Gathering to Grieve, Together: April 2026 Pregnancy & Infant Loss Retreat

I am so delighted to be offering our 2nd Grief Retreat and Ritual for Pregnancy and Infant Loss, April 10th and 11th, 2026 at a lovely retreat center in Sebastopol, CA.

Surrounded by vast green hills, tended gardens, visited by hummingbirds, circled by hawks, and called to by goldfinches, we will be gathering to tenderly honor the depths of love and sorrow in ourselves and with one another.

This retreat is for parents who have gone through pregnancy or infant loss, fertility challenges, and are longing for a place where their grief—and their love—can be welcomed without fixing, minimizing, or rushing.

Our time together includes guided grief ritual, time in nature, shared witnessing, creative expression, and rest.

All invitations are gentle, and participants are supported to move at the pace their bodies and hearts allow.

This year I offer this retreat with my husband, Ryan Malmberg, who has devotedly walked the path of grief for the past 17 years. We have found our winding way with our grief, with the help of nature, with writing poems and songs, building altars, making friends. It has changed us and grown us, and we offer the miles of this path we have walked to others.

The birth and death of our dear son, Otto, opened in us this deep path. When he died we had very little grasp on how to walk it, if we could trust it, if we would survive it. We desperately needed to understand and find symbols, words, ways to be with this love for our son that could no longer hold him and care for him in body.

We found in these endless days, weeks, years, the desire for ancient knowing of the life/death/life cycle, and the reality of how little framework is left in our culture to hold this very real part of our lives.

All of us, every one, come from cultures that knew how to grieve together. We didn’t always skim over the top of something that needed to be delved into. We keened, we wailed, we sang and drummed to express our love, our despair, so that it could MOVE and flow and and take us to the next place we needed to be.

We were changed by our grief, we were matured by it, and we knew that we had to do it in order to survive. As a village. We were never supposed to be alone in it.

In the grief rituals I have participated in, and have led, so often we hear the refrain, “I have never done this, and yet it feels so natural.”

Our bones remember.

When we are not left alone at the void, when we have the beautiful welcome waiting for us after our descent, we can go where we need to go in our hearts. In those depths is not only the pain, but also a connectedness and healing that is like the water of an ancient spring.  

We are so happy to be creating a beautiful space where parents can be honored for their heart’s work, rather than shamed. Welcomed rather than avoided. Where they can bring their broken hearts and be held and guided in this realm. Where they won’t feel alone. 

At the end of these retreats, so often there is a shimmeriness, a joy, a spaciousness that comes from allowing it all, and feeling belonging in this wholeness. Oscar Wilde said, “Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.” And where there is community holding the sorrow, there is joy too.

If you or someone you know would like to experience this grief retreat weekend, you can find more info and apply at jessicamalmberg.com/offerings.