RETREAT IN THE LAUREL HIGHLANDS AREA
OF WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
The Art of Grieving:
InterPlay Expressive Arts and Art-Making Retreat
May 28 – 31, 2026
Laurelville Retreat Center
REGISTER TODAY | Limited to 15 People
Let’s make art out of what has happened in our lives!
A Note From Sheila
So much has happened in our individual and collective lives since I first began writing about grief and the ways that the arts can help us process and transform ourselves and our lives through them.
I’d love for you to have the opportunity to step away for a few days into a beautiful setting and community of like minded folks, to playfully focus on your own creativity and what can come from all that has happened.
Perhaps there is someone you would like to bring with you, in person, or in keepsakes and photos that bring them to mind.
What This Retreat is About?
The Art of Grieving InterPlay Expressive Arts and Art-Making Retreat is a unique gathering designed to help you explore creativity as a path through grief and life transitions.
Together, we’ll create a supportive circle where we can honor our heartbreaks, our joys, and all that life has handed us. Using InterPlay, an improvisational approach to storytelling, movement, and voice, alongside hands-on art-making, we will discover the spiral path of growth and insight that a transformed grief bestows.
What Will We Do?
Over four days in this nurturing mountain setting, we will:
- Engage in InterPlay practices, gentle, playful movement, storytelling, and voice that help us access the wisdom of our own bodies and a supportive group body.
- Visiting the campuses of Touchstone Center for Crafts and the globally recognized mosaic Ruins Project, we will create with our own hands, through mosaic art, watercolor, and blacksmithing, giving form, color and substance to what lives in our hearts.
- Hold rituals of remembrance, offering creative ways to honor loved ones who have died, and exploring new ways to stay connected to them.
- Enjoy spacious time in nature, walking among trees and streams that help us remember that we, too, are part of natures’ cycles of loss and renewal.
- Build a compassionate community, so we do not carry our stories alone.
- By weekend’s end, you’ll carry home new art pieces, deeper insights, and connections with a circle of kindred spirits.
Who is This Retreat For?
People who:
- Are grieving someone they love, or a life chapter that has ended, or want to honor any loss through creative expression.
- Feel called to explore their creativity, whether they’re seasoned artists or complete beginners.
- Are looking for new ways to process the complex emotions of living in these times, grief, beauty, uncertainty, hope.
- Long to be with others who understand that grief is not something to be “gotten over,” but to be companioned, witnessed, and transformed.
AS FRANCIS WELLER WRITES
“Soul activism is what we are called to in this extreme time.”
Through the expressive arts of InterPlay and art-making, we engage in that very activism, tending to what is most tender, personal, and profound.
Where & With Whom?
FACILITATORS
The Retreat will be led by Dr. Sheila K. Collins and Christine Gautreaux, MSW.
DR. SHEILA K. COLLINS
Author of The Art of Grieving: How the Arts and Art-Making Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives.
CHRISTINE GAUTREAUX, MSW
Co-author of Stillpoint: A Self-Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, Time to Breathe & Reclaim Joy.
WHERE
The retreat takes place at the Laurelville Retreat Center in southwestern Pennsylvania, easily reached by car from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.
THE ART OF MAKING IN COLLABORATION WITH:
Touchstone Center for Craft — 150 wooded acres with fully equipped art studios and trails to wander.
The Ruins Project — a stunning outdoor mosaic installation on the Great Allegheny Passage, where art emerges from the bones of a coal mining past. Honoring the power of place and art as memorial.
Laurelville Retreat Center
The Retreat location in southwest Pennsylvania.
The Ruins Project
A stunning outdoor mosaic installation.
Touchstone Center for Craft
Fully equipped art studios and trails to wander.
Practicals
WHEN
Thursday evening, May 28th through midday Sunday, May 31st, 2026
WHERE
Laurelville Retreat Center
+ 2 field trips with activities included
AIRPORT
The nearest airport
is Pittsburgh
International
REGISTRATION
Opens 1/19/2026
space is limited
to 15 people
HOW IT WORKS
RESERVE YOUR SPOT
$300 deposit secures your place
All monies are due by May 1, 2026
LODGING
CHOOSE YOUR OPTION
Double Room – $955
Includes lodging, meals, & programming
Single Room – $1095
Includes lodging, meals, & programming
Is This Right For Me?
If you are wondering whether this experience is right for you, or if it fits where you are in your own life, feel free to reach out.
You can text me at (817) 706-4967 or email me directly at sheilakcollins@gmail.com and we can set up a time to talk.
If someone comes to mind who might appreciate a few days of creativity, reflection, and community, especially someone moving through loss or life transition.
