Have you ever felt the transformative power of community and connections? Join us as we dive into deep conversations with Erin, Cindy and Annie from Hiraeth, Hope, and Healing about their journeys of self-healing and discovery. They share their poignant stories of self-discovery, revealing how a nurturing community has become their backbone to joy. Each narrative is packed with inspiring tales of their retreat experiences that has allowed them to unfurl their authentic selves without judgement.
The suitcase is dropped in the room and the guest dive into the sanctuary these retreats present, forming a cocoon for adoptees and NPEs to forge real connections and form lifelong bonds. They underline the crucial roles understanding and empathy play in dealing with member of this community, and how a supportive each person in navigating this voyage. This episode is a treat for anyone intrigued by the intertwining realms of adoption and genealogy, and the therapeutic power of unity. Get ready to be moved and inspired by their stories, and possibly see the world through a different lens.
Have you ever felt the transformative power of community and connections? Join us as we dive into deep conversations with Erin, Cindy and Annie from Hiraeth, Hope, and Healing about their journeys of self-healing and discovery. They share their poignant stories of self-discovery, revealing how a nurturing community has become their backbone to joy. Each narrative is packed with inspiring tales of their retreat experiences that has allowed them to unfurl their authentic selves without judgement.
The suitcase is dropped in the room and the guest dive into the sanctuary these retreats present, forming a cocoon for adoptees and NPEs to forge real connections and form lifelong bonds. They underline the crucial roles understanding and empathy play in dealing with member of this community, and how a supportive each person in navigating this voyage. This episode is a treat for anyone intrigued by the intertwining realms of adoption and genealogy, and the therapeutic power of unity. Get ready to be moved and inspired by their stories, and possibly see the world through a different lens.
Welcome to Wandering Tree Podcast. I am your host, Lisa Ann.
Speaker 2:So much of that does intersect, so much about being an adopted person that resonates with someone who's an NPE. This absence or lack of genetic mirroring, Hello and welcome to today's episode.
Speaker 1:I am encouraged by the group that is with us today. I have members of Hyroth, hope and Healing joining us for a great discussion on the power of people and connections and all of the wonderful things that can come from our community. And I'm going to turn it over to each of these wonderful ladies and let them dive into their individual perspectives and stories and then we'll come back together and we're going to talk about some of their events, the beauty of those, and I'm going to start with you, erin.
Speaker 2:Welcome. Good morning Lisa. Thank you so much for having us. My name is Erin Constantino and I am an NPE. I made my discovery in 2017. In my everyday life, I am a wife, a mother, a teacher, an advocate, and I am so honored to be here with you today, sharing the wisdom that we have learned, the wisdom of our lived experiences, and how togetherness really does heal.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for that. Do you mind going back just one moment and spelling out NPE for our listeners, just in case this is their first episode ever?
Speaker 2:Sure. So NPE, a non-paternal event, an old genealogical term that used to delineate any break in the paternal line. With the rise of direct-to-consumer DNA tests, that began several years ago. We shifted that to be not parent expected, so the acronym now means not parent expected.
Speaker 1:Understood, all right. Well, thank you for that. With that, I think we're going to go over to Annie and let you introduce yourself a little bit to the audience.
Speaker 3:Hi Lisa, thanks for having us. My name is Annie Persico from the Bronx. I am an NPE and I discovered I should say I confirmed my NPE status around 2015. I originally took the test in 2012,. You know ignorance of the newness of the DNA tests. I didn't know what I was looking at. I am a legal assistant. I work at a law firm in Manhattan. I'm married. I have no children, but I do have lots of furry and feathered friends that share our house with us.
Speaker 1:All right, well, thank you, and that gets us over to you, cindy, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself as well.
