Ch. 6-Vipassana Retreat. The intense experience of 10 days of silence meditating 10 hours a day, no phone, no talking. Meditation in a Cell.

I know this story has been heavy so far. I promise—it gets lighter. These moments were simply the big catalysts, the ones that kept cracking me open over time.

If you landed here, I’m going to assume you’ve read the earlier chapters—leaving Connecticut, living in California, Elisha’s passing—because without them, it wouldn’t make sense why I left everything to go sit in silence at a retreat.

Vipassana is a ten-day silent meditation retreat, and it is very strict. You meditate for ten hours a day—for ten days straight. You do not speak. Men and women are separated. There is no writing, no reading, no phone, no music, no eye contact. You wake at 4 a.m., sit in silence watching your breath until evening, eat two simple meals, sleep, and do it all again for what feels like an eternity.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

I had applied months earlier and was number twenty-two on the waitlist. Then suddenly—two weeks before it began in Washington—I was accepted. Everything in San Diego was unraveling, and I left to do this.

When I accepted, I was still deep in grief and depression. I wasn’t ready to look at anything. I was questioning my relationship with J, grieving the loss of my best friend, and contemplating if I needed to get out of San Diego. I was terrified of spending that much uninterrupted time with myself. Ten days felt unbearable.

In the weeks leading up to Vipassana, it felt like my ego was torturing me. Anxiety followed me everywhere. I tried not to think about what I was walking into, but fear was constant. I had heard stories—none of them prepared me.

A friend in San Diego, deeply spiritual, seemed to understand exactly what was happening. He said, “A part of your ego is going to die in there, and it doesn’t want to die. So it’s giving you hell right now.” He said it calmly, almost kindly.

I told him I wasn’t well. Tears streamed down my face.

He smiled and said, “Oh, my sweet soul. Let it burn.”

I flew to Washington. I waited at a coffee shop for the carpool I’d signed up for, completely unaware of what was about to unfold. While sitting there, I applied to WWOOF in Hawaii—organic farm work—almost absentmindedly. I sent the application, closed my laptop, got into the car, and was driven to the retreat center.

Once there, I signed forms declaring I wasn’t mentally ill and answered pages of psychological questions—already unsettling. Then they took my phone, my belongings, and my identity, in a way. And that was it.

My mind panicked immediately. Grief surfaced fast—there was nowhere for it to hide. Pretty bold of me to even go to something like this after so much existential dread of “What Are We?” and “Where Did My Friend Go?”

No distraction. No writing. Nothing but the breath, all day long. It felt endless. The silence, the structure, the rules—parts of it were deeply triggering. But I understood the intention, so I tried to stay aware.

The first day or two, I was… okay.

And then it hit.

That depression I’d known before—the one from Connecticut, the one that returned after Elisha died—was suddenly right in front of me. Loud. Massive. Unavoidable. It felt like staring directly at a monster I had spent my life trying not to see.

It was pure emptiness. Total void. And I hated it. I wanted life to feel like life, not this hollow nothingness. I was white-knuckling every minute of the day again.

I remembered what my meditation sangha used to say: everything arises and passes. Vipassana taught the same—observe the breath, don’t attach, let sensations come and go.

But this wasn’t passing.

I was terrified of it. And fear only made it grow.

This was anxiety and depression at a level I didn’t know was possible. My body trembled constantly. My stomach was in knots. I couldn’t digest food. I was in the bathroom nearly every hour from nerves alone. By the end of the retreat, I had lost ten to fifteen pounds.

Sleep became terrifying.

Guilt surfaced—deep, buried guilt. Thoughts of losing Elisha, losing friends, wanting to leave J, everything falling apart back home. I felt like a bad person. That belief—I am bad—rose to the surface, fully formed and I was struggling with it as it haunted me.

I didn’t even know it was there.

Later, I would understand it as something rooted in childhood abuse, reinforced by Catholic guilt. But at the time, it felt real. Absolute truth.

The nightmares began. The worst one was being accused of murder I hadn’t committed. Everyone pointed at me. It looked like I was guilty. I knew I wasn’t. I woke up gasping, shaking, in the middle of the night—with hours still left to sleep.

From that night on, I was afraid to go to bed.

One evening, I had a full-blown panic attack lying there—body shaking violently, breath racing, mind in full alarm. And yet, strangely, part of me was still witnessing it. Watching my breath. Watching the fear.

I didn’t want to think anymore. Every thought triggered panic. My system was completely overloaded. Eventually, I decided if I couldn’t sleep, I would just lie there and watch my breath.

I slept a few hours.

The next day, I signed up to meet with the teacher.

She was a small elderly woman sitting on a blanket. I had fifteen minutes. I told her how intense the anxiety was. She listened, gently, and said only one thing: stay with the breath.

I was annoyed. I wanted something more. Something to fix it. But that was the whole point. My mind was fighting surrender.

Something did begin to shift—slightly. The anxiety and depression were still high, but during the meditation sits, I was okay. It was in the in-between moments that the fear rushed back in.

Then came the pagoda cell. A tiny cell by yourself to meditate all day in.

Because I had been struggling, the teacher warned me. Sensations could intensify there, she said. Take breaks if needed.

That night, Elisha came to me in a dream.

I was sitting at a breakfast place—of course. She loved breakfast. She walked in as the song “Four” played. I didn’t realize until later that 44 was our number, and she loved that song in real life. She hugged me. I smelled her hair. I saw her nose ring. Everything was vivid.

She gave me a small side smile—the one I’d never noticed before—and walked into the light.

I screamed, “Nooooo. I love you! Don’t go please.” as I slowly grabbed her arms.

Words I never got to say before she passed.

I woke up sobbing, curled into myself, shattered by the lesson my soul had just learned: do not take life for granted.

I spent that day in the pagoda cell crying on the floor. Memories flooded in—times I hurt people, times I wasn’t present, moments I chose romantic attention over the friend who loved me unconditionally. I felt guilt fully for the first time in my life.

And I let it move through me.

I felt everything on that retreat at full volume. But slowly, something softened. I noticed nature more vividly. Food tasted richer. Small moments began to land.

The final day, when silence ended, talking felt overwhelming. Everyone spoke of bliss. I felt disappointed that my experience had been so brutal—but I knew, deep down, it was exactly what I needed.

I left shaky, disheveled, and tender.

I left the retreat surprisingly in one whole piece. When I got home, I saw the email.

I had been accepted to farm in Maui.

Within weeks, I packed my things and left San Diego. I needed this. I needed earth. I needed to let go and begin again.