Latest / The Resilience Project / Behind the Curtain of the “I Am a Burden” Belief: What We Explored in the Gathering

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Behind the Curtain of the “I Am a Burden” Belief: What We Explored in the Gathering · The Resilience Project

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi y'all, I'm Julie.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a trauma-informed adoptee coach and somatic healing guide.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: After overcoming deep abandonment wounds, I now help adult adoptees move from feeling lost and disconnected to experiencing profound self-belonging.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know what it is like to carry the weight of abandonment, to feel stuck in patterns of longing, adapting, and searching for belonging.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: To have tried every healing modality available and come up empty.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: My own healing has taught me this.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: The answers aren't out there.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're buried within me.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm here to guide you home to yourself.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: The Resilience Project Podcast brings voice, visibility, and validation to the parts of adoption society rarely names, but all of us feel.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Through an trauma-informed somatic lens, I explore the lived experiences of the entire adoption constellation with a tender emphasis on the adoptive experience.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast goes beyond storytelling into soul tone.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: It offers embodied insight, compassionate education, and a path towards awareness, hope, and strength.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Each episode invites listeners to understand adoption more deeply, not just with the mind, but with the nervous system, and to reconnect with the truth, identity, and belonging that were always yours to come home to.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, everybody, to the podcast.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: It is so great to be together as always.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Last Tuesday, I hosted a gathering for adoptees called You Are Not a Burden: A Gathering for Adoptees Exploring Identity.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And today I felt led actually over the last week, I have felt really led, pulled, called to share the heart of what we explored together in our time.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And even if you weren't in that room, this conversation really matters.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: This belief I am a burden is something I have heard over and over again in coaching sessions with adoptees.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, not just with adoptees, with people who have been abandoned by a parent or have experienced some sort of abandonment in their life.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the words are different.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm defective, I'm a nuisance, I don't want to be an inconvenience.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: I have said all of those.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the belief underneath all of it is the same.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Adoptees don't wake up one day and decide that we are a burden.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: The belief forms very early, before language, before we had any type of narrative or story or understanding, before we even had the ability to cognitively get anything, to understand what happened to us, the loss, the rejection, the shame, the guilt, the grief, the fear of intimacy, the fear of losing control.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And for many adoptees, that entire developmental process is interrupted.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, our nervous systems as children absorb something much simpler and much more painful.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: That something must be wrong with us.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: That belief becomes the foundation of our identity in many ways.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: As a counselor by training and a coach who has spent years helping addictive behaviors and now adoptees untangle all of these things like identity, not as a concept, but as something that actually lives inside of us within our bodies, within our stories, and the beliefs that we formed early for a long time.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I tried everything to fix myself.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: I learned so much, but I still felt stuck.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: The turning point for me was realizing that I didn't know how to have a relationship with my body.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And until I could learn that language, which I've talked a lot about in previous episodes, nothing I knew had anywhere to land.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're going to visit and talk about today.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: There was a point in my life where everything looked fine.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: On the outside, everything was great.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was trained in counseling, I was helping other people, I was even trauma-informed.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: I understood my negative patterns in relationships, even though I had absolutely no clue how to stop them.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And underneath all of that, I still felt like I was the problem.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like if something wasn't working in my relationships, if I kept sabotaging intimacy, not just with others, but with myself, if I kept pulling away when connection felt real, it had to be me.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I never said that out loud.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: It lived inside of me.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: I will never forget the moment that changed my trajectory.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've actually talked about this in episode two, and I'm gonna go into a little bit more detail here.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was at Liberty University for an intensive for my counseling degree, and my professor had heard me say in one of our groups that I was adopted.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And after that group, she pulled me aside.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what I remember about this time was as I looked around me, I saw white walls.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: There was no connection.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a hospital room, to be honest.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was just learning.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was there to learn.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm in this place with this person who I had just met and respected, and I was feeling very, very nervous.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: She wanted to talk to me and tell me something that I needed to deal with.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: She basically told me that I had skeletons in my closet regarding adoption, and that if I didn't deal with them, I would harm the people that I was trying to help.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: My response to her was, skeletons in my closet, about what exactly?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Julie, your adoption has impacted you.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember at that moment feeling like I was smacked across the face.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've told this story a lot.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any skeletons in my closet regarding my adoption.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I remember saying to her.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, You absolutely do.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've been a foster parent for years.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen it firsthand.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't deal with this, you will absolutely harm people.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: There was no question.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: She believed that I would.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: It shocked me.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: I went home and decided that I was going to follow through with what she told me to do.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I had no idea even where to begin.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I had no idea what was even awaiting me on the other side of this.