Speaker 4:Cindy, the last one. Thank you, Good morning, lisa. My name is Cindy McQuay. I am the adoptee among us. I am a baby-soup-era adoptee and always known adoptee. I grew up with another adopted sibling and two bio-siblings, so I had the unique perspective of being in a supportive environment, of acknowledging adoption and all the things that come with adoption. I am a I should say was I was a stay-at-home mom. My children are now grown, so I guess I'm just a bum now that stays at home. My husband and I have three grown children. I have three grandchildren, so with my children being semi-grown and flown, it has allowed me to be much more of an adoptee advocate. I love doing searches for people, helping them find their bio-family, reuniting if possible but more so giving them the answers. I'm an avid reader. I love the beach. I have a dog.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for those introductions. I do appreciate it. What I would like to do next is talk a little bit about your connections to one another. How did you meet who wants to take that one on?
Speaker 2:Cindy and I were admins for a large Facebook group and Cindy loves to tell the story of how I thought she was a bitch I very first met her. Yes, and it's true, I did so. We had met each other on the interwebs and this particular group was hosting a meet and greet and it was in Philadelphia, which is dead center of where Cindy and I each live, and so we thought let's get together, let's go meet in person for real. And so we did. And we attended the meet and greet and we went out to dinner afterwards with the large-ish group of people that were there.
Speaker 2:And when we got back to the hotel that night I said to Cindy gosh, that was really so amazing, even though Cindy was the only adoptee, always known adoptee in attendance. I said that was really so amazing, but it just wasn't enough time. And just wasn't enough time kind of has become a central theme throughout what we do. So I said, cindy, what do you think if we plan a retreat? And it's like a weekend? And she was like, oh my gosh, let's do it. And that's the story of how we met. And then we met Annie at the very first retreat that we held.
Speaker 1:That's a great story. I love just kind of how it organically grew. And I've heard you guys talk about the perception of kind of aggravated right. That's a good word that the two of you felt. And I've listened now to you guys tell that story now twice and it's just as cute for me. I love it. I want to now kind of go a little bit into if you don't mind and maybe Annie, this would be good for you to answer this time Kind of talk about that first retreat a little bit and why did you decide to go on this retreat?
Speaker 3:Well, I was part of this larger group. I have adoptees in my life and in my orbit, so the world of adoption was not foreign to me. As it is Like some people just don't even know any adoptees, I happen to know quite a number of them. This retreat came up. I didn't go to the event in Philadelphia. I can't tell you why, I don't even remember if I was aware of it.
Speaker 3:But when this first retreat was scheduled I kind of thought well, the Jersey Shore is kind of close, it's only two hours away, and maybe it would be nice to meet some other people in person. I'm not very good at a one-on-one kind of thing, like I'm not good at banter or small talk if I don't know you. So I thought a group of people might be better for me to kind of disappear into, to kind of get a feeling of what are these people like. These are all these strangers. And when I confirmed that I was coming, erin sent me a message and asked if I wanted to stay in the house.
Speaker 3:So we have a retreat house. Some people stay in the house, some people stay off in a hotel or whatever. So I said, well, yeah, ok, I'll stay in the house, so I got there. I was one of the first people there, after Erin and Cindy. I think there may have been one or two other people there, and I had never met anybody. I walked in and I hope that your listeners aren't averse to profanities because I walked in and the very first thing Erin said to me was hi, do you fucking curse?
Speaker 1:So I said getting a mental picture here.
Speaker 3:Fuck, yeah, I'm from the Bronx, what do you think? And that was it. And I met everybody that was there and honestly, I said to them later on in the day or the weekend, I don't remember when, but I said when I came in and everybody started arriving, I just felt like I knew everyone in my heart. There was such a connection instantly with all of these strangers that I never met before and I just felt at home and in place. Like a lot of NPEs and adoptees will talk about how they always felt out of place in their own families, in their own social circles.
