• Creative workshops
• Community Ritual
• Social time with people who “just get it”
• BIPOC affinity group space
• LGBTQ+ affinity group space… and much more

Friday, January 6 – Sunday, January 8

Sliding Scale: $250 – $599 

The retreat fee per person for the weekend is a sliding scale, from $250 – $599, with limited spots available at scholarship rates starting at $150. Registration includes participation in the full weekend program, overnight accommodations, and catered meals with vegetarian, gluten free, and vegan options available.

We are offering this retreat on a sliding scale to better facilitate a diversity of folks attending. Scholarship Rate tickets ($150) are available for participants with low income and/or limited access to wealth. Please select the highest ticket cost you can afford, so that others who would not be able to attend are able to do so. If you can afford the base rate or higher for the retreat, please select that option. If the base rate or higher is not feasible for you, please do select our scholarship options. BIPOC participants are also invited to apply for subsidized rates.

Select..

• $599 (Sustainer)
• $499 (Your Ticker + Someone Else’s)
• $399 (Your Ticket + Contribution to Someone Else’s)
• $250 (Standard Rate)
• $150 (Limited Scholarship Rate)

Interested participants are encouraged to apply early! Based on enthusiastic interest from our community, we expect this program to fill up fast. We will be prioritizing early applications, as well as applications from BIPOC. Apply here!

All participants will be housed in our new retreat lodge, located on the Urban Adamah farm. Rooms are shared and offer a mix of bunk bed and single bed accommodations. If you have any access needs around your overnight stay, would like to share a room with someone else who is applying, and/or prefer to be in a single-gendered room, please note those details on your application. All-gender, ADA accessible bathrooms and showers are available onsite and are equipped with scent-free soaps.

Noah Cochran found their way to the grief world following the loss of both of their parents in their teenage years. Now trained as a licensed clinical social worker and working as a therapist at Smith College, Noah believes in the healing power of relationships and community. They also teamed up with Chloe and a handful of other brilliant organizers to start the Covid Grief Network, an organization offering free grief support to young adults who’ve lost someone to Covid-19. Noah lives in Western Massachusetts with many books and plants.

Patrice Thrower is a native of Oakland, CA and has served in many ministries throughout the Bay Area. She is a graduate of the UCSF Clinical Pastoral Education program and currently serves as an On Call Chaplain there. She graduated from SUM Bible College and Theological Seminary in Oakland, CA with a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies with a focus on Pastoral Studies. In May 2018 she graduated from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with her Masters of Divinity with a focus of Pastoral Care. She has a deep passion for counseling and learning in diverse settings which she uses daily in her retail management role. Patrice enjoys spending time with her family, especially her two young nephews.

Chloe Zelkha is thrilled to be facilitating this retreat again. After her dad died suddenly in 2017, she felt called to grief work and completed a chaplaincy residency at UCSF Mission Bay Hospital (alongside Patrice!), where she offered emotional support to those who were ill and dying. Her belief in the transformative power of group experiences helped motivate her (alongside Noah!) to start the Covid Grief Network. She is currently studying towards rabbinic ordination in Philadelphia.

This event will be mostly indoors in well ventilated spaces. Participants are required to be fully vaccinated and boosted. Proof of a negative rapid (antigen) COVID test will be required to enter on the day of the event. Final COVID protocols will be emailed to registered participants three weeks before the retreat and updated here on our website.

Urban Adamah’s campus is fully compliant with ADA guidelines. All program spaces and agricultural production facilities are wheelchair accessible. Most paths on the site, except those that are in growing fields, are made of decomposed granite (DG) which supports wheelchairs well except when there is heavy rain. We do sometimes have construction projects taking place which temporarily limit accessibility. Details regarding what is currently accessible can be found here. We welcome suggestions about how we might make our site and programs more universally accessible.

Parking in our lot is very limited. If you do not need accessible parking, please consider carpooling with friends, arriving by ride share, bike, or taking public transportation! The parking lot will be locked and secured for the duration of the weekend and there will be limited ins and outs.

Please include any specific questions or requests on your application.

Photo Disclaimer:

* Urban Adamah and persons designated by Urban Adamah may photograph in-person programs or record/screenshot virtual programs. These recordings or photos may be used by Urban Adamah, at its discretion, for marketing and/or development purposes. If you prefer that your image not be used in this way, please let us know at events@urbanadamah.org.

Why folks in their 20’s and 30’s? Or: I’m 40, can I come?
Losing someone you love can leave a profound impact at any age. And in this death-denying culture of ours, all of us struggle to find spaces where we can talk openly about that experience. We’ve found, though, that there’s a unique kind of isolation that comes when you are among the first in your peer group to lose a parent, sibling, partner, or close friend. This is also an age group that is typically underserved by the traditional grief community — too old for youth grief support and too young for traditional grief support groups where attendees are often older. For this retreat, we’re focusing on folks in their 20’s and 30’s. But check below for resources that might be of interest to you.

What about other types of loss?
Losing anyone in your life can be unspeakably hard, and the specificity of this retreat doesn’t mean to take away from that truth. However, due to limited resources and capacity, at this moment we are focusing on serving folks who’ve experienced a few specific types of loss. (And! Loss takes many forms beyond physical loss – break ups, divorces, life-altering illnesses and accidents, incarceration, family separation, deportation, etc). For now we’re focused on a specific type of loss for a specific crowd, so that we can do that really well.

Is there a commuter option? Can I sleep offsite?
Sorry, no. Every retreat participant will be assigned a bed onsite. There’s a special magic that happens when folks spend the full weekend together in the same space (and, we’ll add, a special magic to sleeping on an urban farm!), and minimizing folks’ comings and goings on and off site is also important for us staying as covid-safe as possible for the weekend.

I can only make it for part of the retreat. Can I still come?
In order to create the kind of intentional community that allows retreat participants to feel safe and go deep with one another, attendance at the entire retreat is required for participation. We will begin at 5:30pm on Friday and end at 1:00 pm on Sunday. And, if you have a conflict that you absolutely cannot change, please note that in your application.

Is this a therapeutic retreat, or a formal grief group?
Nope. This retreat is created for and by peers, and is not, in the traditional sense at least, therapeutic. We do not have the expertise to provide professional therapy or support, and, with few exceptions, all facilitators are also participants (and all participants will play an active role in holding space for each other). For us, we have found that real life experience can be the best form of expertise. And when everyone has only their own story to go on, it means we are all equally ‘expert’: we are less prone to advice-giving, or attempts to ‘fix’ something, recognizing that what most of us are looking for is a chance to hear and be heard, and to identify with others who have been there. That said, this retreat should be a complement to, and not a replacement for, the other places you can go to see a professional.

What other resources do you recommend for navigating life after loss?
Some things we are fans of:

• Modern Loss
• Refuge in Grief