Latest / The Resilience Project / The Long Game: Navigating the Reunion Rollercoaster with Grace - with Elizabeth Barbour & Leslie Pate Mackinnon (Retreat Series #3)

Transcript

The Long Game: Navigating the Reunion Rollercoaster with Grace - with Elizabeth Barbour & Leslie Pate Mackinnon (Retreat Series #3) · The Resilience Project

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hi y'all, I'm Julie.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm a trauma-informed adoptee coach and somatic healing guide.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: After overcoming deep abandonment wounds, I now help adult adoptees move from feeling lost and disconnected to experiencing profound self-belonging.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: 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_00: To have tried every healing modality available and come up empty.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: My own healing has taught me this.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: The answers aren't out there, they're buried within me.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: And I'm here to guide you home to yourself.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: 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_00: Through an trauma-informed somatic lens, I explore the lived experiences of the entire adoption constellation with a tender emphasis on the adoptee experience.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: This podcast goes beyond storytelling into soul telling.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: It offers embodied insight, compassionate education, and a path towards awareness, hope, and strength.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: Each episode invites listeners to understand adoption more deeply, not just with the mind, but with the nervous system.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: And to reconnect with the truth, identity, and belonging that were always yours to come home to.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that so many of these gatherings are emerging right now in this season, I don't think is a coincidence.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: That's a community coming of age in a different way.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: So today, a retreat series continues and concludes with this one, unless another one shows up in my lap.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
3:10
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to go somewhere the Adoptee community talks about constantly and yet almost never gets real support for.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Reunion.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: Not the movie version of reunion, not the airport hug, not the tearful montage version, the real one.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: The one that is beautiful and complicated and exhausting and life-changing, sometimes all in the same afternoon.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: We all know what we're talking about.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what I know reunion is not a moment, it's a relationship, actually, a whole web of relationships that your nervous system has to learn how to live inside of.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: And nobody hands you a map for that.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Except today.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Two people are going to begin handing you that map.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: I am so honored to be joined by Elizabeth Barber and Leslie Pate McKinnon.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth is a reunited adoptee, 27 years in reunion with her birth mom, her birth dad, and 11.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm pausing for effect.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: Yes, 11 siblings.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: She's a reunion coach, a speaker, an author, and she's currently writing a book about building healthy relationships in adoption reunion.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: And right now, she's also an adoptive mom, walking alongside her own teenager as she navigates reunion with her birth family.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: So Elizabeth isn't just teaching this, she's living every part of it.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Leslie is a psychotherapist, a birth mother who has been in private practice for four decades, y'all.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: She specializes in issues surrounding adoption and third-party reproduction.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: She trains therapists and agencies across the country.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And she is known lovingly, and I love this about her, as a tell-it-like it is voice in this space.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Between the two of them, they've been living in reunion for a combined 50 plus years.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: And together, they've created the long game: Navigating the Reunion Roller Coaster with Grace.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: A weekend retreat, y'all, are you surprised?
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Happening November 6th through 8th this year, just outside of Asheville, North Carolina.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk all about it, but first we're going to talk about what reunion actually asks of us.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Emotionally, relationally, and yes, of course, in the body.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Welcome you two.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: It is so good to have you here.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Julie.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: You're so welcome.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: This is just so fun.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay, y'all.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do my best to kind of alternate the questions, but first let's start with you, Elizabeth.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Your reunion began in 1999, I believe.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: So if you could, could you take us back?
6:03
SPEAKER_00: What did you expect reunion to be?
6:07
SPEAKER_00: And what did it actually turn out to be?
6:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great question.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: So, like I imagine a lot of adoptees, I was looking for my mother.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was looking for my first mother, my birth mother.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: And when I found her and called her, one of the first questions I said was, Do you have children?
6:32
SPEAKER_01: Because I had been raised as an only child.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Yes, I have three.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yay, I have brothers and sisters.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: And then I said, Do they know about me?
6:40
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Not yet, but I'll tell them tonight.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: So fast forward two weeks, I drove to Florida to meet her and to meet them for the first time.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: And Leslie will talk about this later because Leslie's always saying, Don't hurry, slow down.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: And I I did not know Leslie back then.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I oh yeah, I just jumped into it.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't recommend it.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: But uh so when I was meeting with my birth mom and my siblings two weeks later, my birth mom was showing me her high school annual of her friends, and she showed me a picture of my birth dad.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Well, I know where he is because he works for my cousins.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: So when you're ready, I'm happy to call him for you.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: And she said, I haven't talked to him in 30 years.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: I haven't talked to him since I told him I was pregnant.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: But so at any rate, so the next day I said, Yeah, go ahead and call him.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: And she was like, What?
