Conceptual rendering — this space does not yet exist.
THE stay
What a stay at Samsāra Sanctuary will hold, from the first night to the drive home.
Samsāra Sanctuary is in development. Phase One, a rest-first home in rural Utah, is where the first stays will begin. Everything described on this page is being designed now.
Conceptual rendering — this space does not yet exist.
A refuge built by someone who needed one
For seven years after my loss, I carried it alone. No one offered me somewhere to put it down. Samsāra Sanctuary is being built so the next person does not have to spend seven years discovering that rest was the thing missing
Conceptual rendering — this space does not yet exist.
The three movements of a stay
Every stay will move through three parts. None of them has a set length. Each guest will move through them on their own timeline, and on any given day the house will hold people in all three.
Conceptual rendering — this space does not yet exist.
Landing
The first days will ask nothing. Sleep, eat, be somewhere no one needs a report on how you are doing. The house will take over the tasks grief has made impossible: meals, laundry, the small decisions that pile up until they feel like a wall.
Those who have been here longer will leave room for you. New arrivals set the pace of conversation.
Rhythm
A calm daily shape returns. Mornings outside. Meals at a shared table. The company of others who carry the same kind of loss, when you want it, and solitude when you do not.
Small choices come back on their own schedule. What to eat. Whether to walk. It is usually the first sign that the body and the mind are finding each other again.
Return
No calendar will decide when this begins. It begins in conversation: you, our founder, and, if you choose, your therapist. No one will be moved toward the door before they are ready, and no one decides alone.
Then the last days turn gently toward home. What will you need when you leave? Who is already holding you out there? With your consent, we will connect you back to the people who referred you, so the rest does not end at the driveway.
No departure date waiting for you
Grief does not keep to a calendar, and neither will your stay. One person may need four days. Another may need six weeks. The length of your stay will be something we discover together, as it unfolds.
No one here will tell you that you should be further along.
Twelve
at a time
The house will hold twelve guests. Some will come as families, some alone. They will arrive on their own days and leave on their own days, so you will never walk into a room where everyone is new.
Suicide loss teaches you to edit yourself for everyone around you, to measure how much truth a room can hold. Here, the room will already know. You can talk, or not. Either way, you will not be the only one.
The people who already know
Grief does not keep to a calendar, and neither will your stay. One person may need four days. Another may need six weeks. The length of your stay will be something we discover together, as it unfolds.
No one here will tell you that you should be further along.
What a day holds
Meals that arrive without being asked for.
Sheets someone else washed.
A morning with nowhere to be.
Grief is exhausting in a way people rarely admit, and most of us keep running the household long after we have stopped being able to.
Here, that work will be done for you.
Suicide loss happens
to a family
It does not arrive for one person. It moves through a household, into how a mother sleeps and what a brother stops saying at dinner.
That is why a whole family will be welcome to come together, so the silence can begin to break in the same room where it formed. And if you are coming alone, the house will be just as much yours.
Conceptual rendering — this space does not yet exist.
Alongside your care, never instead of it
Samsāra is not therapy and will not replace it. It is the place where the body gets quiet enough for therapy to reach it.
If you are already working with a counselor, a group, or a postvention program, the stay is designed to sit beside that work. When it is time to think about going home, that decision will be made with you, not for you: in conversation with our founder, and, if you choose, with your therapist. Then we hand you back to the people already holding you.
Conceptual rendering — this space does not yet exist.
The house
is part of
the care
Grief keeps the body on watch. A room can let it stand down.
Samsāra is being designed around that single purpose: warm wood, low light, water you can hear from bed, nothing that asks you to perform being fine.
When Phase One opens
Samsāra Sanctuary is in development and not yet welcoming guests.
Join the interest list, and we will write to you when stays begin.
If you are not sure whether a stay is right for you, start here.
Samsāra Sanctuary is a program of the Elle Fisher Foundation Corp, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. EIN: 32-0847572.