By Linda Oatman High
Ojai, CA (The Hollywood Times) 8/17/2026 – Back in January of 2019, I posted on Facebook that one of my bucket list wishes was to someday be able to attend one of author/Yoga teacher Jennifer Pastiloff’s retreats. “I will manifest it,” I wrote. “One day.”
But time went on, with Life and bills and work and a son who suffers with serious illnesses. I thought that it was not likely that I’d ever be able to attend one of those magical retreats I kept reading about.
But then my BFF of 30 years died.
Marty Crisp was a fellow children’s book author who I met in 1995, when she was a news reporter sent to interview me about the publication of my first book. We hit it off, and became one of those indescribably compatible bestie duos. Never an argument; never any big drama or conflict. Just understanding, fun, support.
Marty and I traveled to conferences and workshops and writers’ events: New York City and Washington DC and Nashville, Tennessee. Marty and I snuck onto Emily Dickinson’s property and plucked moss for Marty’s fairy garden. We pulled off the DC Beltway and peed on private government property near bunkers surrounded with barbed wire. We earned our master’s degrees together at Vermont College of Fine Arts, graduating with our MFAs in Writing in the summer of 2010.
Marty and I were inseparable. We lived near one another in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but when Marty’s husband George passed away she moved to Huntsville, Alabama to live near her son and his family. I visited when I could, and we talked on the phone almost daily, She was the first person I called with good news, with bad news, with sadness and stress when my son’s symptoms felt like too much to carry alone.
But Marty fell ill, somewhere around November of 2024. She ended up in the hospital in December, and the decline was swift.
It was late December of 2024, and I was driving to the airport hotel in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I had an early morning flight, heading to Huntsville to see Marty. I hoped against all hope that she would hang in there until I arrived.
But Marty’s son Will called while I was on the Turnpike. Marty, my BFF of more than 30 years, was gone.
So Marty had just left this world on a cold Sunday evening in late December of 2024 and I was sobbing alone in an airport hotel room with a flight booked to see Marty in the morning. My heart shattered, and I was devastated that she left before I could get there.
So, there I was weeping in that hotel room, within the hour after my best friend died, and workaholic Me opened up my computer to check emails. (Because that’s what I do when I need distraction, when I need to stop the endless crying, when I need to feel as if there’s something to live for).
“I’m so sad, Marty! Where are you?!” I cried aloud as I logged into my email.
And there it was: an email from Santa Monica Yoga instructor Jennifer Pastiloff herself that began with something like, “O.M.G. Woman; you’re coming!!! You’re coming to Ojai because my friend Miriam Feldman is coming to the retreat and her son has the same illness as your son. Mimi wrote a book about her son’s brain disease, called He Came In With it.
I knew that book. I knew it well. I’d read it twice, astounded by how similar my journey of heartbreak and Miriam Feldman’s were.
I had emailed Jennifer Pastiloff months earlier, telling her that one day I’d like to attend if finances ever allowed. I told her about my son Zach, and the weight I carried ever since October of 2014, when my youngest child suffered a psychotic break and was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 24. I told her about the four pulmonary embolisms that almost took my son’s life, about how I’m a author of books for children and teens, about how I’d love to be a guest speaker/teacher if ever she had an opening at one of her retreats. I never heard back, and I assumed that Jennifer Pastiloff must be extremely busy. After all, she was, like, famous.
Yet there she was, within the hour after Marty’s death, the guru herself: Jen Pastiloff, in my inbox, saying, “O.M.G. Woman; you’re coming!”
And so it was. And so I went. I went to Ojai, using credit card air miles, to my first Jennifer Pastiloff retreat.
And I do believe that my friend Marty had something to do with it.
I now have been lucky enough to attend two of Jen’s retreats. Both times I came home and laid in the darkness of my bedroom, singing the Alanis Morissette song “Thank U.”
There are no words to adequately describe a Jen Pastiloff retreat. Sometimes I describe it as a “writing retreat” or a “Yoga retreat,” but it’s so much more. It’s writing and it’s art and it’s creativity and it’s movement and it’s Pilates and it’s Yoga and it’s eating your face off and laughing your head off and unabashedly crying your heart out.
It’s dressing up for a Weirdo Prom (Jen’s been calling it The Weirdo Retreat) and it’s opening up rather than shutting down.
The Weirdo Prom
Jen has a way of bringing EVERYTHING out of EVERYONE, and her retreats get intense. (We all left the latest one with puffy crying eyes, as one of the attendees had lost her son just 60 days before the retreat, and that amazing mom gave us the most incredible gift of knowing Ayden through a touching memorial video of his life. We all left the retreat grounds carrying his light and his beautiful free spirit forward into the world.)
Jen Pastiloff is the epitome of love and of light and of her trademark “I Got You” mantra.
She’s also freaking goofy as hell and wonderfully wild and weird and intellectual and philosophical and hilarious and so, so real.
We retreat attendees are moms who are grieving a child who is ill; we are moms who have lost a child; we are women who carry loss and hurt and shame and grief and joy and hope all in our fragile human containers. And then Jen cracks us wide open and catches whatever spills out.
Jen is blunt and honest and down-to-earth and endearingly self-deprecating. She’s open about her past struggles towards sobriety, the dissolution of her marriage, her childhood, her grief. And because Jen is so open, we, too, can be open.
And here’s something pretty freaking cool: this woman, this writer and retreat leader Jen Pastiloff? She has literally, literally, saved lives. But those are stories only for those who bond at a Weirdo Retreat. What happens in Ojai stays in Ojai; same for Italy. The attendees’ secrets are safe with those who share the space. (And by the way, men can attend, too. It’s not a woman-only event. Come as you are, whoever you may be.)
A Pastiloff retreat includes food, lots and lots of food, and there’s wine if you want it. There’s also the most amazing non-alcoholic bar run by the coolest bartender around:
Jen Tyminski (“Jen T.”) is a retreat attendee who operates Structured Sparks, an innovative business based in Seal Beach, California that offers coaching, business alliances, specialized project and event management, and of course, Jen’s trademark NA bar in which she whips up the most delicious of mocktails and non-alcoholic wine served beautifully.
Jen Pastiloff offers twice-a-year retreats in Ojai, California: land of horses, pink sunsets, and healing. Once a year, there’s an Italy retreat. (I’m manifesting that for some day; one day . . .)
Jennifer Pastiloff is the author of two books: On Being Human and Proof of Life.
Read her books to get a sense of the woman behind the retreats. Jen grew up in New Jersey, not far from Philly, and her father died when she was eight. She’s deaf. She worked in a Hollywood restaurant for years, struggling with anorexia and other life issues.
Jen suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of 33, and that’s when she got into Yoga, and writing, and finally, leading her retreats.
That was the moment that changed her life. That was the decision that changed so many lives, including mine.
Jen’s upcoming retreats are in Tuscany, Italy on September 13-19, 2026 and in Ojai on October 15-18, 2026. Email from her website for details.
So go. Eat the food. Drink the wine, or enjoy one of Jennifer Tyminski’s delicious non-alcoholic creations. Do the Yoga. Dance. Write. Paint. Laugh. Cry. Create. Connect. Confess. Jump in the water with those who are now your family.
And then sing Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” when you get back home. You will be forever changed, in the best of ways.
www.jenniferpastiloff.com
www.structuredsparks.com
