On the last night of Camp Heartbreak, Jessica*, a 26-year-old engineer from Niagara, stood in front of a blazing bonfire and threw a piece of paper into the flames.
In this ritual, the burning note represented something she wanted to leave behind in the ashes: The dream she’d had for her life — marriage, kids, a house — that had evaporated a month earlier, when her seven-year relationship ended.
“I had no idea what I was going to do. The next day, week, month, year looked so daunting. I didn’t know who I was as a person, what I even wanted out of life anymore,” said Jessica. “All I knew is that it wasn’t the one path that I had already chosen.”
Still, she found herself hesitating before she threw the paper into the fire. “I was like, ‘No, no, I don’t want to let it go.’ It was a very real representation,” she said. “I didn’t think I was going to have that reaction. It was very emotional to really choose to let that go.”
It helped that Jessica was surrounded by other women saying their own symbolic goodbyes: To a marriage, to someone they loved, to a dream that had ended or would never come true. “Everyone was there to support each other, which was so beautiful.”
This “ending ceremony” in the Kawarthas on an unseasonably chilly late May weekend capped the very first session of Camp Heartbreak, which ran from May 29 to June 2.
On the surface, it seems like any other wellness-adjacent adult retreat, promising nostalgic activities like archery and kayaking, and a postcard-worthy setting in cottage country complete with two lakes. But this camp caters specifically to the broken-hearted, offering intensive therapy led by trained professionals alongside campfire singalongs and a high-ropes course.
“It was basically a hypothesis that camp plus therapy equals good,” said founder Greg Chociej, who was propelled to create this immersive retreat by a feeling that most of us don’t have the tools or the space to process having your heart broken.
“We’ve always looked at it as a rite of passage, like you’re going to get your heart broken but you’ll be OK. But some people aren’t,” said Chociej, a 41-year-old entrepreneur from Toronto. “I lost both my parents to cancer in my teens, and I think the idea for this started there. And then I started going through romantic relationship breakups and it was like, this sucks just as bad.”
When you tell someone you’ve lost a parent, he said, they try to give you a hug. But when you say you’ve just been broken up with, they try to get you drunk. “To me that’s a really unhealthy way of dealing with stuff,” he said. “I kept wondering why there weren’t more support systems for people experiencing something ubiquitous.”
To ensure that nobody feels alone in their sadness like he had, Chociej made sure group therapy a central part of the camp’s programming. Campers were split into groups A and B. While one group was in therapy — split into at least two sessions, adding up to three or four hours a day — the other was off doing woodwork, pickleball or canoeing, or therapeutic-oriented activities like mindful creative writing or a sound bath.
Mealtimes consisted of classic camp food with “15 years of sophistication” added on: charred salmon, homemade burgers, and pies made with rhubarb grown on the property. The morning coffee came from Pilot. The sleeping arrangements were your classic bunk-style set up (this cost $1,298 per person, but will increase to $1,498 in future), although private one- or two-bedroom cabins could be booked for an extra cost.
As is tradition, the campers quickly came up with a nickname for the two professionals who led them through group therapy: “Jellen,” a portmanteau for family mediator Jennifer Donison and psychotherapist Ellen Feldman.
Vanessa*, a 48-year-old from Mississauga, was the first camper to arrive. She was drawn to the retreat by the chance to feel like a kid again for a while, and take some time away from the challenges of parenthood and her long-term relationship. “I was hoping for some peace, clarity and distraction,” she said. “I was very, very wrong about the escape from reality, because group therapy puts it smack dab in front of you with a mirror.”
This process was intense, to say the least. “It was exhausting. You literally cry for hours,” said Vanessa. “After two days, I was like, ‘I can’t cry anymore — but you do.’”
She was in Group A, along with six others. “The group of women that I was paired with were so willing to be open and vulnerable and supportive,” said Vanessa. “We held space for one another, guided by Jennifer and Ellen. We created a sisterhood that has continued outside of camp.” Weeks later, they were still supporting each other in a group chat.
It was “bittersweet” to realize that she was far from alone in the heartbreak she’d experienced. “Sometimes we all feel unseen and unheard, so being witnessed and witness to, without judgment, without anyone being intimately involved, is something incredibly special,” she said. “[But] it’s soul crushing, especially as a parent. There are so many times I cried through therapy, going, ‘My poor daughter.’ And then just realizing how messed up everyone is, and how much unresolved trauma…everybody needs Camp Heartbreak, for sure.”
Jessica, who describes herself as “super introverted and shy,” counts the group therapy as a highlight. She feels she benefited from hearing the campers’ myriad perspectives: people thinking about leaving a relationship, people years out from a toxic marriage, those freshly single like her. “The one thing I’m always going to take away from camp is the idea of two truths,” she said. “It can be true that you did have a good relationship, but it’s also true that it’s over and you need to move on. It’s a hard concept to be able to accept, but it was really impactful for me, to move forward.”
At the same time, the campers — who were by coincidence all women — had fun. “We laughed so hard one woman peed her pants,” said Vanessa. “It’s those moments in between the heavy stuff that were so amazing, being able to feel like I could just be myself.”
Jessica was not only mourning her relationship; she had lost her father six months previously, a double burden of grief. She found the balance between intense emotional work and lighthearted distraction was ideal. “Therapy can be very mentally draining, and then you go do a physical activity where your brain isn’t playing reruns of the session,” she said. Campers could also opt to spend time alone; Jessica spent some of this time shooting hoops, connecting with a sport her father had taught her to love. “They also provided everyone with sketchbooks or journals, and I used that time just to draw.”
As she drove out of the camp, Jessica said she felt a thousand times lighter than when she arrived. “I was so lost, and I was able to walk away feeling like myself again,” she said. “If I had not gone to camp, I would have been months, years behind where I was, mentally. You really get to focus on yourself.”
She met one camper who lives near her, and they’ve already gotten together. “The supportive atmosphere from camp trickled out into our relationship now,” she said. “If I were to have these same conversations with my other friends, they’d be coming at it from a different perspective. Instead, me and her are just there to be like, ‘I understand that is really hard, I know you were talking about that before.’” She describes this as feeling like you’re allowed to say something like, ‘I’m not ready to move on yet,’ and the other person will just be happy for you that you’ve expressed the feeling.
As for Chociej’s hypothesis that therapy plus camp is good? Well, he’s already planning a fall session. “It gave me a lot of hope back. It was really beautiful,” he said, visibly moved at how all the campers began singing together at the campfire right away on the first night. “You could see how much people are going through it, and they often go through that alone. To see that we could help, and they could help each other, and that people need each other and it’s going to be OK…I can’t believe how well it went.”
*Last names withheld for privacy.