Speaker 3:I felt in place for probably one of the first times in my life. I went to the next five retreats before I missed one just not a good scheduling situation for me. And every single one I get something different, something better, more tools, more knowledge. I just can't recommend them enough to just be in person, even a one-on-one with another NPE or with an adoptee, just to say, like I get it, I know how you feel and you don't have to explain it, and I think that's such an important aspect of the healing process to have someone just acknowledge what you feel without you having to say well, I feel this way because I just do. I feel this way for no reason. It's just how I feel. To be put into that situation is just amazing. I can't speak highly enough of them.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tee up a couple of threads off of that, annie, and I'm going to punt the first one over to you, cindy, and the second one to you, erin. The first one is can you talk a little bit about the tools that are going into the toolbox for the attendees to kind of get a better understanding of the power of that activity? And then, erin, I'm going to come back around to when Cindy's kind of given us that and talk about the use of the tools. But more importantly, I want to speak to connection and validation of the feelings and how that is normative, and I'd really like you to kind of expand on that a little bit more, because Annie just talked about how she felt validated and comfortable in her feelings and that is, you know, it's very important. So, cindy, you first, how about the toolbox?
Speaker 4:The toolbox. Erin may have to chime in a tad on this. She's much better at explaining the toolbox. But I'll start off by saying when Erin and I first started speaking about doing the first retreat, I had said to her great, I'm all in, but we have to make sure that if we're including all of the community, meaning the NPEs, adopties, donor Conceived and LDAs that they're all inclusive. The meet and greet that we were at there were several projects as the wrong word I can't think of the word that they were doing that I could not partake in because it didn't include an Adopty. So that was very important. So when we pick our facilitator, we make sure to emphasize to them that it's not just for Adopties, that it's the entire trio of communities because of the intersections that we all have. So our tools could be anywhere from the academic aspect to the I don't want to say meditating, but to the breathing, you know, just learning how to breathe. Erin likes to refer to our tools as the Mary Poppins Bag and that when you leave each retreat, something else has been added into that Mary Poppins Bag that you can just keep pulling out whichever tool.
Speaker 4:I for one am not into writing, and that is one thing that we almost always have somebody doing some sort of writing therapy, but I found that, you know the first one. I may have sat there with my arms crossed figuratively, I was not sitting like that but I found that with an open mind. Wow, there is things with writing that I can use. It's not writing a book or my memoir, you know. It's finding parts of the different sessions that we offer that I can use. So we have all those different types of tools that everybody's going to benefit some part of each of the sessions that are offered. Again, like I just said about the writing, there's some thing that I can get, even if it's writing a sentence that validates things for me. So I don't know, erin, if there's anything that you want to add about the tools.
Speaker 2:No, I think you did a beautiful job. There's brain based, scientific approaches that work for some people, and then there's more holistic aspects that work for other people, and it's really important to us to have a good blend of all of that, because even somebody who considers themselves to be super academic and, you know, wants to know everything there is to know about the biological aspects of trauma. We could pull out a drum and start drumming, and they have this incredible visceral response to the release of all of that stored energy. So even someone who comes in thinking, oh, that that holistic stuff is, it's just not going to work for me. I need the practical, brain based stuff Great. We're just asking you to try it, and if it works for you, great. And if it doesn't, that's okay too. Just like someone who may be super holistic, doesn't want to try anything that is science based or, quote, practical, for lack of a better word. You know may learn that there's a natural pathway that it could work. So, yeah, we try to have something for everyone.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great approach. I do want us to touch. It really is about lived experience, connection, the intersection right and then inclusive of which is really about our collective community. There's a lot of cohesive themes in those, in all of those experiences that do create that intersection. I want to circle back on the kind of getting the validation, and I don't mean validation like, oh, you're so right, I mean validation as it is okay. So kind of talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I am very honest about is that when I met Cindy, I subscribed to the rainbows and unicorns version of adoption and I thought all of those same platitudes that you know we hear so often oh, it's a beautiful thing, it's a selfless thing, you know the gratitude piece. And being in community with adoptees and NPEs and donor conceived folks, I have learned so much, obviously I've learned about the trauma of adoption and the trauma of donor conception and the trauma of having a late discovery whether it's a late discovery adoption or a late discovery NPE that so much of that does intersect, so much about being an adopted person. That resonates with someone who's an NPE, this absence or lack of genetic mirroring, preverbal trauma that that could have occurred. And when we're together in community, there is this ability to draw on the lived experiences of each of the different communities that allows us to recognize how we show up and how we come together in community, and also that unconditional acceptance that if something is said in a session that creates a trauma response, you don't have to run away and hide because we inherently recognize that that is a trauma response and you're not in a room full of people that don't understand that, and so this community really has created so much like I'm almost drawing a blank, because I don't think there's a part of my life at this point that hasn't been affected by or influenced, whether positively or negatively, by all of these collective experiences and really coming together in community.
