OUR RETREATS
Teddy's Wish funds annual healing retreats for parents who have
lost a baby due to SIDS, stillbirth or neonatal death.
TURNING TRAGEDY INTO PURPOSE
We set up Teddy’s Wish to give hope, help and support to other grieving families and to fund research into the causes of baby loss. As a small, volunteer-run charity, we’re driven by doing something meaningful in Edward’s honour. Our vision is that in the future, there will be no more grieving parents of tiny, perfect babies. Together with your support and generosity, we believe that vision is achievable.
Space to grieve & heal
After experiencing a major loss, grief can significantly affect both your mind and body.
Our weekend retreats, which are free of charge to parents, combine exercises to improve psychological health. These include group support, creative writing, a gardening with grief workshop, mindfulness meditation and yoga.
The retreats are a safe space that give parents the chance to feel their grief and to connect with the baby they have lost. By doing so, we help parents take steps towards healing. Steps that start at the retreat but can be continued at home.
There's also the opportunity to get to know other bereaved parents, who can empathise and share their experiences.
If you are interested in attending one of our retreats, please get in touch through the contact us page or email support@teddyswish.org
What our parents have said about our retreats
The retreats are held over a weekend in the restorative surroundings of St Katharine's Parmoor and couples or individuals can attend. Our residential weekend retreats are run and facilitated by Paula Abramson and Julia Bueno, and our day retreats are run and faciliated by Jenni Thomas OBE with Nicola Whitworth. Teddy's Wish funds the entirety of the retreat, asking parents only to cover their travel costs.
Please email support@teddyswish.org for details on our upcoming residential retreat on Saturday 6th June 2026 or click here
Our Retreat Facilitators
Paula Abramson
Psychotherapist and Training Facilitator
Paula is a psychotherapist and training facilitator, specialising in providing bereavement support to families and training for professionals, following the death of a baby or child. Paula worked for more than ten years in the NHS, providing support to families and professionals. She was also appointed as bereavement counsellor for the Wandsworth Child Death Overview Panel, the first role of its kind in England.
Since 2008 Paula has designed and delivered training workshops for healthcare professionals whose work includes supporting families when a baby or child dies. Learning from families lived experience is always at the heart of Paula’s training.
Having worked within the public and charity sector, in 2019 Paula founded Bereavement Training International, a baby and infant loss consultancy. Working in partnership with some of the leading baby loss charities Paula’s consultancy delivers training to more than two thousand healthcare professionals each year.
Paula has informed national policy, shaped professional practice and provided transformative support to thousands of bereaved parents and professionals. She has consulted on many national baby loss projects and initiatives and has authored or co-authored papers and journal articles. In recent years she has guest featured on a number of baby loss podcasts. In 2019 Paula joined the Ockenden Review Team to help set up and lead the Family Support Service for the Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Trust Maternity Review.
Paula is an ambassador for Abigail’s Footsteps, a baby loss charity providing support to families and professionals, and a trustee for First Touch, the charity supporting the neonatal unit at St George’s Hospital.
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Julia Bueno
Psychotherapist and Training Facilitator
Julia has been a psychotherapist for over twenty years. Alongside her private practice, she has worked for the NHS, Universities, and charitable counselling services.
Julia has expertise in supporting people through reproductive loss. A former Trustee of the Miscarriage Association, she is a member of its Health Professional Panel and manages its national directory of specialist talking therapists. She runs both support and therapy groups for those experiencing loss, and trains and supervises therapists in the field.
Julia is the author of two books. Her first, The Brink of Being – talking about miscarriage, won the British Medical Association Popular Medicine Book Award in 2021 and was runner-up for the British Psychological Society Book Award 2021. It has been published in the UK, the US, Romania, and Thailand. Her second, Everyone’s A Critic, explores the universal experience of self-criticism and has reached readers in the UK, Mexico, the Middle East, Romania, China, and Poland.
Julia's writing and books have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The New York Times, The Guardian and Psychology Today, and she reviews books for The Times Literary Supplement. She has appeared on podcasts, radio and TV talking about her work. She is currently writing her third book, Coping With Pregnancy Loss, and is working with a colleague on an edited collection of writings for clinicians.
Julia sits on the Adjudication Panel of the UKCP’s complaints and conduct process and examines communication skills for senior doctors with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Before training as a psychotherapist, Julia was an unfulfilled solicitor and taught law. She runs, meditates every day and hates cold water swimming. She’s learning to draw and to play the piano.
Upcoming Retreats
“It was quite literally life changing for me. Connecting with other parents who are living a similar trauma gave me a sense of belonging, where I have an 'otherness' in the rest of society. Something I have been yearning for so long. In a world so lonely and alienating, there was a sense of togetherness."