Camp Widow

Happy Hanukkah! Wishing our community a holiday full of peace and light. Chag Sameach!

It's Giving Tuesday, Friends - the day reserved each year to celebrate the work of nonprofits! We have an exciting day ahead full of sharing why hope matters to our widowed community members, and we need your help - EVERY DOLLAR RAISED TODAY WILL BE MATCHED UP TO $10,000! Soaring Spirits has expanded our programs to meet the ever-changing needs of our widowed community during a year which has heightened our sense of isolation and augmented the absence of our love people. Whi...le we haven't been able to meet in person for the majority of the year (and the photos in this video make us miss you all SO much!), our programs have expanded online in ways that have formed community, connection, and understanding despite the challenges of not being together in person. Listen to these words from your fellow widowed friends, and join us as we strive to match those dollars! Donations are gratefully accepted online at https://givebutter.com/whyhopematters, or you can text "SHAREHOPE" to 202-858-1233. Thank you for your support, friends - we are so very grateful! See more

We are giving thanks for our amazing widowed community. Wishing you all a gentle Thanksgiving.

We are excited to welcome all of you to Camp Widow virtual 2020 tomorrow. Are you registered? We'd love for you to join us. Even though we are meeting virtually this year, there will still be connections made. It's the moment when you meet other widowed people and know you are not alone. That is what our community is all about.

We will have our tribute tile wall this weekend at our virtual Camp Widow. Take a look at all these Well Loved people!

CWV20 workshop highlight: Start Friday morning off with some Zumba! with Meg Adams-Kraidman We take the work out of workout, by mixing low-intensity and high-intensity moves for an interval-style, calorie-burning dance fitness party. Once the Latin and World rhythms take over, you’ll see why Zumba Fitness classes are often called exercise in disguise.

Happy End of October! As with everything else in 2020, Camp Widow is going virtual! We have a great 3 day program packed with workshops and social events. Mark your calendars for Novemember 20-22, 2020. Registered campers will have access to all the content for the next year. Come join us for the weekend! You can register here:

Wishing our Canadian friends and family a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Did you know that Soaring Spirits is hosting an 18-week online program called the Festival of Hope starting September 13 and continuing throughout the first week of January? Open to everyone and featuring a different theme each week along with weekly Zoom calls, live entertainment, and recorded videos from your community members, the Festival of Hope is our gift to you, and we look forward to sharing it with you online! https://soaringspirits.org/events/festival-of-hope/

Anyone else getting FB memories from Camp Widow 2012 and 2017? We were San Diego at this time for both those years. We sure are missing our time together! Please share one of your memory photos from one of these camps.

Here we are in San Diego for Camp Widow West 2016. We had another successful kids camp, due to some amazing volunteers! We passed HOPE around to each other on Saturday morning. We had an awesome intern Taner, that we miss! We offered a dress exchange! What do you do when you attend multiple Camps and need a new dress? We danced at the Midsummer Nights Dream themed banquet and had a beautiful message release. Sunday morning we ran a 5K in neckties. We are always so thankful for the people who come to this thing called Camp Widow, you are changing the way people view widowedhood!

With what would have been the start of our 27th Camp Widow West weekend event, we just want to say that we not only are missing our campers, but also our Marriott partners. Our program runs smoothly because of the care from our Marriott family. San Diego was our original home, but we are so fortunate to call Tampa and Toronto Marriotts our home too. We are thinking of all of our people, just to name a few; Aleksandra, Anna, Cesar, Howie, Dwayne, Chef Ben, Chef Victor, Eric, Tina, Brian, Wayne Honey, Maria-Leah, Sami, Garth, Jack, our valet staff, housemen, red coats, and staff that make our campers feel at home. We miss you and hope to see you all soon! Tampa Marriott Water Street Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre Hotel

Camp Widow West 2015! Remember that one where Michele changed her dress multiple times during the keynote? Our alumni took an afternoon sail out in the bay, we wowed the pool guests with our amazing Flashmob, we had a colorful ballon drop for the message release at our Black and White Ball, we had our first camper from Mexico, and we gathered as a community giving and receive hope from each other. What a good year that was in San Diego.

Let's go back to Toronto 2017. Another amazing Camp Widow weekend in the books! We had our largest International Camp yet that year, Harold was our amazing photographer, our alumni went bowling downtown, we did some painting, we enjoyed some Photo Booth fun as always, we had a beautiful community message release created by Sarah and Mike, and we started a chilly Sunday with a mindful walk through the labyrinth. So much love and hope in that weekend.

Let's go back just a few years in our Camp Widow memories to San Diego 2017, for our 18th weekend event. We hugged some old friends we hadn't seen in a while, welcomed new faces into this community, we had a successful CW Kids Camp!, our alumni took a trolley and toured around the city, our Masquerade themed ball featured a beautiful river to "take what you need, give what you can", and...... we danced (even with crutches).

2014 was also the year we welcomed everyone to Tampa, FL our new east coast Camp Widow home. We laughed and cried and laughed some more, we made origami boats and floated them down the channel, we ran a 5K in the dark due to daylight savings, and we had a community of widowed people that get it.

2014 was the year of our first international Camp Widow held in downtown Toronto, Canada. We had campers from Europe, Australia, US, and of course our Canadian hosts join us, we had international Rotary representation, we surprised Eaton Centre with a CW flashmob, our message release was across the street in the City Hall fountain, and we danced the night away.

Our first Camp Widow on the east coast was in Myrtle Beach, SC 2012. What an amazing experience to be right on the ocean. We had SupaFresh, our first "camp chat", parasailing, and our first message release was Saturday night on the beach with orbs. What was one of your fondest memories of that first east coast camp?