Speaker 2:The community piece for me is learning. It's educational, and you alluded before to normative, which again is a word that I had asked that we kind of shift to, because what is normal, right, who is normal and what is normal? Just being able to be with people who have experienced these same things allows us to feel normal. But again, what is normal? So what we're experiencing are normative things. People that have experienced these things or have this lived experience don't have to feel like they are pariah.
Speaker 1:I think that's extremely important.
Speaker 4:I can add to that that for me personally, I grew up with an adopted brother. I also grew up with adopted cousins. There were many adoptees in the neighborhood so I always had other adoptees to get it with. When we all come together at these retreats, it blows my mind to see the joy if that's probably the wrong word, or maybe it's not but the look on the attendees' faces to see somebody else like them and the guard. You can just see the guard let down on everybody. Like Erin was saying, they don't feel as though they have to watch what they say. They can just be free be themselves, knowing that they're not going to be judged. That in itself is just mind blowing. For the attendees to be around other people who legit get it. I hate to keep using that word or those words. That's the truth. You're around your people, you know, and it's just amazing.
Speaker 3:I'd like to just kind of expand on that a little bit, relate a very tiny story. You know to be around people like Cindy was saying, and just feel like you know you're not being judged. At that first retreat we were sitting at the table and it wasn't a session, it was just probably an after-break, this kind of thing, and one of the attendees was telling a little bit of her story, right, and I was sitting there listening and in my hand I'm going, wow, oh man, that stinks. And then I'm like, but wait a minute, that happened to me too. You know it's more like you forget that you have this kind of Unusual story because everyone around you has the same unusual story, you know. So it it. I think the retreats kind of offer a little bit of the togetherness part, gives you a place where you can kind of say I can tell this without judgment, because it happened to you too.
Speaker 1:I think that's important and I like the concept of just again in community where the veils come down. Cindy, I think you kind of said the face is just relax, and I know we're using the term normative and I do like that, even for me. I am in my, I'm open about my age, I'm in my 50s and equally closed adoption, and I still struggle with what is my definition of socially normal behaviors or how people perceive or may not perceive me, and I don't know if I'm ever going to get past that. But it's nice to be in a scenario on podcasts like this and my other co-podcasters in the space or bloggers or writers where I can go.
Speaker 1:That's my deep breath. I can just take the deep breath and relax, because I have spent a world of my time Ensuring that I can somehow fit into the space and maybe if I had just been whatever version of me was me, I wouldn't be that hyper aware. So I love, I love that kind of context of that. Cindy, if you don't, if you don't mind, can we go back a little bit, though? You said something that I think is very interesting. Some listeners would love to hear at least that there is space for this type of thing in the world, and that was that you you kind of grew up around other adoptees and your experience has been different. I want to hold space for that.
Speaker 4:My story definitely is, is not the norm among other adoptees. As I said, I was a baby scoop era adoptee, so my parents did everything they weren't supposed to do, meaning back then, you know, most of the parents were told not to tell them the blind slate thing. You know the grateful BS. I never got any of that. I was very supportive from the get-go. I was always inquisitive. My questions were answered to the best of their ability. I, you know I never heard that. You know your mother loved you so much and so that's why she thought this was best.