7:29
SPEAKER_01: You just met me.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know what?
7:31
SPEAKER_01: If we're gonna do this, let's do this.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: So she called him.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: He called me about two weeks later, and same question Do you have children?
7:40
SPEAKER_01: His answer was only eight.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, I'm sitting there on the phone doing the math, going, Wait, only eight?
7:48
SPEAKER_01: Wait, and then I have three others.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, I'm the oldest of 12.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was mind-blowing.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: And and still it's 27 years in reunion, it's still a little mind-blowing.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's also incredibly joyful.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so I was looking for one person and I found dozens.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I can't even tell you all the aunts and uncles and grandparents and everything.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: So I've had a really positive reunion on both sides of my family.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: So it actually turned out to be way more than you expect.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was not one of those kids who had the ghost kingdom thing.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: I I didn't really fantasize about my biological family at all.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: But I tell you, this is not something I could have ever, ever imagined.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: You know what's interesting, Elizabeth?
8:35
SPEAKER_00: I didn't either.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: I didn't really have a ghost kingdom.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: What I would do, and I'd be curious, Leslie, with even your practice if you hear this from adopted people, but I would go into other people's ghost kingdoms.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is I would read Little House on the Prairie and put myself there.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Or I would read C.S.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, Lion, the Witch and the Word.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I'm saying?
8:55
SPEAKER_00: And I I remember I had this little space in my closet, and I would just that would be where I hung out because I just felt like I need something.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm missing something, but I didn't know what it was.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: And so I tried to find it other places.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Is that community?
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes, yeah.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: It's very, very true.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Leslie.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: Does do you relate to that, Elizabeth?
9:15
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I I do.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: And that would be a curious conversation for another time.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: How many adopted people buried themselves in books and in the fantasy world of other people's experiences, people's community, as Leslie said?
9:34
SPEAKER_00: That's what I was searching for.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: So, so good.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm glad I found somebody else because sometimes I'm afraid to say that I didn't have a ghost kingdom because I feel like everybody did.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think they did.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, okay, that's helpful.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: So, Leslie, you come to this obviously as both a therapist and a birth mother.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: So, how does living it change how you sit with clients in it?
9:55
SPEAKER_02: Dramatically, I have to tell you, it was a huge step for me to because I was trained as a therapist psychoanalytically, which is mask, and you never say a word about your Siggy.
10:10
SPEAKER_02: He got a bunch of things wrong, I always say, and that's one of many.
10:14
SPEAKER_02: But anyhow, uh so I remember when I first got into this work and I began telling my story because every conference I'd go to, they'd want to hear my story, and it's pretty.
10:26
SPEAKER_02: And I would say to my therapist friends afterwards, what did you think?
10:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I said things about me.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: And one after one, they came back to me and said, You were so authentic along with the people you were presenting with.
10:42
SPEAKER_02: I've never seen anything like it.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: I have a psychiatrist friend who was an adoptive dad, and we were both, oh my gosh, we're talking about ourselves.
10:51
SPEAKER_02: Uh but then I lined it up with the way that addiction therapy has changed over the years.
11:00
SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
11:01
SPEAKER_02: Addicts preferred talking to people who had lived experience rather than people who were just reading a book about if you shoot this up your arm or you drink too much of that.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: And so they realized that yes, these people had educated themselves, but they also had the lived experience.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: And so that's what I've hung on to and said to other therapeutic groups because there's not as much resistance therapy is changing over time.
11:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:30
SPEAKER_02: But that was really a no-no when I started 30 years ago to be up there telling my dirty laundry thank you very much.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: So you you aren't alone there because I I think Elizabeth can back me up in this.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: We both were trained in the therapeutic space.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: I got my master's in counseling.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: I believe you did too, Elizabeth.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: You and I talked about this.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, I am gonna have to self-disclose.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: How am I going to help people if they think I'm up on this pedestal?
12:01
SPEAKER_00: And it drove me freaking nuts.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And I remember for the first couple of years and I was trying to practice, I blew that so royally because I just felt like people need to see.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: The phrase that helped me so much was that I'm a wounded healer.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: They need to see that I, and you know that's from a book.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember, isn't it?
