Charlotte Church and team at The Dreaming Retreat Centre on what’s coming up – including Returning to the Queer Heart
"This retreat offers a space to return to the body and welcome the full range of our feelings – heartbreak, grief, joy – meeting them with love"
Former Attitude cover girl Charlotte Church is beloved by the gays for many reasons – not least two of the best pop bangers of the 00s, ‘Crazy Chick’ and ‘Call My Name’ – and now we have a new reason to call her mother.
The music veteran has served as founder and lead facilitator of The Dreaming, a wellness retreat nestled in the Elan Valley of Wales, since 2023 – and this weekend, it’ll be opening its doors to LGBTQ visitors for Returning to the Queer Heart.
“Queer people are often denied the fullness of their humanity by a world that demands we fit into narrow moulds,” leaders Daniel Sutton Johnston and Sanah Ahsan tell Attitude. “This retreat offers a space to return to the body and welcome the full range of our feelings –heartbreak, grief, joy – meeting them with love. We are gathering together to embrace each other’s complexities without shame, giving ourselves permission to be deliciously and messily human.”
“It’s such a living, breathing thing” – Charlotte Church on The Dreaming
Added Charlotte of what’s coming up at The Dreaming: “There’s always a lot bubbling under the surface here — it’s such a living, breathing thing. But one thing I’m especially excited for is our WITCH retreat, which has been a long time coming.
“We’re also bringing back the Song of the Soul retreat, which holds a really tender place in my heart — it’s such deep, personal work, and people really come away changed.
“Then of course, we’ve got our Celtic Wheel retreat series, which includes Beltane, Solstice, and Samhain — these are absolutely beautiful markers in the year for us. They help ground us in the rhythms of nature and each other, and there’s real magic in honouring them together as a community. It’s about remembering who we are in the context of the Earth and the seasons — not just the fast-paced world.
“One day I might be called to be a steward of another piece of land” – Charlotte Church
On the future of The Dreaming, Charlotte meanwhile told us: “Honestly, I don’t really see The Dreaming as a business — it’s more of a symbiotic relationship with this land.
“We tend to each other. I’m completely open to the idea that one day I might be called to be a steward of another piece of land, if that’s what the universe or the Earth needs from me.
“But if that were to happen, I know the story would be entirely different. Each place has its own soul, its own energy, its own needs. It wouldn’t be about copying and pasting this — it would be about deeply listening again, learning again, and letting the land and the people shape what it becomes.”