I have a dream!

I want a place for adopted people to meet and to stretch themselves both in comfort and discomfort. I want them to feel safer and more at home in their bodies. I want them to think of the present moment and the future as much or more as they think of the past. I want them to feel they have people they can reach out to who get it, who get them, who feel like forever friends.

I’ve been working with the winningest coach in Ivy League history for over a year now as we put her book together, and I have learned so much about working hard, toughness, discipline, and selflessness. I learned a lot from writing You Don’t Look Adopted about all of those things, but I have also been contending all my life with the learned behavior of collapsing when things get hard. I had also learned how to fawn—a sort of internal collapse where I will try to please you in exchange for a sense of felt safety in myself. It’s gross.

I am learning how to be more accountable to my own self—for the sake of being me, not for the sake of trying to survive in a world where I feel like an alien. I am learning that just because my brain tells me I’m an alien, that these deep seated trauma-based beliefs I have need to be called out, brought to the light, and examined if I want the chance to live a life that feels vital and authentic.

Did my mother really abandon me? How do I know she truly didn’t find a way to get me a better life than the one I would have had with her? What do I gain from believing I was abandoned? What do I gain from believing I carry a primal wound? One thing I gain is the ability to avoid living whole heartedly. I get to live like a creature that was half-born, half-committed to living because I didn’t get what I wanted—to be kept. I get to live in a tantrum my whole life! I get to never really fail at anything because I never really tried. I get to not feel the overwhelming grief because I’m sitting on the lip of it, looking down but never fully immersing myself in it so I can swim to the other side and crawl out.

By buying into the limiting beliefs my brain feeds me, I get to avoid being completely myself, a being my brain tells me neither mother wanted—one mother didn’t want me to be hers and one wanted me to be a hers I could never be since we don’t share the DNA of family. I get to avoid pulling myself up to my full height and saying, Ready or not, here I am. I get to avoid disappointing others by living in constant disappointment myself.

I get to avoid the muck of being human by telling myself I’m an alien and living half in space, unreachable.

I have dedicated the few years on calling bullshit on myself. I feel like I’m becoming the parent I’ve always needed—one that knew what I carried inside as far as trauma goes, but one who also knows my potential, and who is willing to push me even when I say I think I am going to die. I know my tricks. I want a lot for me. I want me to feel safe but also to feel fully realized as a human being. I want those things for you, too, if they sound good to you.

My thought was to create a super affordable online retreat so that people who struggle getting to in-person retreats for reasons of finance or time could do meet with other adopted people in the comfort of their own homes.

My one ask it that people keep their cameras on. At in-person retreats, you can’t suddenly pull a dark screen over your body. A sense of cohesive, visible community is so important to the whole process of retreating together, I believe.

The suggested reading to prepare for the retreat are the books Belonging by Toka-pa Turner and Living Untethered by Michael Singer.

The days will be full of discussion, brainstorming, and deep self-introspection. My goal is for you to feel more excited and inspired in community about your self and your life at the end of the three days.

Dates:

Friday, March 3, 6-8 PM EST

Saturday, March 4th, 10 AM-12 PM EST and 2-5 PM EST

Sunday, March 5th, 12-3 PM EST

Cost:

Suggested donation of $200. Pay what feels doable.

My Venmo is anne-heffron. My PayPal is anneheffron@gmail.com. Write to me at that same email if you have any questions.