Every Sunday morning I get up at 5:30 to prepare for Flourish, which starts at 6:30 PDT. Every other morning I get up at 5:30 to feed the chickens, so it’s not like Flourish is cramping my style. A late night for me is 10:05 PM. 

This means, basically, my life revolves around hens and adopted people. The hens are something I do to get eggs, but figuring out how to thrive as an adoptee and talking about adoption and supporting other adopted people is my jam.

It feels so good to have a purpose. One of the worst things about not knowing who you are is how hard it is then to have a clear sense of purpose. It’s like being a jellyfish without an ocean. You just…are. And you’re drying out. 

Pam Cordano and I started Flourish, a group for adopted people, when COVID hit and we couldn’t do our in-person retreats. At first we did Flourish as a week-by-week drop-in class, but then we decided to go big, to push the limits, and we created not just one but two year-long groups in order to accommodate the wide span of time zones from Australia to New Zealand to Canada to Hawaii to Maine to California to the U.K. (Hence the early class on Sundays.)

(I realize some of these areas listed share the same time zones, but I don’t feel like looking them up and getting all precise about my facts here. I’m still a good person. Just lazy when it comes to facts. I am adopted after all, and if someone can change my name, then who says someone might come along and change time zones? So why spend too too much time getting familiar with each one? Getting attached?)

Anyway.

We are into the second half of the year with the groups, and I am so glad Flourish exists. When adopted people gather and acknowledge and challenge thought patterns and feelings the body carries, wonderful things happen. People make friends. People quit their jobs. People show up and they show up and they show up and trust builds. People get angry with Pam and me. Ruptures happen. Repairs happen. Relationships get even stronger.

I understand myself and other adopted people even better now than I did six months ago, and so I want to write a book about what I have learned since writing my first book, You Don’t Look Adopted, a book I self-published five years ago this month. I want to focus on how I have noticed that a lack of self-esteem, self-confidence, and trust—things I can easily connect to being abandoned and then adopted—has affected my ability to dream up a wonderful life for myself where I feel free and fully bloomed, and I believe, how it affects other adoptees in similar manners. I want to address what is missing for myself and for my tribe, and I want to change. 

I started to write the book, but I had the feeling something was missing, and then I understood: my people. 

I don’t want to do this alone. I have learned so much, and I have so much belief in my own future and the future of the adopted people I know that I want to share and cheerlead and work my butt off in the company of people I love: other adoptees. 

I have another project that I am working on. I’m co-writing a book with the winningest Ivy League Coach, Kathy Delany-Smith, the Harvard women’s basketball coach. Over a hundred of her former players are contributing to the book, and I’m learning so much about what it means to play the game to win while always looking to the other players to see who needs help. This is making me bolder and even more ambitious. This is energy I want to share. 

Relying on self-confidence, self-esteem, and trust, I decided to create a group of writers to come along with me. 

The best thing, I think, is that you don’t have to think you write well to play. You just have to play. The well part will follow. 

I figured if I was getting up early anyway, another weekend class would be fine. This time I made it even earlier! 6 AM PDT!!

Here’s the write-up I created to describe the class. I hope you can join me.

 

 

Self-confidence, Self-esteem, and Trust

 

Writing into Self

and the Adoptee Experience

 

A Group Writing Project

that Aims to

Change the World

 

 

 

 

I started to write a book about self-confidence, self-esteem, trust, and the adoptee experience because it had occurred to me that what stands in the way between me and even being able to imagine the life of my dreams--never mind create it—had to do with a fundamental lack of self-confidence, self-esteem, and trust. 

 

It’s hard to write from your core when you haven’t claimed it or don’t even know what it feels like aside from an agitated, anxious mass. 

 

I believe when babies are separated from their mothers, a deal is struck: We the universe, we the people, are going to take away your sense of self and safety, but we will keep you alive.

 

Well, I’m alive, but I also want to live. I don’t like that deal. I don’t want it. 

 

One thing I’ve learned from doing Flourish classes with Pam Cordano is that adoptees do better with other adoptees when it comes to whole-heartedly saying yes to life. 

 

I would argue that adoptees need other adoptees, also, in order to create their deepest and most meaningful work. I mean, why do something alone when you can have someone there who gets you? Why drive blindly when you can see? 

 

I want to make a ruckus, and I want you to do it with me. I want adoptee voices to get louder and more powerful and to have clearer intent. What is it exactly that we even want? 

 

This is my plan: I’ll have two groups of 20 people (I was going to do one group, but the demand is high, and I want to keep the groups at a manageable size-) and we’ll meet weekly via Zoom to talk about writing, your writing, and to do writing exercises focused on ways to help you best bloom into a life marked by trust, self-confidence, and self-esteem. 

 

I’m not a therapist—I’m a writer—so these exercises will be based on getting you to say what you feel in the clearest, truest voice possible. You may want to have a therapist to help if you enter Triggered City. 

 

I’ll do one-on-one calls with you twice a month for 30 minutes each in order to talk about your work. 

 

My goal is to have you each write your own book, and for you to each contribute a chapter of your book to a group book, one I can self-publish on Amazon and make available to readers at no cost. This way you will get free advertising for your own book and the world will have easy access to many adoptee voices (for free!). 

 

I have heard some people argue that adoptees should not charge other adoptees for work done. I think this is ridiculous. I invested thousands and thousands of dollars to get where I am as a writer, and I need to charge for my work in order to pay my bills. My rate for coaching is $150 an hour, so, as you can see, I am also trying to make this affordable for a group of people who notoriously struggle with money issues. 

 

May we all feel we are enough and that we have enough. May our work together help get us there.

 

I’m going to offer two group Zoom times to accommodate those in as many time zones as possible:

 

Group 1: Saturdays 6:00-8-00 AM PDT.

 

Group 2: Tuesdays 4:00-6:00 PM PDT.

 

Once you are in a group, that is your home. You’ll stay there. 

 

Cost: $150 per month

 

We will start Saturday, September 4. 

 

To reserve your spot, please let me know if you prefer Sunday or Tuesday and send September’s $150 to me via Venmo (Anne-heffron) or Paypal (anneheffron@gmail.com). I ask you to commit to the year for the health and well-being of the group. 

 

Let’s do this.

 

 

 

 

What people have said about working with me: 

 

Anne Heffron isn't merely a writing coach, she's a one-woman arsenal of advice (when it's needed), encouragement (when it's warranted) and, above all, in possession of the ability to nourish the soul by reminding you why you wanted to write in the first place. Put quite simply, I would not be writing right now if not for her.
-Elliot Lavine

 

Being coached by Anne was like being given a giant permission slip and being told to fill in the blank. Her genuine curiosity and insightful questions encouraged me to open new doors in my writing and step through them just to see what would happen. The power of being seen and validated by one who equally values humor and honesty is not to be underestimated.

-Mel Toth

 

Anne has a keen ability as a coach to take her students where we don’t want to go. Deep inside ourselves. She can take a linear/binary thinker like me safely into the world of the esoteric, making for a more courageous and meaningful story.
-Ron Pontrelli

 

Meeting with Anne is the highlight of my week. Anne is kind, motivational, and a brilliant listener and advisor. She's compassionate, empathetic and gets it. She's also wickedly funny. Under her guidance I've written about raw, hard stuff which feels so much better now it's on paper than being dragged around by me. I'm so grateful to have this opportunity, and want to keep working with her for the rest of my life!

-Jane Gould