What the Worst Retreat of My Life Taught Me About Community

A few weeks after my longtime partner and I split up, I was on a plane to Maui, looking out at the ocean the way I imagine a bird looks at a fish it’s trying to catch. I believed that what I was searching for was down there, within my grasp. All I had to do was dive.

For me, that meant spontaneously snagging the last spot at a spiritual retreat tucked into the verdant, windswept pastures of upcountry Maui. Just a short drive from beachfront condos, surfboard shops and crowds in the more bustling parts of the island, this part of the island felt like another planet. Drive up the hill from funky Pa’ia town into Makawao, where the air is 15 degrees cooler, and smells of scorched asphalt and saltwater are replaced by sweet papaya and orchid, and your soul will feel like a puzzle that just found its final piece.

Organic fruits and vegetables surrounded me like a fragrant blanket, and I’d be nourishing my body with healthy meals, along with gorgeous accommodations and spiritually minded individuals who would sweep me into their arms and love me right back to health.

Obviously, my grief clouded my thinking, as there were many problems with my plan — the most obvious of which was that no one else there had a broken heart, and my sob stories threatened to kill their spiritual high. On my first night, while everyone was drinking wine and laughing by the fire pit, I felt more alone than I could have imagined, thinking I had made a grave mistake.

The next morning, after feeling as if I’d stepped into an open audition for a Lululemon commercial, I was now completely certain that a mistake had indeed been made. There was so much yoga happening at this retreat, and I hadn’t done yoga in over a decade.

I realized that if someone at the retreat committed a crime, I would never have been able to give the detectives an accurate sketch because it was literally just a blur of blonde ponytails and perfectly shaped butts.

Of the two men in the group, one of them was tall, with chiseled muscles and soft, curly black hair. He was Clark Kent in child’s pose, and though he claimed to have been traveling the world, surfing and “finding himself” after a breakup, I suspected his story was as diluted as patchouli oil in a diffuser. For the entirety of the retreat, the female attendees bathed him in love, light and bosoms, likely “healing” him in a multitude of ways.

I realized there was no room for the gravity of my heartbreak that night at dinner, when, after a stunning family-style meal of grilled mahi mahi and fresh greens with candied macadamias, strawberries and avocados and a papaya seed dressing, Mr. Kent stood up to give a speech. “I really wanted to thank all of you for welcoming me into your circle,” he said, earnestly. “I have felt so loved and supported – especially when you kept telling me I looked like George Clooney.”

The rest of the dinner wasn’t much better, as I listened to the woman across from me talk about arriving on Lanai’i, a small island off the coast of Maui, by helicopter, to celebrate her honeymoon. Though locals live on the island, the economy is driven by the two Four Seasons hotels there – one on the beach, and one at the top, where horses graze on green pastures and the air is cool and crisp, much like Makawao. She spoke of lavish dinners, massages and champagne on the beach, and I joined in the conversation, as I had also been to both hotels.

I didn’t tell her that I paid next to nothing for my stay, despite rooms starting at $1,000, as I had many of the same experiences she did – including wonderful salmon tacos and mojitos at the Four Seasons’ beachfront restaurant. But she ignored me completely, giving me a tense, patronizing smile, and continuing to speak of her own experience, which I realized she believed to be far more noteworthy than mine. I was trying so hard to belong to this group because I had chosen to come here, and then I realized that I could control of my own experience – whether at this retreat or how I allowed my broken heart to define me.

On day three, when I walked into an empty restaurant, where I thought the group would be gathering for a communal meal, the restaurant manager, Laurie, told me they had all decided to do an off-site lunch. A plan that I had conveniently not been made aware of by anyone in the group.

Though I was relieved, I also felt incredibly rejected, which was a feeling I thought I’d be getting away from on this retreat, yet here it was, staring me straight in the face.

I could tell Laurie felt sorry for me, so she told me to order whatever I wanted from the menu, and she’d take care of me. It was like she saw something in me she knew she could trust, and she hung out at my table for my entire meal, making me feel as though I had just found my person.

“Come back at 6, and I’ll have the chef prepare you a dinner to take back to your room,” she said.

