Community Spotlight: Cindy Shufflebarger & P23 Retreat
Rest for the Weary: How P23 Retreat Came to Be
Every so often we get to sit down with someone in our community whose story stops you in your tracks. This month, that's Cindy Shufflebarger, founder and executive director of P23 Retreat, a Richmond based ministry that walks alongside parents grieving the loss of a child.
Cindy and her husband Scott didn't set out to start a nonprofit. They set out to survive. Their third daughter, Ashlynn, lived only three days after she was born, and Cindy is honest about what came next. In the middle of that grief, she wrestled with hard questions about God's love and God's presence. “God could have healed her, but God didn't heal her. He must not love me was kind of where my thought pattern went,” Cindy shared. It didn't take long for her to see that Ashlynn's death wasn't a measure of God's love, but that didn't make the grief any less real or any less exhausting.
About three months after Ashlynn died, Cindy and Scott's in laws offered to watch their other children so the two of them could get away for a long weekend at a beach house. It was just a chance to catch their breath. Years later, looking back on their grief journey, they realized that weekend away had been the most powerful thing that helped them both, even though they grieved very differently from each other. That's when the idea was planted: one day, they wanted to give other grieving parents the same gift of rest.
The dream sat quietly for years. Eventually Cindy and Scott found a piece of land on a road called Solitude Drive in Reedville, Virginia, right on the water. They stepped out in faith and bought it, even though they had no idea how or when they'd ever be able to build on it. At closing, they learned the property was part of a small set of neighborhood covenants from a plot of land called Sheepshank Shores. Curious about the name, Cindy looked it up. A sheepshank is a nautical knot made by bringing a weaker piece of rope alongside a stronger one to reinforce it. “That's exactly what we're trying to do,” Cindy said.
They never did build that retreat house. Instead, God gave them something bigger. Rather than sending grieving families to one property, P23 Retreat now sends couples to Airbnbs and private vacation homes all over the country, three to four nights at a time, along with a care package that includes a guided prayer journal, a “messy grief journal” Cindy developed to help process grief through all five senses, and a team of three people committed to praying for them while they're away. Since starting the nonprofit in 2022, P23 Retreat has served more than 200 families across 27 states, from parents who lost a baby to stillbirth to parents who lost an adult child.
The name comes from Psalm 23, and Cindy is quick to point out that P23 Retreat serves anyone, regardless of their faith background. “We saw that Jesus wept at Lazarus's grave,” she said. “So he's with us in our grief. We saw that Jesus would retreat for time with the Father. We're offering retreat for the couple to be together, however they need it, but we saw that Jesus did that too.” She also points to 2 Corinthians, where we're encouraged to comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received. “Someone did this for us, and it was impactful. We want to do it for others.”
P23 Retreat is now working through a season of financial strain, and Cindy and Scott are pivoting to expand their reach without expanding their budget. They're developing “sending kits,” a resource that will equip churches and small groups to walk alongside a grieving couple on their own, from recruiting a prayer team to staying engaged well past the twelve week mark, which is often when outside support quietly falls away. They've also started an annual virtual memorial walk the week before Mother's Day, giving grieving parents around the country a way to feel connected to one another while raising support for the ministry.
Through all of it, Cindy keeps coming back to the same thread. “I feel like he's just growing it exponentially,” she said. “We've just tried to have open hands.” What began as two people longing for a place to rest has become a ministry that has walked hundreds of families through the hardest season of their lives, one retreat, one prayer, one care package at a time.
Ways to Get Involved
P23 Retreat is looking for people to come alongside this work in a few specific ways:
Join their circle of light. For $23 a month, you can help P23 Retreat offer light and hope to grieving parents during a very dark season.
Join their prayer team, committing to pray for couples while they're away on retreat.
Host a small gathering in your home, with appetizers or dessert, where Cindy or Scott can share their story and the work P23 Retreat is doing.
Invite them to speak with your small group or Sunday school class at church.
Volunteer to coordinate their memorial walk next May.
To get involved in any of these ways, reach out at p23retreat.org.
