It had been 13 years since I traveled to Italy as part of my pilgrimage of grief after losing my husband when an upcoming NextTribe creative retreat, exploring Umbria, caught my attention. It was to be held in the very part of the country that had played an important role in my journey of healing. Almost unbelievably, the retreat would take place at the very estate in Umbria that was owned by my friends — the ones who had welcomed me so warmly when I was a very broken and grieving guest. 

I knew right away that I wanted to return, particularly since the focus was going to be on creativity. I had found that creative pursuits were my own pathway of exploration following my husband’s death, and they had helped in my long process of healing.    

NextTribe is going back to Umbria for another Creativity Retreat May 10-18, 2025. Grab your spot in the spectacular villa here.

But to further complicate things, my 100-year-old father, who had been relatively healthy, began declining rapidly, and I reluctantly canceled my plans, as I didn’t want to be out of the country when he passed. But as it happened, he died a week before I was to leave. I was able to take part in his memorial service in time to un-cancel my trip. At that time, I had just been looking at photos of a memorable trip I had taken with my dad to northern Italy many years earlier, during which we had quarreled and then made up at an astonishingly beautiful church built into a cliff. Those moments had been special to our relationship. 

Traveling in Umbria: The Memories It Unlocked 

And so it was that I arrived in Italy this past May with a big bundle of grief and memories to unpack, as I joined the NextTribe group in Rome, on our way to Umbria. But I had already learned so many years ago that Italy is a place to find solace when you are hurting, even when the memories may be bittersweet. 

My late husband Gary and I had dreamed of moving to Italy after we retired, to enjoy what we thought of as il buon vivere, the good life. “I can’t imagine myself as an old man puttering around Austin,” he would say. He would much prefer puttering around the ruins of Rome and Verona. We even took an immersion class in Italian in Verona one summer. 

But after his sudden death on a kayak trip on a wild river in Guatemala, that dream of Italy died along with him. I remember that afternoon at home when I got the terrible news of his death. I was surrounded by friends who had known us both as a kind of power couple. And among those friends was Jennifer Vickers, whose husband Lee Walker was a close friend of Gary’s. As it happened, she and her husband had already been working on their own dream of a house in Umbria. 

My friends had bought not just a house in Italy, but a ruined castle in the countryside. It seemed like an incredible fantasy.

In fact, they had bought not just a house, but a ruined castle and several acres of surrounding countryside. At the time, it seemed like an incredible fantasy.  

In late December the following year, I had decided to end my yearlong pilgrimage in Italy, and on impulse I emailed Jennifer to say that I would be in Rome and that perhaps we could get together. Even though it was a busy Christmas season for her family at their home in Umbria (still a work in progress), she invited me for a visit. As we made our way up a steep winding hill about an hour from Perugia, I felt as though I had fallen back in time. They had made a great deal of progress on the main house, which they had restored faithfully as though it hadn’t changed since it was built. 

We visited the ruined castle at the top of the hill, which had little left but crumbling walls, and speculated about lingering ghosts. They put me up in Lee’s studio, and I loved sleeping beneath his huge “idea” blackboard, on which he noted the progress of various projects. I was completely smitten when we visited the various rustic exhibits in the small villages around their estate. I still kept cherished photos of myself with their young daughters Giulia and Gabriela on a ferris wheel in Perugia.

Embarking on a New Adventure in Umbria 

I had that same feeling of expectation this time as our vans made their way up the winding hill to what has become an extraordinary set of public spaces, part of an expanded presence on the hill. We passed the 11^th-century church that had been transformed into a living and gathering space, where much of our retreat would take place. 

Next to it, ready to reflect spectacular sunsets, was a beautifully situated infinity pool. In the distance was the house I recognized from my previous visit, where Lee and Jennifer still live. Clearly Lee and Jen’s plans had evolved far beyond what I remembered.  Their dream of a home in Umbria had expanded to become a reality: the elegant Villa Castiglione Ugolino, lodged within the huge Murlo wine and olive oil estate, with its breathtaking views of hills, valleys, and vineyards. 