I met Dominic on my way to the pool, as he was hosing off the porch, and he told me about a secret swimming hole with a waterfall in Haiku, and the best place to see sea turtles at Hookipa beach. After a few times passing him on the property, each time chatting longer, we made plans to go together after my stay for the week was over.

That night, Laurie smuggled me one of the best meals I’d ever had – a beet-root burger with vegan wasabi aioli and turmeric zucchini pickles and a passionfruit avocado mousse with toasted coconut, which I paired with a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. I could hear the birds chirping outside my window, and a cool breeze blew in through the open shutters. I took a hot shower in my stone-studded shower and felt more peace than I’d felt in a long time.

“Do you want to take my car for the week while I’m working?” Laurie asked me the next morning. To get such a loving offer from a complete stranger felt immensely validating, and though I had a rental car, I couldn’t shake the profundity of such a gesture.

Oddly enough, I never saw a single person from my retreat the rest of the week. I texted the instructor that I was struggling with my breakup and decided I didn’t want to be around people, and she was kind enough in her response, but never checked in on my emotional well-being.

Perhaps I had committed some unspoken sin in the world of retreats by seceding, but for me, breaking free of what felt like superficial wellness was the best treatment I could have ever given my body and mind.

On my last afternoon, I sat in one of the massage huts, overlooking a giant valley of trees, with a peekaboo view of the ocean miles below, meditating for a few hours. When I got up to leave, a woman I had never seen before was walking toward me. Instead of walking in the other direction, I walked right toward her, almost as if I had been expecting her. We began a conversation, which lasted an hour, and though she had been there the whole time I was, we had never crossed paths until that moment – an hour before we were both leaving. We decided to spend the day together at the beach, and, as it turns out, she had just left a 10-year marriage, and had also come to Maui to try and heal. I couldn’t believe my luck.

I booked a few extra days at a hotel, which was as tall as a skyscraper with a gigantic parking lot, right off the bustling main road, in a popular part of touristy Kihei. It was a far cry from the peace of Makawao, but perfectly mirrored the frenzy of where I was emotionally. In all its bigness, I felt tiny and lost.

I was so grateful when Dominic arrived to join me for dinner. We had already watched kite surfing at Hookipa Beach a few days earlier, so it felt as though I was meeting an old friend.

He took me to a tiny beach across the street, making sure to warn me not to come here after dark by myself. Then we walked around downtown Kihei, awkwardly bumping into each other every few steps. Our hands would accidentally touch, then one of us would nervously say, “sorry,” jerking our arm backwards as if we had just touched a hot stove. We had drinks at a dive bar, then ate ramen while a Willie Nelson look-alike sang love songs on the back porch of a crowded Japanese restaurant. The air was thick with heat, and we were two grownups acting like 15-year-olds on a first date.

At the end of our date, we decided to watch a movie in my hotel room. “It will be too late for me to drive all the way home,” he said, looking at me for approval.

“I don’t mind if you stay over,” I said, “but I’m on this trip because I just had my heart broken, and I’m not ready for anything other than friendship.”

What happened that night still stays with me. What I didn’t tell him was that I felt so broken, it seemed as if my heart had been carved out with a spoon. The space that was left behind was so tender, every breath felt like a suction cup, attaching itself to the empty spaces and replacing it with more tightness. I wanted desperately to be held, but I couldn’t say that to a man who was going to sleep in my hotel room and not make it sound like I was giving mixed messages.

But I didn’t have to say anything. After our movie, Dominic wrapped his arms around me, careful not to touch any part of my body beyond my arms, and we slept like that until he woke to go to work the next morning. It was exactly what I needed in every way.

I remember on my final afternoon at the retreat, hugging Laurie goodbye — twice. “Don’t forget how strong and powerful you are,” she reminded me. I didn’t know how to tell her that, because of her, I think I would now find it easier to do just that.

I wouldn’t forget much about that trip. I was well-fed, cared for and filled to the brim with a sense of belonging that came, not in the way I had expected, but in the way that I most needed. I came to a retreat to heal my heart, and that’s precisely what happened. All the things I hoped to find, three thousand miles away from where I lost them, came back to me in ways I never imagined in the cool climes of upcountry Maui.