How a book retreat reminded me books have the power to heal a broken heart

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – They say eyes are the windows to the soul, but in my case it's the pile of books waiting to be read on my coffee table.

If there's a big, messy, complicated feeling I can’t find the words for but need to process, a book will always have an answer. For the better − or worse − parts of 2024, I've rummaged between the pages of Ada Limón's poetry collections, Sloane Crosley's "Grief Is For People," Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar," Mary-Frances O'Connor's "The Grieving Brain," Mary Jones' "The Goodbye Process" and Sally Rooney's "Intermezzo." You get the picture.

Books have always been my lifeline, and so is being in the company of others who feel the same way − fellow readers who turn to the pages of their favorite books for comfort, joy, laughter, understanding and catharsis.

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On a sunny September weekend, that love for literature inspired 45 authors and attendees, including myself, to flock to the Kimpton Rowan Palm Springs Hotel lobby and, for three full days, relinquish our time and attention to the power of books as the picturesque San Jacinto Mountains served as our cloak from the "real world."

Some braved rush hour traffic from Los Angeles on a Friday to the desert oasis for the readers retreat organized by founder and CEO of Zibby Media, author Zibby Owens (the "Blank" author's one-day and three-day retreats are part of her larger literary empire, which includes a podcast, book club and a bookstore in Santa Monica, Zibby's Bookshop).

Other women flew in from Texas and Colorado, sisters met up from opposite coasts, and a another set of sisters flew in from Canada. The quarterly retreats, with ticket prices ranging from $950 to $1,500, excluding travel expenses, are run by Graça Tito, Director of Events for Zibby Media. They have also been hosted in Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina Texas, Miami and New York (Owens dreams of someday hosting an international retreat).

Some of us were newbies but for others, attending Zibby Retreats has become tradition.

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As a first-timer, and as someone who honestly didn't know readers retreats were even a thing, I went there with an open mind. Selfishly, I also hoped that through our museum outings, dinner conversations, writing workshops and author panels, I'd stumble across more answers to the existential questions clouding my mind.

After all, I knew I'd be around fellow readers and a group of talented authors − Joselyn Takacs ("Pearce Oysters"), Mary Jones ("The Goodbye Process"), Lara Love Hardin ("The Many Lives of Mama Love"), Ava Dellaira ("Exposure") and Swan Huntley ("I Want You More") − who would talk about all things books, and who also let us in on their thoughts about life, loss, grief, family and community

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It also rarely felt like 45 strangers had come together for a weekend away. Instead, it felt like friends returning to each other − our shared love of books and reading helped cut through the small talk and get straight to deep, intimate conversations.

"People who have read the same book are not strangers," Owens said during a brief interview before we all walked over to The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs.

"If you are curious enough to read and spend hours in someone else's shoes then when you meet others who also like doing that, you tend to have a group of people who are interested in people and therefore interested in each other and in talking about shared book experiences and life in general."

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"Books are just a way to talk about life, really," Owens added.

That rang true as Dellaira shared during an author panel that while writing her latest book "Exposure," she was simultaneously grieving her father. On the final day of the retreat, Hardin opened up about what she's lost due to her past with addiction and substance abuse. During an author interview, Owens mentioned she wrote about losing her best friend during 9/11 in her first book, "Bookends." Takacs shared how it felt not being able to share the milestone of publishing "Pearce Oysters" with her late father.

Contrary to what I'm making this reader's retreat sound like, grief wasn't the main focus or at the forefront of the weekend. But as the days went by, the room's shared experiences with grief felt like the invisible thread that connected many of us to one another, to the books we read and to the words that come gushing out when we bring pen to paper.

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As writers and readers, it's these big, messy, complicated feelings that inform what we read and how we let our favorite author's words transform and comfort us.

"Both reading and writing are such useful tools for processing grief," Dellaira said in an interview after the retreat. "Grief can be so isolating, even when you know that other people have gone through it, it just feels lonely. It feels lonely to have to go into the world and interact with people when inside you're like, 'How is life just going on when I just lost this person that means everything to me?'"

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On the last day of the retreat, as everyone got in their final photos with the authors, made their final book purchases and exchanged information with one another, I chatted with Elizabeth Kopple. She, along with a few others throughout the weekend, had asked what my angle for the story was going to be.

At the time, I wasn't completely confident in writing about grief but still, I told her what I was considering. In response, she shared with me that her son had been killed two years ago and she was at the retreat with a friend she had met at a child loss support group.

During a phone call a few days after the retreat, she told me, "I don't know if I expected it to be so front and center when I signed up, but it was gratifying to be able to hear and have those conversations and hear how grief had transformed so many people."

I didn't say it to her then, but her openness with me felt like a sign to write what felt most natural.

In March, my grandmother died from cancer. The grieving process had begun over a year before that, but it didn't make it any easier or clear cut. It made it more confusing. So I turned to my books for clarity and comfort, and sometimes to just feel less alone and confused. It became a fixation.

I've read a horror story about a grieving mother who cuts out a piece of her deceased child's lung because she can't bear to let go, a book about death cleaning that made me think about the practicalities of dying, memoirs of those who have been transformed by the death of a friend or a parent, and I've revisited poems to find new meaning and old books that hit different now.

Being around so many women at the reader's retreat who weren't afraid to be honest about how a book made them feel or how it related to their real-life experiences felt comforting and transformative. The power of books and reading is in the empathy and community we build with not only the characters on the page but also those around us who we can share it with.

You're never alone with a book, and you're never alone with a fellow reader.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Readers retreats and the power of books, community amid grief