Unveiled, Connected Couples Retreats

  • What: Unveiled weekend retreat and Connected one-day retreat.
  • Where: Monica Parish, Whitefish Bay
  • When: July 17-19 (Unveiled), July 18 (Connected)
  • Cost: $350 per couple for Unveiled in person; $199 for Unveiled livestream; $120 per couple for Connected in person; $60 for Connected livestream. Scholarships remained available at press time — email jpiiretreatmilwaukee@gmail.com to request assistance.
  • More Details: Go to jpiihealingcenter/unveiled. Organizers expect the retreat to sell out.

For married couples, the struggle can be real. Most just wrestle with the question of how to get a weekend away, but many husbands and wives engage in a much deeper struggle to build a marriage that’s healthy and strong.

St Monica in Whitefish Bay and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee are hosting a weekend experience to help married couples of all ages — and those stepping toward marriage — get that time together and discover God’s healing through what retreatants have called a “life-changing” experience.

The Unveiled weekend retreat, as well as its shorter sister event, the Connected one-day retreat, will happen July 17-19. Couples can attend in-person and virtually.

Unveiled comes from the John Paul II Healing Center, which is the same team that offers Healing the Whole Person. It is taught nationwide just a few times a year by author and speaker Dr. Bob Schuchts, who has 30 years’ experience as a marriage and family therapist, and his daughter, Carrie Schuchts Daunt, who shares stories about how God has transformed her marriage through this teaching.

“The Unveiled Couples Healing Retreat is really to help couples receive all the grace that’s available to them through the Sacrament of Marriage, to understand God’s dream, God’s plan for their marriage. He desires that our marriages would help us experience his love for us and the healing he longs to give each of us.” said Margaret Rhody, Associate Director for Parish Renewal with the archdiocese Office of Evangelization and Catechesis, who participated in the Unveiled retreat with her husband.

She shared that her husband’s favorite thing about Unveiled was that it offered teaching from Dr. Schuchts based on his experience as a therapist followed by time for structured individual reflection and then discussion exercises with your spouse — no one is expected to discuss in a broader group.

At the end of the retreat her husband’s response was, “more homework please.”

Norma and John Herbers participated in Unveiled virtually in preparation to serve on St. Monica’s Unveiled Core Team. “Even though we’ve been married over 40 years, we found the Unveiled experience to be extremely beneficial in bringing intimacy through enhanced communication skills. We recommend it to every married couple,” Norma Herbers said.

Rhody said that Unveiled offers couples at all stages of marriage a pathway to better understand each other’s hurts and receive God’s healing.

“Couples who already have a strong marriage found it really helpful because they received formation on marriage that they’d never heard before,” Rhody said.

“Couples who are engaged said it’s actually really helpful to learn some of this before they go into marriage, so that they can intentionally lean on the grace that God wants to give us as we enter into our marriage.”

“There’s something about a weekend away. I can carve out a weekend away to just invest in my most important relationship. Really, your marriage is so important. It colors everything. It’s your home base. It’s meant to be a place of security and freedom, and being able to grow into who you fully are,” she said.

“It might feel like a sacrifice to give up a July weekend in our short Wisconsin summer, but it’s so worth it to have time away together, and the retreat offers multiple opportunities to go for a walk by nearby Lake Michigan together. We made it a ‘date weekend away’ and that was so good for us.”

Rhody added that often, one or both members of the couple struggle to share what’s wounded within themselves. Examples of wounds adults might bring into a marriage include adverse childhood experiences such as the divorce of parents or the unexpected death of a loved one, anxiety exacerbated by the stress of work or raising a child with challenges and pain from miscommunication in past conflicts.

“Most couples don’t want to hurt each other. Many hurt each other unintentionally and don’t know how to avoid hurting each other or help each other heal from those hurts,” Rhody said. Unveiled and Connected help bring a safe atmosphere to share and tools to process those things, and in a place where the sharing is only between the couple if that’s their wish, she said.