Speaker 4:From what I can remember, I was told she was very young, which is true. We always taught adoption within my family. When I wanted to open my records when, you know, the the US legally allowed me to when I was 18, they were very, very supportive. You know I came home with my papers and mom sat down and, you know, read it with me, looked over. You know, to this day she still asks me questions, you know. Or when she sees that I recently met up with, you know, another cousin. You know she wants to see pictures. So I Again the support that I've gotten. I'm blown away, you know, by how many can't even start to search until their adopted parents have deceased. I mean so again, that's why I say I'm boring, because mine I Didn't have that. You know that brick wall. It was open all the time for me. Again, I just I'm so saddened for those that did not have the experience that I had.
Speaker 1:I think that is fantastic. It makes me a little bit of green with envy. I think that for myself, I can only speak for myself. If I had had that type of an experience, I might be a more grounded person. But this is where an intersection comes. I could not feel comfortable taking that step to go figure it out until I was released from this fear of what would happen if my Adopted mother found out, and so I waited for her to pass away. And that's a common right, that's a common intersection point. I think the struggles that we have with who we are and what we know about ourselves and how it transitions when we find out those things right, more biological things about ourselves, it's. It's interesting as adults to go through that. Do you have any any thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:You know that a lot of us NPEs also have some of the genetic mirroring issues that adoptees have. Myself, my dad, my BCF, my birth certificate, father was Italian and More acronyms right.
Speaker 1:You knew that's what I was thinking. I'm like we just dropped another acronym, right Love it. You know I work in an industry that's acronym heavy, and so when I'm over in this world, oh my gosh it just cocks me up.
Speaker 3:So my dad I differentiate I call my BCF, I call him my dad and I call my biological father BF, my father. You know, my dad was Italian. His he's first-generation American, so his parents were off the boat and I grew up in that world. I grew up in the Italian world. I never knew any of my mom's relatives. So if I was asked, I would say I was Italian. And I can't tell you how many people Said to me really, you're Italian, you don't look Italian, you, you look Irish and like I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 3:I'm Italian, you know, but I was very, very different From my family, the family that I knew. You know, they were loud and boisterous and dark and, you know, expressive and and I was not like that, the little blonde kid sitting quietly in the corner reading while, well, everybody, there was all this Italian chaos around me and that that goes a long way to feeling out of place. And if my, if I, if I questioned anything, I was always my, I like to say my mom would invoke long-dead relatives that nobody knew, you know, who had freckles, who had blonde hair, who had. This doesn't help when the deception is such that they're, I guess, trying to protect me, but I don't know from what you know, from a lie, basically a self-serving lie. You know, I think that this is where a lot of our trauma as NPEs comes from the deception. You know, it's a lot of self-serving deception and I know I kind of totally went off track of what you wanted me to talk about.
Speaker 2:So you know, annie, if I could jump in here for a second right, because in our world we talk a lot about the weaponization of certain things, right, like the weaponization of religion. Right, like that's, their adoptive parents are doing God's work and that's why you know you needed to be adopted. And in the NPE world, there's this weaponization of protection. Right, we were doing this to protect you, we were doing this because that's what was best, best for you, right, that's always the phrase that we hear it's what we thought was best for you. And no, no, it wasn't what was best for us. None of this adoption, npe, you know, donor conception, like it's what was best for you.
Speaker 1:So we've talked a little bit about deception and their secrecy across all of these areas of the community and we know there are so many different experiences and where I'm going with that, I think I've just found another intersecting component to all of these areas. I'm gonna call it now the alphabet soup of acronyms for us Secrecy and then finding out who you are. It's earth shattering and I think you said it a long time ago, erin, maybe not on this episode, but maybe when we were talking before when you found out what was going on in your world, it rocked your foundation. So I think that's a common theme in NPE, npe, lda and, quite honestly, adoptees too, and so can you kind of talk about how'd you approach having your foundation rock?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I said almost immediately and that was my own self-protection I said, okay, nothing has changed yet everything has changed, right. And so in those first initial moments and hours and days, I had to remind myself of the parts of me that hadn't changed. I'm still a wife, I'm still a mother, I'm still a teacher, but there's this whole other side of me that I don't know. I don't know anything about it, and there's also this entire 42-year relationship that I had with my mother that imploded because here's this person that you are supposed to trust implicitly, who is always going to tell you the truth, or the best version of the truth, truly to keep you safe Don't touch the fire, it's hot. Okay, I shouldn't touch the fire because it's hot. Now, as kids, do we test that? Of course we test that. But then that's proven correct. Oh shit, my mother told me not to touch the fire because it's hot, and guess what? She was right.
