Finding Yourself After Loss Retreat
Learning to Love & Care for Yourself
FALL 2025, September 21-25, 2025 | Whispertree Retreat center
Boonville (Mendocino County), Northern California
We are honored and excited to host the Return to Zero California Women's Retreat at the beautiful Whispertree in Northern California. This will be a transformative journey over 5 days / 4 nights in Fall 2025.
Learning to Love and Care for Yourself After Loss is a nurturing retreat designed specifically for mothers who have experienced the heartache of pregnancy and infant Loss. This retreat offers a warm, supportive environment where participants can learn to truly love and care for themselves amidst their unique journeys of healing.
This retreat is ideal for mothers who are further along in their loss journey and wish to cultivate a deeper relationship with their body, mind, and heart. It is also perfect for those struggling to trust and care for their bodies following their loss experiences, and for anyone sensing the need for some tender loving care but unsure of how to begin. Participants will find valuable guidance in integrating movement, mindfulness, and ritual into their daily lives.
The retreat focuses on teaching somatic tools and techniques to support nervous system health, emotional regulation, and embodied self-compassion. Attendees will have the opportunity to reconnect with their sense of connection, vitality, and purpose, fostering an environment of healing and self-discovery. Whether you are looking to nurture your body, mind, and heart, or seeking a community of understanding and support, this retreat offers a compassionate space for growth and renewal.
*It is highly recommended, but not required, to be at least one year out from your loss and have participated in either a RTZ HOPE virtual support group or in-person retreat.
While your life will never be the same following loss, it is possible to return to wholeness. You don’t need to do this work in isolation.
This retreat is a carefully cultivated experience using a trauma-informed and resilience-oriented approach to guide you in a process of self-reflection, compassion, integration, and embodied action.
Please see our Testimonials and Vision statement to hear about previous retreats we have hosted. We do hope that you will join us.
For questions, email Betsy Winter.
There are 21 total spaces available for this retreat. Register early to reserve your spot.
Retreat Vision
Designed for those seeking to nurture a profound connection with their body, mind, and heart, this experience offers solace and healing. Whether struggling to rebuild trust and care for their bodies post-loss or simply yearning for self-kindness, participants will discover the power of movement, mindfulness, and ritual to guide them along their path to renewal and self-discovery. Join us and embrace the opportunity to cultivate a more profound understanding and appreciation for yourself.
Nurture Yourself
Our lives are always busy. When we have experienced losses on the journey to parenthood, it is hard to find time and space to tend to ourselves. Therefore, we imagined this retreat as a break from all of that—a chance to practice unconditional love for yourself. This is a gift you are giving yourself, to honor you, your loss experience, and your journey. Come and be taken care of. Let yourself rest. Nurture your body and spirit.
Cultivate Compassion
During our time together, you will be taught strategies for practicing self-compassionate mindfulness to effectively manage difficult emotions and challenges. By learning to approach moments of pain or sorrow with kindness and resilience, you will develop the ability to navigate the complexities of life after loss with grace. It is our aim to help you prioritize your own needs for healing and self-care, fostering a sense of kindness, understanding, and compassion towards yourself throughout this difficult yet transformative journey.
Find Community
It is an essential part of the grieving process that you do not feel alone or isolated. You will have the opportunity to make connections in a brave and sacred environment with others who have been through a similar experience—whether it be infertility and recurrent loss, miscarriage, stillbirth, termination for medical reasons, infant death, or toddler death. This is a time for you to take off the mask you wear every day and be your true self. You will form friendships that will support you and your journey long after the retreat is over.
Location & Travel
Accommodations & pricing
what to expect
FAQ
Our goal is to offer unconditional support for all parents who have experience losses on the journey to parenthood, no matter what their age, situation, or stage of their grief journey.
If you have other questions that have not been answered here please email us.
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Yes. We have had women who are pregnant attend the previous retreats. Pregnancy after loss can be filled with anxiety, and we hope that you can connect with others at the retreat who have walked this part of the journey and can share their experiences with you.
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Yes. Although the majority of the people attending the retreat have experienced the death of a child during or shortly after pregnancy, we know that grief of a young child is similarly heartbreaking.
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Yes. We know that if you have terminated a pregnancy, it was the hardest, most painful decision of your life. You are grieving the death of your baby.
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No. We have had people attend the retreat whose loss was as recent as 3 weeks and as long ago as 35 years.
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No. The pain from the pregnancy and infant loss never goes away. If it has been a long time since your loss but you feel like it's the right moment to dedicate special time to your healing, please join us.
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Our goal is to create a space for people of all faiths to process their grief. We do not bring a specific religion into the retreat curriculum, however all participates are free to include their belief system in their own experience. There will be elements of spirituality available in connecting with your self and your loss experience, but it is up to each participant on how they do this.
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Unfortunately, this is an adults-only retreat.
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Unfortunately, at this time the retreats are currently for women only.
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If you have any special requests, please write them in the "Additional Comments" section of the registration page. We will try our hardest to meet your expectations but cannot make any guarantees.
Meet the Facilitators
Betsy Winter is a certified mind body coach, perinatal mental health advocate, nia black belt, and somatic practitioner with 20 years non-profit executive experience. She is trained to help individuals navigate trauma, grief, and attachment injuries using a range of somatic and therapeutic modalities. She specializes in guiding individuals with complex narratives through their path to healing by helping them tend to their sorrows, shift relational hurts, and address past traumas with care. Betsy honors her late daughter, Eliza, whose short life in 2015 inspired her to help others navigate life’s challenges and embrace life’s gifts through mind, body, soul. She has been providing holistic support to bereaved parents through Return To Zero: HOPE since 2018.
Betsy’s heart-centered, inclusive, and trauma-informed approach to care is central to her work as the Director of Community Support. Her hope is to empower parents to experience genuine connection, emotional healing, and to gain a deeper sense of meaning, authenticity, and wholeness through community and the embodied experience of grief and love.
Betsy lives in Olympia, WA with her husband and two living children, Bennett and Wren. To learn more please visit her website.
Kiley Hanish is dedicated to helping people through transformational growth and healing after loss. After suffering the stillbirth and loss of her first child Norbert, Kiley co-created the Emmy-nominated film Return to Zero to break the silence and stigma around pregnancy and infant loss for parents around the world. The film led to her non-profit organization Return to Zero: HOPE, where she advocates for and guides bereaved families in reclaiming their purpose, meaning, and healing after their tragic loss.
As an occupational therapist and speaker, she is widely recognized as a thought leader at the intersection of mental health and the loss during the perinatal period.