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: We were living in Maui, Hawaii at the time.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember sitting in my little office.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: We had this beautiful home with a wraparound porch less than a mile away from the beach.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was dreamy.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat there with this manila envelope in my hand, so afraid to even open it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: My social worker that I had been connected with in the state of California at the time said that I needed to journal before I actually read this information because she said that it was gnarly.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: She sent me six pages, not common in the state of California.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're working on it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's some good strides right now, good progress in the state of California.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: She told me to write down what I would expect.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And my husband at the time decided to read the document first so that he could be prepared.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Once I read this document, the whole world changed for me because I couldn't read any further.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't get to the second page.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: What I read was that she had attempted to abort me twice, between weeks 12 and 16.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then I never picked it up again until about two years ago, when I was in my home country that I now know is Italy, when I decided I needed to really read about my life.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was too much for me at the time.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have enough to hold it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the capacity, to be honest.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the sad part was she didn't tell me that information.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: The paperwork did.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so at that point, my brain fragmented into multiple pieces.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: I got a massive headache, and I felt those pieces of myself bouncing around in my head like a puzzle that I had nobody around to help me put them back together.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And at the exact same time, everything made sense.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Every pattern, every overreaction, every moment of why am I like this?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: It made sense.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking this is where the work really begins, which was humbling because I thought I had already done the work.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: After that, I tried to put myself back together.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I talk about the Kinsugi vase a lot.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Japanese art where pottery is broken and put back together beautifully with gold-plated glue.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what it felt like.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like I was trying to do that without any guidance.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: I had all this insight and knowledge that I had learned.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I continued to grasp and read and process and analyze.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then my birth mother died in 2020.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And something in me knew if I don't deal with the unfinished business that I have regarding her, I'm not going to be okay.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: This wasn't this massive dramatic shift in my life.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't as if everything in my life was falling apart externally.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: But internally, there was a very unsettled Julie.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: There was this missing piece, and I did not know what it was.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I just continued searching.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I found an EMDR therapist who was adoption competent on the suggestion of a past therapist that I had.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it took me nine months with her.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Funny, nine months before I moved at all.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And she kept asking me, where do you feel it?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say, I don't know, my head.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: I actually talked about this in last week's episode.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Everything stayed in my head.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing dropped below my neck.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when she said, You're not going to go anywhere until you actually work with your body.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking, how?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: How do I do that?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I know somatic means body.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I actually learned that in my program, but we never got any training in it.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So what does that even mean?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: I found a somatic therapist, but she was literally a quack.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: She told me to blow bubbles, to play with play-doh, to notice the water on my hands when I wash them.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: All of those things are great somatic tools, but that's all she told me.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: There was no context.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: She said I had a touch aversion and that I would be just fine.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: That did not work for me.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I felt hopeless.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: I felt ridiculous.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the story kept getting louder.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I am the problem.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: I am the common denominator.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I am an imposter helping other people.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember calling a very dear friend of mine, Becky, who I work with now, who had gone through my program, my addiction codependency program.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I noticed what she was posting on socials and I realized I think she has uncovered that missing piece that I've been searching for.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to her feeling like a dog with my tail between my legs.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, here I am helping all these people, and I can't even fix myself.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: What is wrong with me?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: But that was my next turning point because I finally humbled myself enough to say, I don't know how to be in my body.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And when I started learning that slowly and gently, that's when everything shifted, not overnight, not dramatically, but the information that I had carried for years in my head finally had somewhere to land.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I began to understand what tightness felt like in my body, what numbness felt like, why my chest clenched and braced, why my throat closed.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized I wasn't ever broken.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was living in a state of survival when it came to connection with others, even myself.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I learned that belonging wasn't a guarantee.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I minimized.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I interrupted, I prostituted myself emotionally and physically to keep love close.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I called myself an idiot all the time.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I assumed no one could really love me because I didn't believe that I was lovable.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest shift wasn't fixing me, it was finding belonging within me, not isolating, not hardening myself to outside sources, but realizing I didn't need someone else to validate my existence in order to survive.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: My connection with God, my connection with my own body, that's where it began.