Speaker 2:So for those of us that have this discovery in adulthood, this happens all at once. It's almost like the slow burn for the adoptees, right, Like they have this lifetime of making these realizations, the late discovery world. It kind of happens all at once, and so I then needed to figure out these parts of me that I never knew where they came from. They must come from there and those parts of us that we don't necessarily like, right Cause I think we all have parts of ourselves that we wish they weren't that way. All the time, Realizing the ugliness in my own particular case, the ugliness of my biological father, it made me very appreciative that I never really allowed those parts of me to develop.
Speaker 1:Well, that's definitely a nature versus nurture path here, and that one we could probably spend a few hours talking about for all of us in this community, because there's a good angle to that where it's even beyond the genetic mirroring. It's beyond what you look like, it's again your micro behaviors, it's silly things Like, for example, in my case, this is becoming a topic in my home. I am snarky, you just need to know I'm sarcastic and I can be very snarky. I believe for me that is a 100% defense mechanism, but I gotta tell you it's so ingrained in my personality that it's really difficult.
Speaker 1:And then another in my world that I hear and I've heard from my entire lifetime is that I have, like, this weird tone. Well, I think I don't have a tone. What I mean by that is I can't hear what people are talking about. Like I can't hear the tone. I don't know where it came from or where it landed. And I love the fact that you kind of expanded on that so we could touch a little bit on nurture versus nature, because it's so. It is such a theme again in all of these communities and these various intersecting points. I didn't think I was gonna hit on your intersection and inclusion. So much today, but it has been very key to this discussion.
Speaker 4:So that's the genealogical bewilderment that Annie was and Aaron were both saying Annie, where'd I get these freckles? And Aaron, how come I can sing and nobody else can do this? And that's where I was saying. I am Italian and the parents I grew up with are Swedish and German. So, as you can see your readers can't see I talk with my hands. I'm the only one in my family that does that, and it was constantly oh, there's the Italian and Cindy. So my genealogical, my obvious things were acknowledged, whereas Annie and Aaron it was oh, it must come from some Lake Ant or some older person. So again, I'm blown away at the shock. Then, when the late discovery people find out their discovery and my gosh, I was being lied to. It wasn't from this old relative, it was from my legit biological family.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna go back to. I'm a little green with envy. I believe if I'd had something similar to your experience, I would definitely be a different person. Now I feel I'm pretty well adjusted in life and growing quite a bit, and even in the last few years I've grown significantly in who I am and kind of working through some of those items that are born from trauma. But it would have been I do think it would have been different. All right, well, as we are moving kind of into our next portion of discussion and a little bit of a plug fest here for your events and you know what's upcoming Retreat for me has been my greatest healing.
Speaker 2:I tried therapy. I think therapy is amazing. I say it all the time. I think everyone should go to therapy at least once in their lives because I think therapy serves a purpose. When I made my discovery, the NPE isms were so new that there really wasn't an NPE-informed therapist in my area, and so there was a lot of re-traumatizing with the phrases that were shared with me. And because I had gone to therapy previously, I knew what I needed to do to heal, and that was to become my own healer. And so I, you know, with the help of Cindy, created retreat and I really focused on things that I knew would help my healing, bringing facilitators in with things that I knew that I needed.
