Everyone in the Room, Raise Your Hand if You're Adopted. The Final Retreat.

When I was 51 and emerging from a fog so violent and intense it felt like I was being pushed through a force that was trying to reshape or kill me, I knew I needed something, but I had no idea what. I finally met Pam Cordano, a fellow adoptee, and almost immediately I experienced something I had been looking for since I was a child: someone who reflected me back to me. Plenty of people in the past had reflected many parts of me to me. I had wonderful friends, family members I loved, but the adoption piece was a gaping hole, and when that wasn’t addressed in my relationships, I wasn’t completely myself.

 The thing was, for most of my life I didn’t know I needed to talk about adoption. I just felt like a train teetering off the tracks. I spent the majority of the time a slight distance from my own body. In the company of another adoptee my nervous system relaxed in a way that was unfamiliar to me, and I felt better. I felt stronger, more capable, more excited to be alive. I felt more generous. The more I was present for myself, the more I had to give others.

I asked Pam, a therapist, if she would consider doing adoptee retreats with me. I thought it would be so cool if we could gather small groups of adopted people together so they could experience the bodymind shift I’d had since making friends with her. Pam is an amazing therapist. She’s insightful and straightforward and creative—she was like a rocket compared to the snail therapists I’d worked with in the past, pre-fog (I. Want. My. Money. Back.), and I thought her skills combined with the tools I’d learned as a writer when I wrote a memoir about being adopted could be powerful additions to the healing modalities on offer for adoptees. 

We had eight retreats in just over a year. The 4-day sessions were so much more than I could have imagined. I didn’t know just how amazing it would be when twelve adopted people gathered in a room with the intention to heal and love. That feeling! It’s crack. It’s solace for the tired and stressed. It’s hope. It’s a world that finally vibrates at the same level you do. It’s a deep breath. It’s tears. It’s laughter. 

I can’t commit to any kind of job when I do these retreats because they require so much travel. If I didn’t have to make a living, I’d do these retreats forever. Pam and I have committed to each other to try to find a way to make the information we put together available in some form so that more people can have access to it for less money. 

We have our last retreat coming up from August 22-25 in Jersey City. We had three spaces just open up, and so there is still time for you to be part of what so many participants have told us is a life-changing experience. 

We are offering a sliding scale this last time, also, so in case you were waiting until you could afford it, try us now. 

Contact me for details at anneheffron@gmail.com.

See you there.