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And when that happened, I stopped needing to people please to stay.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I stopped interrupting to be heard.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: I stopped abandoning myself to keep connection.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what's crazy is those weren't character flaws.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: They were survival strategies.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: They were wisdom.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: But they didn't have to define me anymore.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I realized this isn't just my story.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many adoptees walking around thinking that they're broken, but no one ever taught them how to update what their body had learned before they had words.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's why the gathering that I had last Tuesday existed.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Not because we all need more insight, but because identity lives deeper than that.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when you learn to work at that level, everything changes.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to talk about the three major limiting beliefs that keep us stuck and how to get unstuck from them.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: The first one is I've tried everything, nothing sticks.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: I felt that way.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: My guess is that you have begun to see that adoption creates these early beliefs, pre-language.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: When we were in the gathering and I went through each one of these, I asked everybody to put a one in the chat if they felt all of this.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the chat went off because everybody related to all of these things.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: The help that we received was focused on thoughts and behavior.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it was top down, went from the head down.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Insight and education that created awareness, but not lasting relief.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Adoption addressed in ways that dismissed it as a problem or misunderstood or dealt with it insensitively.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: For example, how many times have any of you listening or watching gone to a therapist?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not trying to dog therapy, but this was my experience as a trained therapist and adoptee myself.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Was I had to educate my therapist on what I needed help on?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: I had to help them understand.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: We shouldn't have to do that.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Did you experience spirituality that shamed or silenced your grief in statements like, you should be grateful, you're so lucky.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that keeps us silenced and unable to share because we don't want to rock the boat.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: We may have been given tools that didn't reach the place where the identity got wired in the first place.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And here is the truth that I want to invite you to understand.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot work on identity from the surface when the belief is held in the body.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: You can't outthink a pre-verbal belief.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Body-formed beliefs require body-level work, y'all.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Identity doesn't live in our head.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Those neck up modalities don't honestly work for adoptees.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: It lives in what our body remembers.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: It gets wired through felt sensation and our lived experiences, not willpower.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: The definition that I came up with after researching a lot about identity is this it is the core of who we are more than labels, roles, or others' expectations.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's the truth hidden within us, shaped by your experiences, values, and a deep understanding of your authentic self.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's the deep, unspoken truth of who you are waiting to be uncovered.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is the catch, y'all, even when external pieces are missing.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Think of it this way if you keep watering the leaves of a plant, but the roots never get support, you don't blame the plant.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: You realize the method is incomplete.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: So to recap all of this, your body remembers what your mind can't explain.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Lasting change happens when you can speak to the place that actually learned the belief.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Identity isn't just what you think, it's what your body has been taught to expect.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: So if the belief is in the body, the path to heal that has to include the body.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the next limiting belief, number two, that I run into, this is a few of them, but this is a variation of them that keeps us stuck is I am a burden.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: I am too much or not enough, or I'm not worth it, or I'm not worth investing in.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So how many of you listening or watching have said this to yourself before?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: How this shows up all the ways I described in my own personal story, and I'm guessing you can relate to, how many of you minimize your needs and take up less space?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you overfunction, caretake, people please?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you numb and escape your feelings?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you self-abandon to keep a connection?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you experience the quiet shame of something must be wrong with you?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's that what I've already shared, being told that we should be grateful.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: That silences our grief and our confusion.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: You might have found yourself cling to any kind of patterns of fitting in or belonging, even if it meant you would lose or abandon yourself internally.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: So all of these are just some of the ways that this belief becomes self-protective.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: The next truth that I'd like to invite you to understand is these are not character flaws, they're survival beliefs.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: When connection feels fragile, we take up less space.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: We isolate, we withdraw.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Not because we are a burden, but because belonging feels uncertain.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: So think of it this way: if a child learns to hold their breath underwater to survive, we don't call that broken.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: We call it wisdom.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I want to repeat that this is not a personality flaw, but a wise survival strategy.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: You never ask the question, what do I need?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I bet.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because you were worried about what everyone else needed in order to keep the peace, or you would be seen as ungrateful.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: A belief can be understandable without being true.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Your struggle isn't who you are, it is what you learned.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd like you to imagine for a moment, if you can, maybe close your eyes if that feels comfortable for you.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to share this list that one of my clients shared with me about the limiting beliefs that she had.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I want you to see what happens in your body when you hear these words.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Unwanted, rejected, worthless, broken, non existent, unlovable.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is common for us.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You are not alone.