
Should You Try A Crying Retreat? We Unpack The Newest Quiet Travel Trend
“When people care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.” – Langston Hughes
Breathwork retreats, eroticism retreats, silent retreats, cryotherapy retreats, and even prison retreats: An online search will instantly provide a multitude of retreat options for a variety of dynamic interests, emotional states, and facets of the human condition. Given these possibilities, it makes perfect sense that another type of retreat — a place where one can temporarily withdraw from everyday obligations — might involve tears.
“An online search will instantly provide a multitude of retreat options for a variety of dynamic interests, emotional states, and facets of the human condition.”
While these types of bespoke retreats existed before the pandemic, after 2021 is when this subset of quiet and slow travel emerged, promoting an abundance of personalized, in-person experiences. Some of these experiences, of course, promoted yoga or cooking or sex…some, a cathartic cry. Colloquially known as “crying retreats,” (though practitioners prefer the term “grief” or “healing” retreats) these short yet deeply profound sessions are places to commune, connect, unwind and, as promised, cry. Centered around a communal grief process often rooted in indigenous healing practices, crying retreats are held in natural settings, and employ a somatic and cooperative approach to working through different scopes of grief, sadness, emotional woundedness, and repression.
During the retreat, guests are encouraged to process long latent emotions and ideologies around sadness, and explore how their emotions connect to different parts of their day-to-day. “We are holding the deepest space for the actual grief process,” said Tessa Ridley, RMT and President of the Sunrise Grief Retreat Society. “Where you actually get to confront the deeper emotions and the things you’re struggling with, but are also able to tell your story in a different way.”
“During the retreat, guests are encouraged to process long latent emotions and ideologies around sadness, and explore how their emotions connect to different parts of their day-to-day.”
Anywhere from a few days to a week in length, crying retreats occur all over the world, creating beautiful backdrops for emotional excavation. They offer curated, trauma-informed experiences for people from all backgrounds, locations, and walks of life; former attendee and current facilitator John Terrell, MA, calls them “an emergency break off of our lives to heal our feelings.” Because of their locations, offerings, and length, the price of the retreat can vary greatly, but begins at around $700 per person and maxes out at around $6,000.
Most crying retreats begin with a professional facilitator assessing an attendee’s goals for the retreat. Goals can include something as simple as “becoming comfortable with a sad memory” to something more complex, like “accepting the death of my spouse.” Secondly — despite differing goals, backgrounds, payments, and more — each attendee must accept and acknowledge exactly where they are, emotionally. This is a difficult task, but an important one. “(The retreats are) specifically curated for people who are willing to begin to acknowledge the struggle that they have in their grief experience,” said Ridley. “A lot of the people that are coming are struggling so much that it’s impacting their life.” This acknowledgment is important so that attendees will waste no time, taking full advantage of the retreat and its potential for healing. After attendees get settled in their living spaces, eat, and are introduced to fellow participants…the work begins.
“Each attendee must accept and acknowledge exactly where they are, emotionally.”
A day at a crying retreat is always extremely structured but varies from establishment to establishment. A common experience might be a morning meditation, an organic breakfast, yoga, group therapy, lunch, a physical activity, quiet time, a somatic massage, dinner, and then storytelling around a fire. Other activities, according to facilitators, might include camping, archery, calisthenics, group massage, breathwork, journaling, ropes courses, or equine therapy. During these activities, the safety and comfort of all attendees is crucial. Retreat facilitator Heather Moyer explains that much of a crying retreat is about trust, community, and learning — all of which lead to the healing itself. “Together we share our sacred grief stories in a safe environment, learn practices for staying with all the emotions that come with loss of any kind, techniques for remembering with more love than pain, how to release any burdens of guilt, and so much more.”
“Together we share our sacred grief stories in a safe environment, learn practices for staying with all the emotions that come with loss of any kind.”
– Heather Moyer, grief retreat facilitator
While many of these activities might seem familiar — like something one might participate in at a sleepaway camp or work retreat — the offerings at a crying retreat are specifically designed to promote a strengthened connection between one’s body and one’s emotions. Every activity and interaction promotes a safe space for the connection between “doing” and “feeling,” so participating in an activity naturally results in an emotional response.“It’s a multi-dimensional thing,” Ridley says. “It just really forces you to come back into your being and in your body and to really feel your life.”
“The offerings at a crying retreat are specifically designed to promote a strengthened connection between one’s body and one’s emotions.”