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Newen, Henry Newen wrote a book that talked about that.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: And I just realized that is so important.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: So I feel like I'm more of a big sister than I am an authority and I or a guide, however you want to put it.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: It helps people settle and be more at ease.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: And I love that you called that out because that is what we were trained, even in the years that I was trained back in the early 2000s, in that way.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: Well, I I think it's really a big thing that we're coming out of that era.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
12:54
SPEAKER_02: And again, it's not like you share every detail of your life, but they know broad pieces of, oh, hello there.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: So anyway, and and I started to say, just as an aside, you all were talking about that kind of lost kingdom and not being necessarily in that, but wondering about birth families all along.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: And of course, I remember when I started to approach reunion, I said to my husband, Do you think they're both in prison?
13:28
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Well, that's kind of grim.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: And then a day later I said, I put them, I asked that they be put with Catholic families.
13:37
SPEAKER_02: What if they turned out to be priests?
13:40
SPEAKER_02: In some realms that bothered me as much.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: I don't mean that all the priests in the world, but you guys know what I mean.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Good gravy, priests or prison?
13:51
SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, I gotta think about the worst and what would make them have their angels' wings, I guess.
13:57
SPEAKER_02: But I just had to know that they were okay.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: Not knowing what happened to them was I just couldn't live like that anymore.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that's a biggie.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: Just so the audience and listeners know, you are in reunion.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: There's been many challenges, but I think that's important to know.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: And you can share whatever you feel comfortable sharing about that.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna push that, but I know you as well as I do the little bit that I know you, I think you'll probably share transparently.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: So the two of you have become dear friends.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I wouldn't have been introduced to Leslie if it weren't for you, Elizabeth.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: So very, very grateful for the two of you.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, I I guess my question is: what drew you to each other's work and what made you say we need to build something together?
14:46
SPEAKER_02: You go first, Elizabeth.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: So I I had just moved back to Asheville a couple years ago and had re-entered the adoption community after having been very involved in it 20, 25 years ago.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: I was very involved in American Adoption Congress from the late 90s until kind of the late 2000s, and then stepped aside.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: And I was looking at the Cub conference coming up in October.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: I guess this is what's a year ago.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: And I was curious to see who the speakers were and what the topics were.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: And I had not attended Cub before, but I thought, oh, it's in Atlanta, it's three and a half hours away.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: I live in Asheville, North Carolina.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: I can drive down.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: And I wonder if anyone's talking about reunion, because that's my lane.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: That's my passion.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: And I saw Leslie McKinnon.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, let me look her up.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, then I looked her up, and in her bio it says she and her husband live in Asheville, North Carolina.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what?
15:41
SPEAKER_01: What?
15:41
SPEAKER_01: So I just called her out of the blue and said, Well, you don't know me, but this is who I am, and are you willing to have lunch?
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, our first lunch was three hours.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm not surprised knowing the two of you.
15:52
unknown: Yeah.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: And and so I think as as we got sharing our histories, I think we realized that we had so much in common in terms of our passion.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Leslie has been doing this work non-stop for many decades.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: I sort of had a start and stop, and now I'm restarting, have been the last two to three years.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: And um, so it's like, okay, let's let's partner.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: And what I really appreciate about, and we'll talk about this more later when we talk about the retreat, but what I appreciate when we come together is that with Leslie being a birth first mom and me being both an adoptee and an adoptive mom, we kind of cover the it's amazing.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: And you saying that, I I got the chills over my body.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: So I know, I know this retreat is so, so unbelievably important.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if anything like this has ever existed before.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I'm so excited to highlight it here.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that you mentioned I'd like to allude to from my own reunion story and then from others who I've talked to is I did it like I was drinking from a fire hose.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Because, like you, Elizabeth, I had no idea.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: There was nothing written for me.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: At the time, I was reading it's behind me.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: I was reading Coming Home to Self by Nancy Verrier because that was the only thing that was out there.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: And my adopted adoption competent therapist told me about it and said, read it like a manual.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Don't read it from cover to cover.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Read whatever, wherever you are, read that section.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: And so when I was in reunion, I was reading that section.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: And the crazy, crazy thing is that the things that she mentioned happened real time as I was experiencing them.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: They talk about GSA, genetic sexual attraction.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: There was some of that that existed for me.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to even talk about.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, it's everything's cool, but it's that feeling, that connection that you've never felt before with any human besides your children, usually for us.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: And so it was very strong.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't just that.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: It felt like every time my my sisters messaged me, it was like electricity went through me and it was like I had a boyfriend.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: I was like, what is happening to my body?
18:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm not kidding.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure those of you that have been in reunion understand this, especially when it is good and there isn't any secondary rejection.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: And I've been very, very blessed to have a good reunion.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's been five and a half years, and we have our challenges, our ups and downs, and we're the thing I love is we're leaning in.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what you can hope for.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't have that, guess what?