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to take you into a bit of a somatic imagination experience around this idea.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to invite you to close your eyes if they aren't still closed.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if it feels comfortable, place a hand over your heart.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And imagine for a moment.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Just imagine that you are safe, that you are loved, and that you belong.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you can't find a situation like that, just imagine it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you were safe, if you were loved, if you belonged, how would you show up?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: What would change in how you treat yourself?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: What would you stop proving?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And what would you finally let yourself need?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if nothing shows up, that's okay.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Even resistance is information.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's the power of what the body can tell us.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just be curious, not judgmental with this exercise.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: The next limiting belief, and the final one that I'm going to cover today, is I don't have time for this.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: It'll uncover too much.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Avoiding, y'all feels safer because it keeps things predictable.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: But things we avoid don't disappear.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: They just stay loud in the background.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the part that nobody explains.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: When you finally look at something you've been carrying for years, we're usually afraid that it's going to overwhelm us, aren't we?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: But it won't because when you drop the resistance, you uncover the strength that was always there for you to grasp.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: It allows you to finally feel, not avoid, not escape, not numb what you have carried so silently for decades.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the last truth I want to invite you to understand.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: The healing work that we do builds capacity to feel what you've been carrying.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Clarity doesn't create chaos.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Carrying it alone does.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: But with guidance, you stabilize.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: A gentle, body-based pacing prevents overwhelm because when there is someone with you supporting you through the exploration, it builds the body's capacity to feel what was experienced preverbally.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Your nervous system begins to have a moment to finally exhale.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that you won't unravel, it's that you won't unravel alone.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: So think of it this way: you don't train because you already have capacity.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: You train so your body can hold the distance.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can learn to be with your experience without being consumed by it.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Once I understood that identity lives in the body, I stopped looking for another quick fix and built my own capacity.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to start living from a place of peace, self-acceptance and compassion, safety and self-love.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew I could not keep this to myself.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I created the belonging blueprint, which is my signature seven-phase process.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was built through my own lived experience as an adoptee who was healing herself for the last 20 plus years, who had learned to walk and is still learning to walk through identity loss, attachment wounds, and the quiet shame of feeling like a burden.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: With years, years of trauma-informed body-led work that I have been doing.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in the last couple, even inside of Revolution, where I've been working with adopte D's, I saw that real healing does not happen through insight alone, but through slowly rebuilding safety, self-trust, and a true sense of belonging from the inside out.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: It teaches you how to learn the language of your body so you can stop living from old survival beliefs and start living from the truth of who you are, so that you can live the life you have always desired to live and didn't know how.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Think of it this way: for a long time, it can feel like you're driving without a map.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're moving, you're trying, you're taking exits that look promising.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: You even stop and ask for directions.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: You read all the books, you try different routes, and sometimes they help for a while.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: But underneath it all, you still don't fully know where you are.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's the disorienting part.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: The belonging blueprint isn't me handing you the destination.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's helping you understand the terrain you've been standing on your whole life.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: It gives you language to where you actually are now.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: It helps you recognize the patterns in the landscape, and it teaches you how to navigate from within instead of guessing your way forward.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about rushing to arrive somewhere.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's about finally knowing where you're standing so that the path makes sense.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: If something in this conversation resonated with you, if you recognized yourself in the burden belief.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And for those of you who are actually craving an even deeper experience, there's also an in-person retreat that Dr.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Liz Debeta and I are holding on May 23rd and 24th called Unmothered, a Revolution in Adoptee Healing.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's an in-person event, like I said, and it's a space where adoptees can explore identity, belonging, and healing in community.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because one of the most powerful experiences an adoptee can have is sitting in a room with other adoptees and realizing that they don't have to explain their story anymore.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's understood.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to leave you with this.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you've been carrying the belief that you are a burden, you are not broken for feeling that way.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're responding to something real.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: But that belief doesn't have to be the end of your story.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Healing begins the moment we start questioning the identities we built to survive.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And if this conversation stirred something in you, that might just be the beginning.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Please feel free to DM me on any of the socials.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can drop the word podcast or even burden in there.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I will send you a resource that will provide support and would be happy to have the discussion with you.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just let me know and I'll send you the link to schedule a call.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, I'm gonna go ahead and drop the link in the show notes if you want to schedule a chat with me to connect more about what I talked about today.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you all have a wonderful Thursday.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, I'm so grateful to be with you and be able to share these things that have really impacted me, and I hope that they can impact you in the future.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Have a great Thursday.