We’d be honing our senses to a higher level as we explored the villages — as well as mining who we were at this moment in our lives. 

When we debarked from our vans, I made a beeline for Jennifer, and the years melted away. I was delighted that she would be leading the retreat along with Shannon Faseler, an art historian from Wimberley, a town in the Texas Hill Country that I knew well. They would be focusing, they explained in our opening session, on honing our senses to a higher level, using our daily experiences in exploring the art, food, and crafts of the villages around the villa. We would also begin to explore who we were in this present moment in our lives. We were given handmade books, along with art supplies, for keeping a record of our impressions and discoveries. 

As we introduced ourselves and told a bit of our stories, it was clear that everyone had come to begin a new chapter — or at least to let go of an old one.

Awakening Senses, Unlocking Creativity

We were welcomed each morning by mist suspended over the beautiful vistas from the main villa and the guest house, along with the delivery of fresh croissants and fruit for our breakfast. 

On the first day, our destination, I learned with great delight, was the town of Gubbio, where we’d have lunch at the Taverna del Lupo, which had been one of Gary’s and my favorite restaurants in all of Italy. The taverna was named in honor of St. Francis and the wolf that he famously tamed in order to save the city. I remembered images of St. Francis and his friendly wolf being displayed all around the dining area. I didn’t know that the taverna had also become a favorite of Lee and Jen’s after Gary told Lee about our fabulous lunch there. One more instance of déjà vu to tuck away. And I was surprised and delighted by a group toast in honor of Gary, which made my porcini risotto all that more delicious.

I was surprised and delighted by a group toast in honor of my late husband, which made my risotto all the more delicious.

Over the next few days, our lessons in heightening our senses ranged from picking out images from Giotto’s marvelous frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi to learning about traditional weaving methods, generations old, from Marta Cucchia, the charismatic granddaughter of the founder of the studio Giuditta Brozzetti in Perugia. In picturesque Sansepolcro, we took rubbings of various textures to get our senses going, before visiting the intoxicatingly fragrant Aboca Museum, with its exhibits of cauldrons and beautiful hand-painted ceramic jars, to learn about traditional methods of creating herbal essences. 

We walked to the Civica Museum, where we were curious to see if the hieratic painting of the Resurrection by Piero della Francesca, once called the most beautiful painting in the world by Aldous Huxley, lived up to the hype, before dining at the Osteria dei Poeti, where, as a poet, I felt particularly charmed.

Into the Kitchen, Then Writing the Next Chapter

For many of us, the culinary highlight of the week actually came from the hands-on pasta-making class led by Jennifer’s old friend Rosa, who has cooked for a number of celebrities. Rosa, who exudes the no-nonsense taskmaster ebullience of a master cook who loves teaching, said that she had in fact taken up cooking because she looked at it as an art. And as everyone struggled to knead the pasta dough in exactly the right way, she said, with a twinkle in her eye, that happiness was the key to great cooking

The key to great cooking, she said with a twinkle in her eye, was happiness.

Happiness, plus a lot of persistence, we realized. And when we tasted the results of the fresh pasta and freshly made tomato sauce, we also realized that something so simple can also be quite profound. 

That night, as we became dancing fools in the chapel where we had been working on our book projects, I thought about all the threads of our stories that were weaving together in a pattern, just as Marta had shown us, smiling in concentration as the shuttles flew back and forth on her loom. The ingredients of inspiration and creativity, we were learning, include happiness as well as discipline and hard work. 

And on the final night, when we displayed our books, each one was different, and I think we were all startled by how creative our fellow NextTribers were. Though we had barely touched the surface of all the culture and beauty Italy has to offer, we had absorbed enough to let it all begin to seep into our psyches, just like the healing aromas from the Aboca Museum. 

I felt as though I had come full circle, from the time I first came to Castiglione Ugolino in its formative stages, when I was in need of healing, to this time when I was more fully able to truly see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the country that I knew would continue to play a role in my story.