Another unique feature of a crying retreat is its emphasis on indigenous traditions. Depending on the organization, events at crying retreats are designed to connect to nature and other people in a consciously non-Western way, creating new pathways and modes of emoting and healing that aren’t taught in modern institutional systems. This often looks like laying hands on one another, communal massage, storytelling, and ceremony around water or fire. At many retreats, these native practices aren’t explicit but subtly woven into the fabric of the retreat. “It’s a way to heal through our ancestry and to heal our disconnection from the earth and our bodies,” Ridley says. “We give honor to all the indigenous cultures that we come from, and use some of their medicine to help heal each other. Even if we don’t know that that’s what we’re doing, that’s what we’re doing.”
These retreats also tend to go deeper than traditional Western therapies and are far more intense. Often, those who have tried therapy will turn to a crying retreat because they don’t know where else to go. Terrell can attest to this in his own experience: After a painful end to his marriage, he spent copious amounts of time and money in therapy trying to process his uncoupling. At a certain point, he says, his therapeutic practice hit a wall. Terrell’s own therapist suggested he try a retreat.
“Those who have tried therapy will turn to a crying retreat because they don’t know where else to go.”
“That really did the trick for me. I went to this one retreat, and it was very significant because it got below the level of thought to where I was really stuck, which was in my body, in my feelings…they talk about gut feelings, you know, the way down in the guts.” The retreat challenged Terrell to embrace a new mode of feeling and emotional processing, which became life-changing.
The result of attending a crying retreat can be profound, and has allowed people a new emotional outlook and to access vulnerability in a kinder and gentler way. Ridley calls these resources “tools and skills for compassionate being.” For Terrell, this meant finally being able to make peace with his divorce, find access to new emotional spaces, and better understand his place in the world. “People spend ten years in therapy thinking that’s the way to go,” Terrell said. “But really, one retreat can change people’s lives.”
Crying retreats are only getting more popular for those seeking these differing modes of emotional expression and healing. There are varied theories as to why this is, but many believe the need to cry now goes back generations; back to old wounds, familial trauma, and repressed ways of being. The more crying and emotions generally have been deprioritized over time, the more we see a need to work intensely through these states. Crying “is part of the human evolutionary process, part of our evolutionary process of humans,” Ridley explains. “There is intergenerational work to be done, and we’re the generation that seems to say ‘I have to do something about this now,’ like, it’s just almost coming to a head.”
“The more crying and emotions generally have been deprioritized over time, the more we see a need to work intensely through these states.”
Moyer also believes the current state of isolation — the lack of human touch, geographical community, and increased reliance on technology — also contributes to our need for crying retreats.“This lonely disconnect,” she says, “leaves people in grief desperate, desperate for connection, desperate to be with people who understand exactly what they’re going through.”
But perhaps the most immediate need for crying retreats comes from our overall cultural context. Through a post-pandemic world filled with political unknowns, natural disasters, and the din of one’s ever-present iPhone, people crave transformative, in-person experiences that can only occur away from the noise of everyday life — experiences that embody simplicity and groundedness, both literally and emotionally. A return to nature, a return to the self, a return to ancestral values — all of these things create the tenets of a successful crying retreat. The movements of quiet travel and simple living echo the need to retreat, and to cry, almost, for one’s life.
“A return to nature, a return to the self, a return to ancestral values — all of these things create the tenets of a successful crying retreat.”
Word is quickly spreading about crying retreats, both online and through personal recommendations, which in and of itself is a harbinger of intergenerational healing and the good that these retreats can do. Still, one question remains: Should you try it?
Most everyone could benefit from this type of retreat, as they appear to serve a crucial and timely therapeutic service that could, according to facilitators, save a life and heal generations of pain. But, they are also not for the faint of heart: These retreats call in an intensity not often experienced in our everyday lives.
Even if you don’t attend a crying retreat, the need to explore the work that happens there is crucial to one’s well-being. As Ridley says, “We owe it to ourselves to explore ourselves.” How you collect on that emotional debt — well, that’s entirely up to you.
Rebecca Leib is a writer, podcaster, and comedian who’s appeared in the AV Club, Bustle, and Marie Clare. Her writing is in VICE, Reductress, LAist, Los Angelino, LA WEEKLY, Art Etc. and on NatGeo, NBC + NBC Digital, Disney, Investigation Discovery, and CBS. Most recently, she worked as a writer/producer on National Geographics’ “Brain Games” reboot with Keegan Michael Key. Check out her comedy/history podcast, “Ghost Town,” and find her on Instagram and X at @RebeccaLeib.