A ceremony for the grief the world has no ceremony for
There is a grief the world has no ceremony for.
No flowers arrive. No one gives you time off work. Nobody checks in months later or years later and the world moves on while you carry it quietly, in your chest, in your body, in the part of you that goes still in certain moments. Maybe it's when someone announces a pregnancy or when a particular date comes around every year or maybe it's just a feeling you've never quite been able to name, sitting somewhere deep, waiting.
I'm talking about the grief that lives in the womb and in the body.
Miscarriage, once or many times. Termination, and everything complicated that lives inside that word. Stillbirth. The loss of a child at any age, because a mother who has lost her child at forty is carrying something just as enormous and just as invisible as one who lost a baby at eight weeks. Years of infertility. Failed IVF cycles. And for the woman who has reached the point where biological motherhood is no longer possible, whether that came through circumstance or age or medical necessity or a choice that still carries complicated feelings, that grief belongs here too. The mourning of a life that didn't come, or a door that has quietly closed, is real and it is so rarely given any space.
Reproductive trauma that nobody ever called by that name also belongs here.
And for the mother whose child is living but whose grief is no less real, the mother of a child with a disability, a life-limiting condition, a serious mental illness or psychiatric diagnosis, who has spent years mourning the life she hoped for them while loving them completely, that grief belongs here too. The world rarely names this as grief. But it is, and it is exhausting to carry alone.
And if you went on to have children after any of these experiences, please know that your grief belongs here just as much. Having a baby afterwards doesn't erase what happened before. The womb remembers all of it and so does your body, and that earlier loss still needs to be held.
What I know, and what I have witnessed again and again in working with women, is that this grief when it is never given space does not disappear. It finds the body instead.
It becomes the tension that never fully leaves your shoulders and the skin that keeps flaring and the gut that won't settle and the exhaustion that a full night's sleep doesn't touch. The hormones that feel chaotic every single month. The hips that are always braced and always tight and always holding something. The anger before your period that feels much bigger than the moment. The autoimmune condition that arrived the same year something inside you broke. The chronic pain with no clear cause.
Grief that has nowhere to go doesn't dissolve. It relocates. Into inflammation and hormonal disruption and the body's immune system turning on itself. Into a disconnection from your own body that feels like it has just always been this way.
The womb carries memory. The nervous system holds what was never allowed to be released. And the body will keep asking, in the language of symptoms and exhaustion and that low hum of something not quite right, until it is finally and properly held.
In villages and communities throughout history, across every culture, this kind of loss was never carried alone and it was never carried in silence. There were ceremonies. There were women who gathered. There were rituals to give the grief a voice, to acknowledge what had happened, to let it be witnessed and then, only then, released from the body and from the bloodline. This was not considered optional. It was understood that without this honouring, the grief would stay in the cells and pass to the next generation, shaping the womb that carried the next life before that life even arrived. Just as we would tend the soil before planting something precious in it, the womb needs to be cleared and honoured before it can be fully alive again, whether that means a future pregnancy, a creative life, or simply the return of feeling at home in your own body. We have forgotten this. We have forgotten to honour the divine feminine wisdom of the body that knows, instinctively, that it needs to be tended and cleared and held. Wild Womban is that ceremony. The one that should have always existed.
Wild Womban is not a yoga retreat or a wellness holiday or a workshop with a timetable and a certificate.
It is a ceremony. Four days in the hills of Tuscany in a private villa surrounded by olive groves, with a heated pool, a private sauna and open land, with a small circle of women, eight maybe ten and no more than that, who have come to finally put down what they have been carrying, perhaps for a very long time.
What happens across those four days is earth-rooted womb ceremony drawn from ancestral feminine wisdom, intuitive feminine dance and movement, witnessed grief circles where you speak or stay silent and both are completely held, nourishment practices for the womb and the body, a candle lighting ceremony under a near-full moon, deep rest and seasonal nourishing food and drink. And the particular medicine that only comes from being in a room of women who understand from the inside, who don't need it explained, who are not afraid of your grief, who are carrying their own version of it.
The dates of this gathering are not chosen from a calendar. They are chosen from the earth.
We gather on the 22nd of September 2026 and we close on the 25th, four days before the Harvest Full Moon in Aries rises on the 26th. This means we are held throughout in the waxing gibbous phase, the days when everything in the lunar cycle is building toward its fullest expression, when emotions are naturally closer to the surface and what we have been carrying feels ready, finally, to move. The women leave on the 25th and the Full Moon rises the following evening. What each woman has begun to release across these four days reaches its natural completion in her own life, in her own body, as the moon reaches fullness. The ceremony does not end when she steps on the plane home. It continues.
September is harvest season in Tuscany. The olives are ripening and the vines are full and the light is golden and long. The land at this time of year is at its most abundant and generous and earthy, and there is something in that, in gathering to grieve in the middle of all that fullness, that feels right in a way that is hard to put into words but that the body understands immediately. Harvest is the season of acknowledging what has grown, gathering what is ready, and releasing what has served its purpose. Grief asks us to do the same.