Speaker 2:Being in community with folks who don't need explanation has been my greatest, greatest source of healing. It has become a labor of love. Love for me, a labor of love. That was a little bit of a tongue twister. It's allowed me to grow personally. It's allowed me to grow professionally. I am now a graduate student pursuing my master's in social work so that I can continue to bring healing to each of our communities. And there is joy, you know, like Cindy said, like that. It almost sounds terrible, like, oh my gosh, how can you find joy in you know being, but there is so much joy. Retreat is, retreat is hard, but retreat is beautiful. You know, we, we, we cry. Of course we cry, but there's so much laughter, so much laughter, and we bring retreat to as many places as possible. You know, cindy and I have been searching, and now Annie been searching, for at least two years to try and find a house on the West Coast. Spoiler alert we just found one. We're truly coming to the West Coast.
Speaker 4:I guess I'm up next on Maya. I think I've said before, my greatest joy, or what I get the most out, is seeing the connections, the friendships that are for a lifetime, the camaraderie. You know we talk about the in community, so we're not only in sessions but we make and eat all our meals together. So just doing those little mundane things and watching the joy on people's faces, you know, talking maybe about a baseball game and then it goes around into their journey. I just that.
Speaker 4:For me, it gives me so much pleasure to just sit back and watch these weekends unfold into. Oh my gosh, I don't want to leave you guys, can't we just stay forever? Like I can tell you when we get back on Tuesdays and you're drinking coffee by yourself and we have a big group chat that you get added to after, and every Tuesday after retreat you know the we call them the newbies are either going. I missed you guys, and it's the truth because you have developed with your people I'm putting my hands together this bond that you've developed because you are with your people and you're just at such ease.
Speaker 1:Annie, anything you want to add.
Speaker 3:Sure. So the thing about retreat is that we have our attendees from all walks of life, all different political, religious, socioeconomic, different places, right, I love that. We all get together, those go away and we become true friends with people that we normally wouldn't be friends with. So that's one thing. I kind of second what Cindy was saying about watching people come in. How you'll see someone? They're very timid, they're very they're not sure what to make of what's happening, right, so they're going to sit at the end of the table or over there on the couch or kind of just be sitting alone and by that night they're in the middle of a group. They're chit, chatting, they're having a drink, they're laughing, they're going outside, they're, you know, just the blossoming of what that person is truly like in their most intimate moment that you normally might not show strangers.
Speaker 3:I love that and I also love and I wanted to point this out, I was going to bring it up earlier but there wasn't a good place to kind of chime in with it you know we have sessions and we're very structured, thanks to Erin and Cindy. Everything is very structured and timed and there's a list and go with your group and you know all that stuff. But if you don't want to go to a session and you want to sit at the pool, that's okay too, and nobody judges you for that. If you're, if you're called that day to just take a nap all afternoon, it's all about healing, but you don't have to heal the way we tell you to. There's such a mix of I want to say for lack of a better term business and pleasure in the weekend, and we do want to get across that. Whatever you feel as an individual, attending our retreat is best for you. That's what we want you to do.
Speaker 4:One thing we did not go over was our scholarship fund. I know within our community, the Adopti community specifically, I see and have seen a lot of banter about costs, of resources that are out there and we honestly do not get as many applicants as I wish we would for the scholarship fund.
Speaker 1:Where would they find information on that?
Speaker 4:It's a tab right on our website hyrithhopeandhealingcom.
Speaker 1:And what other social media outlets do you guys use we?
Speaker 2:are on all social media platforms.
Speaker 1:It's not too difficult, then that's good.
Speaker 4:Another thing that I thought of that we didn't even talk about, was the fact that we are now a 5013c 501c3.
Speaker 1:Congratulations, ladies. That's awesome. Well, I've appreciated our time together. I want to thank each of you for being on today's show. It's been a learning experience for me through all of our conversations, and you are always all welcome here again. I am now going to say I'm super interested in attending a retreat for just me myself. I don't be surprised if you see my name coming across. What are the next series of?
Speaker 2:events In October. We will be in Tennessee In April 2024,. We will be in New Jersey In July 2024, we will be in California and nowhere will be yet in October 2024. So stay tuned for that one, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:And again, thank you guys so much for being on the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us. Thanks, Lisa.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to today's episode. Make sure to rate, review and share. Want to join the conversation? Contact us at wanderingtreeadocdcom.