Story by Reagan Scott
LINCOLN (SNR) - A Rachel’s Vineyard weekend for healing after abortion will be held in the Lincoln/Omaha area Oct. 25-27.
Retreat details and location are available by contacting Heather at 402-253-9936 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. More retreat dates and locations are available at rachelsvineyard.org.
Founded by Theresa Burke, Ph.D., Rachel’s Vineyard offers participants a place to heal from the emotional and spiritual wounds of a past abortion.
Open to women who have experienced an abortion, and also mothers, fathers, married couples, grandparents, siblings of aborted children and those who have been involved in the abortion industry, the weekend offers attendees a way to acknowledge any unresolved feelings that may follow an abortion experience.
In 2018, Rachel’s Vineyard reported that the organization had offered more than 13,000 retreats, and served over 320,000 individuals, couples and families and since its inception. It was Burke who adapted the retreats from the book, “Rachel’s Vineyard: A Psychological and Spiritual Journey for Post Abortion Healing” in 1995.
There were 18 retreats held in 1999, and the organization now holds more than 1000 retreats annually in 48 states and 57 countries.
Heather Hruby, a member of the Rachel’s Vineyard team for Nebraska said that the first Rachel’s Vineyard retreat was held in the state in 2001, and that there has been at least one retreat held in the state almost every year since.
Because Rachel’s Vineyard is a national organization, and retreats are spaced throughout the year, a retreat could draw both in state and out of state participants. In Hruby’s experience, she said there may be five to 11 people on a typical retreat.
While there are elements of the retreat that are only known to volunteers and participants, Hruby said that one aspect involves putting oneself in the scriptures using all five senses, to help heal trauma that happens in the body.
“In a way, it’s more effective than just talking about it,” Hruby said.
Participants have the opportunity to work through any anger that they may have, are helped through the process of grieving a lost life and have the opportunity to partake in the Sacraments. While the Nebraska retreat is Catholic in denomination, Hruby said that non-Catholics are invited to attend, and that members of any Christian denomination would get a lot out of the retreat because it is all based in Scripture.
“We approach this work with mercy, and not judgement,” Hruby said. “A lot of people in the Church have been impacted by abortion, and they need an avenue for healing. I’ve seen marriages saved, people come into the Catholic Church and scores of people return back to their faith.”
Taylor* (name changed for privacy) attended a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat in 2015 to find healing after abortion. For many years, Taylor found herself living with unpredictable imaginings of what her baby might have looked like, or how old her baby would have been. She had a view of herself as “permanently altered in a negative way” and lived with an interior sorrow until one day in 2015, when she said she was triggered to look for something that could help her explain why she felt the way she did.
After a Google search, Taylor came across an organization called Silent No More, which seeks to bring awareness of the effects that abortion has on both men and women to the public. She emailed a contact in the organization who got her in touch with a Rachel’s Vineyard representative. When a retreat was suggested, Taylor made the decision to attend, and said that the weekend has had a lasting impact.
“I had no idea of the depth of the sorrow and the grief that was in my heart, and that was touched by forgiveness,” Taylor said. “I was finally able to acknowledge and embrace the life I had destroyed, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
Looking back, Taylor said that the whole experience was very healing, and very necessary.
She said, “At the end of that I was just set free,” she said. “…I know that I’m forgiven.”
Now, it is Taylor’s hope that the Church will be more active in witnessing to the love, forgiveness and mercy of God, and will reach out to more post-abortive women.
“I’m just an average Catholic girl who grew up in an average Catholic home, and that means that I am not unique, and that means I am not the only one,” Taylor said.
