Life After the Fog -- A Year-Long Group for Adopted People

Life After the Fog

A Year-Long Group for Inquiry into How to Live Authentically

Since writing You Don’t Look Adopted, I have made it my life’s work to figure out how to thrive as a person who has a brain and body that carries trauma stemming from a time I can’t remember.

I have led or co-led three different year-long groups that focus on adoption and voice. What keeps me coming back to groups is that I see this is where the good stuff happens. I think so much of the difficulties adopted people face in life stem from a feeling of isolation, of being different, of not being seen or heard. You take people who feel like islands and put them with other people who feel like islands, and everything shifts.

Who are you when you aren’t alone? Who are you when you are understood, seen, heard? What do you want to say when you know someone will listen? Who do you want to be when you know someone will mirror back power, strength, understanding, and love?

What would you do if you felt supported and safe?

What do you really think about…everything?

I recently finished a book called Truth and Agency: Writing Ideas for People Who Were Adopted that will be available on Amazon in the next few weeks. I have come so far from the young woman I was in graduate school who was trying to write a story, any story. I have learned it’s okay to say what I think. I have learned it’s okay to exist! I have learned how to turn on this thing inside of me that feels like me in order to write what feels like truth to me. I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am—a place where I feel increasingly free to be myself instead of feeling like I’m in a cage I don’t understand.

I have an ability to see blocks in people. Maybe it’s from having a mother who tried to hide her true self from the world. Maybe it’s from years of being a massage therapist where I learned to spot physical blocks in people’s bodies. Maybe it’s because anything that doesn’t feel true to me sets off all sorts of alarms. Pay attention, my bodymind says to me, something isn’t right. I live by John Keats’s statement that truth is beauty.

I have no interest in judging a person or what they do with their life. Life and creation aren’t about good or bad, I don’t think. What I am interested in is how free is a person to express their truth.

With that in mind, we’ll use writing and group inquiry as tools in this class to help you access your thoughts and beliefs and dreams, but it’s not about being a writer. It’s about being you. You, I believe, are inherently a writer when you write. We’ll use all sorts of things as tools, and I’ll be bringing in guest speakers to share their ideas with you to keep your mind challenged and engaged as we embark on this path of exploration on what happens when you’ve acknowledged the repercussions of adoption and want to move on from a focus on trauma to curiousity about what you can do next.

We’ll meet once a week via Zoom, and then you and I will have two 30-minute one-on-one calls a month so we can connect. You can read me things you have been working on, or talk out something that is on your mind, or whatever you feel would most support you on that day.

The goal will be for, at the end of the year, the group to gather their forces and to continue meeting without me. You will have become a family of sorts, and you will have become interconnected and empowered. The goal is for you to feel more like yourself, stronger, braver, even more wholeheartedly engaged with life. 

I will hold the class twice on Wednesdays to try to accommodate different schedules. One class will meet from 12-2 ET, and the second will meet 6-8 PM ET.

To save your spot, you can Paypal (anneheffron@gmail.com) or Venmo (anne-heffron) July’s $150 to me.

If you want to pay for the year, it’s $1,600.

I love being part of these groups because I see that they really matter to the people who participate. I look forward to working with you.

Limit 20 participants per class.

What people in some of my groups have to say about our work together:

You have opened my world and my mind, given wings to my words, and allowed my thoughts to play. 

Through our work, I have found my voice and honed my craft.

I am forever grateful.

K.B.

The 3 classes I have taken with Anne over the past 1.5 years have resulted in more personal healing and growth than any other time in my life. I have never been a writer, yet I love learning from Anne. I would describe her classes as spending quality time with a smart, creative, funny, thoughtful and talented writer who shares her knowledge while encouraging the class to discover and acknowledge the individual, painful, hidden parts of their stories. She asks questions that get to the core of who I am so that I’m able to write about it.  She helps to put words to feelings I can’t articulate. Working with Anne is more like learning and growing together rather than being told how or what to write.

Anne wants to hear the true story of you, the one at the heart of your being, not the “nice” one you think everyone wants to hear. Two years ago, I would have said my story didn’t matter and nobody would want to hear it. With Anne’s help and guidance, I am writing pieces of my story and growing and healing in ways I never imagined possible. I feel both challenged and a sense of calm. I finally feel whole and alive. Anne hears me and genuinely cares about each person in the class.  She asks incredibly intuitive questions that result in “ah ha” moments of discovery for many of us.

I am so grateful I found Anne when I was coming out of the fog after finding my first family. She has a way of helping others put words to feelings and stories that have been hidden for decades. She has an amazing gift, and she gives freely of herself to every single person in each class. She speaks of her own truth and growth in such a way that encourages and shows a way to articulate the deepest parts of me.

K.K.

With little to no previous writing experience, I lacked the confidence and know-how to tell my story. Since working with Anne Heffron, I have learned new ways to express my thoughts into words– far beyond my expectations. Anne continues to inspire, challenge and motivate me with her incredible knowledge and infectious personality! 

K.V. 

Hearing Anne's voice on a podcast was the catalyst to finally pursuing the truth of who and what I am.  Now, she helps me find my voice in writing and always encourages me being me.  

A.G.

Working with Anne has unlocked my most authentic voice and given me the courage and focus to say everything I never knew I had to say with a momentum that is like life and death. Also, she's like a magical fairy guiding us into the darkest places with the gentlest and most hilarious spirit. I've never felt so generously and skillfully supported in my own journey of writing and self- discovery.

L.C.

Anne made me believe the unbelievable--that I could write a book.
She saw the writer in me before I saw it in myself.

S.C.

Anne makes me brave, both as a writer and an adoptee. She pays close attention and has a true gift for reading in between the lines of her student’s work, and provides accessible feedback on how to enrich their stories. She encourages breaking the rules of what story telling is supposed to look like, which gave me the permission I needed to convey mine in my own way. And that is invaluable. 

 K.S.