Tuscany is not simply a beautiful backdrop. This land is ancient. The hills of this region of Italy were sacred long before any modern tradition existed, tended by the Etruscans who understood the land as a living thing and who built every ceremony and every city in alignment with the earth's own energy. That reverence is still in the soil here. Women who come and put their feet on this ground often feel it immediately, a quality of being held that goes deeper than the scenery. The land itself is in active support of this work. We are not working against nature here. We are moving with it, held by the earth, the moon and the season in everything we do.
This is a cosmically timed ceremony. Not in a way that requires you to believe anything or understand astrology. Simply in the sense that we have chosen this place and these dates because everything, the land, the season, the moon, is pointing in the same direction. Toward release. Toward honouring. Toward what the body has been waiting to let go of.
Women are welcomed from 11am. Heemali will be there to greet each woman personally as she arrives. A slow welcome lunch together, seasonal and nourishing, eaten without agenda. Time to settle, unpack and breathe. A gentle afternoon movement practice to begin the process of arriving in the body. As evening comes, a shared dinner followed by a simple opening circle by candlelight. One word from each woman about what she is arriving with. A short restorative practice to close the evening and signal to the body that it is safe to land.
A slow morning yoga practice working into the hips, pelvis and sacrum where grief lives most densely in the body. A witnessed story circle through the morning, speak or stay silent, both are held. A completely free afternoon. An intuitive feminine dance journey in the evening, moving through sorrow, anger and tenderness, followed by dinner together.
A deep yin practice to open the morning followed by silence and free time. The womb and grief naming ceremony through mid morning, earth offerings, candles, the naming of what has been lost. A free afternoon for rest, land time and optional womb nourishment practices. An optional water movement session in the pool as the afternoon softens, moving gently in the water as a way of releasing what the body has opened to, in preparation for what comes next. At sunset, a candle lighting ceremony under the Tuscan sky. Each woman lights a candle for what she is ready to release and for what she is ready to welcome, one evening before the Full Moon rises.
Pool and sauna available throughoutBreakfast available from 6am, simple and nourishing, so that no one leaves without being fed. A water movement session in the pool from 7am to 8am for those who wish to join, moving slowly and intentionally as the final ceremony of the gathering, held by the water as the Full Moon prepares to rise that evening. A gentle grounding movement practice together from 8:30am to 9:15am, a closing, a way of saying goodbye to the land and to each other through the body. Departures from 9:15am. The villa is vacated by 10am. The Full Moon rises this evening. Whatever began in these four days continues.
Water movement at dawn, one last ceremony before departing
If you feel ready to commit, there is an early bird offer of £100 off your place for deposits received by 31st May 2026. No pressure. But if your body is already saying yes, there is no reason to wait.
One woman, her own room, her own bathroom, complete privacy.
Two women who know each other, sharing a room and bathroom by choice.
One woman, both single beds to herself, shared hallway bathroom.
Two women who know each other, one single bed each, shared hallway bathroom. The most accessible price point on the retreat.
Florence Peretola Airport (FLR) is approximately one hour from the villa and has regular direct flights from London and other UK airports. Pisa International Airport (PSA) is approximately one hour fifteen minutes away and is also well connected to the UK. Airport transfers are not included in the retreat price and are the responsibility of each participant. We recommend coordinating with other women attending to share taxis or hire cars from the airport.
The villa has a private heated pool and a private sauna, both available throughout the retreat. The pool is open throughout September and the surrounding land includes olive groves and open ground. Bring a swimsuit.
All meals are provided from dinner on arrival evening through to breakfast on departure morning. Drinks provided throughout are water, herbal teas and coffee. Alcohol is not included or provided as part of this retreat. The retreat is vegetarian, wheat-free and dairy-free throughout. If you have any other dietary needs please let Heemali know at the time of booking.
Comfortable clothing for movement. Something warm for evenings. Something you feel beautiful in for the candle lighting ceremony. A swimsuit for the pool. A journal. Anything that feels meaningful to bring into the ceremony space. Travel insurance is not included and is the responsibility of each participant.
My name is Heemali and I am a trauma-informed yoga teacher, movement facilitator, women's holistic health coach and womb ceremony space holder. I am also a woman who has carried this grief in my own body and my own family line. I am not standing apart from this work. I am inside it, the same as you.
This is not a public retreat and it will not be widely advertised. The places will be filled through personal invitation, passed between women, and that is all. If you feel called, please don't wait. When the circle is full, it is full.
And if you're not sure, if something in you is pulled toward it but your mind is finding reasons to hesitate, I want you to know that this is how it almost always feels for the women who most need to come. The hesitation is part of it. Trust what your body is telling you.
If this page has moved something in you, it found you for a reason.