will combine facilitated group experiences with quieter periods of reflection and rest.
There will be opportunities for:
shared reflection and conversation;
poetry, story and creative expression;
simple, carefully facilitated ritual;
exploration of the Five Gates of Grief;
gentle psychological exploration informed by IFS;
time in nature and outdoors;
silence and individual reflection;
remembering and honouring;
connection with the community that forms over the three days.
Participation is always invitational. There is no expectation that you tell your story publicly or disclose anything you would prefer to hold privately.
This is a retreat rather than therapy. The emphasis is on creating a thoughtful, well-held guided community in which each person can find their own way of engaging with the experience.
Who is it for?
Withnessing is for adults drawn to spend time exploring grief, sorrow and the question of how we continue living after life has changed.
You do not need to have experienced a recent bereavement. You may be grieving a person, a relationship, health, identity, belonging, a stage of life, a future that did not happen, something you never received, or something that remains difficult to name.
The retreat may also particularly resonate with therapists, counsellors, psychologists, healthcare professionals, palliative-care practitioners and others whose work regularly brings them alongside sorrow and loss.
No particular spiritual or religious belief is assumed or required. Soul work, as we understand it here, belongs simply to being human.
What matters is a willingness to come with some openness — to yourself, to others and to whatever may emerge during our three days together.
The setting
Withnessing: Returning to Life will take place over three days at the Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol, in a peaceful setting with gardens and outdoor space.
Lunch and refreshments are included each day.
Comfortable, reasonably priced accommodation is available separately through the Penny Brohn Centre for those who would like to stay, allowing the retreat to be experienced residentially while also making it possible for those living locally to attend from home.
Cost
£595 per person *
The fee includes the complete three-day facilitated retreat programme, lunch and refreshments.
We recognise that cost can prevent people from accessing experiences such as this. Three half-price supported places are therefore available for people using Penny Brohn’s services or their supporters. Contact us for more details
Accommodation is booked separately.
⸻
WITHNESSING
Returning to Life
Three days to make room for sorrow, honour what has been lost, and return together towards life.
Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol
£595 including lunch and refreshments
Three half-price supported places available
Further information and booking through Anam Cara Therapy:
anamcaratherapy.org.uk
Dates are correct for 2026. 2027 fees subject to change
Our bespoke retreats for counsellors, therapists, coaches, and all mental health professionals
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Penny Brohn Centre, Bristol, United Kingdom
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