18:26
SPEAKER_00: You have a retreat like this where you can actually learn more through it.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: So let's let's talk about that a little bit.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Yes, go ahead.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: Let me just tell you what drew me to Elizabeth.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: It was like looking in the mirror.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: And I tease her recently.
18:41
SPEAKER_02: I've said, I kind of feel like sometimes we're we're like one head and two bodies.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: We are, I think we're a lot alike.
18:51
SPEAKER_02: I hope that doesn't bother you, Elizabeth.
18:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, totally.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: It's just like this.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: It was just this automatic, and I don't, I don't do that with everybody.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: I have a lot of friends, but I don't automatic.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: And my automatic opened up and and we have just been going.
19:09
SPEAKER_02: When when she said a minute ago, was that just last year's retreat?
19:14
SPEAKER_02: I can't even believe it because I honestly feel like I have been with her for years.
19:20
SPEAKER_02: So anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, and thank you, Liz.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, it is.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: And I think what I want to add to that, I think the one thing that Leslie and I hopefully bring to the table and bring to this community is the capacity to hold the both and.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: And I think where we see so much conflict in and misunderstanding is because people are in one camp or they're in another camp.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: And Leslie and I, not having known each other beforehand, but when when we got to know each other, we know that there's room for all.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: And that that's just a different approach to this work.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: So it is a different approach.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I was gonna ask a question about that later, but since you just brought it up, I'm gonna bring it up now.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: The both end of it.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: This is something that most adopted people know, understand, experience, but may not have named very often.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: I think we're beginning to name it more.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: And you just named it, you can love your person, and the relationship can be really, really hard.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: So I think for you, I'd like to know in your research, because I know you've interviewed a ton of people, Elizabeth, why is holding both so essential and so difficult?
20:38
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, Leslie, you can speak to this too.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: But she just talked about it, so I'm asking her first, and then we'll go to you.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, I I I think it's difficult because of the dissonance, right?
20:49
SPEAKER_01: It's how can these two opposing things be true?
20:52
SPEAKER_01: And I'll give an example, and this is not so much a hard as it I mean, it is a hard, it's it's a grief hard.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: It's that I love every single one of my siblings.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: All 11 of them.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: They are unique, brilliant, hilarious, kind, loving people.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: And I am so pissed off that I did not get to grow up with them.
21:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: However, if I had been raised by my biological mom or even my biological mom and my biological dad, those kids might not they probably wouldn't exist in the world.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: So thinking about that, it's well, I want I would have wanted to grow up with my parents, but the reality is I wouldn't have these 11 beautiful humans in my life if I had.
21:38
SPEAKER_03: That's it kind of boggles the mind.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: But so that's that paradox, right?
21:41
SPEAKER_01: That Gene Wigner talks about in her book, The Adoption Paradox.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: That's the paradox that we all, not just adoptees, but we all have to sit with that.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're right.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm reading that right now.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: And actually going to be rooming with her at the upcoming At Mom event Adoption's Making of Meeting.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: So good.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: I love Jean.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Shout out to Gene Whitner.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're grateful for her.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: Leslie, do you have anything to add?
22:05
SPEAKER_02: The only thing is my focus has always been where Elizabeth put it clearly.
22:12
SPEAKER_02: We were all duped by adoption.
22:15
SPEAKER_02: There are no bad guys.
22:18
SPEAKER_02: But because of what happened to us, I mean, there are no bad guys, I don't think, in the community.
22:25
SPEAKER_02: I think the bad guys are out there making money, but um but because of what happened to us, we're quick to want to look at another person and find out the enemy.
22:37
SPEAKER_02: I remember when I first came into the rooms, we all picked on, because I came in with a group of birth parents, thank you.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: And so it was like those adoptive parents, they got my children and they're the ones and da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
22:50
SPEAKER_02: But it didn't take me long to know that I wanted them to have as much, if not more, information than me.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: They're raising my child, right?
22:59
SPEAKER_02: Do you think I don't want my child raised the best possible way by the most educated person?
23:04
SPEAKER_02: And then I worked with so many families and saw they didn't know what was coming and what was about to hit them either.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: So I just come back to we are all in this together.
23:16
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, any certain people can kick you off or rub you the wrong way, but there is not a bad group within this adoption constellation.
23:27
SPEAKER_02: We just need more information.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: We really do.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: You're so right.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think this goes really well with the next question is you guys have used the word roller coaster very deliberately when you talk about this.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: So, what are the emotional stages of reunion?
23:45
SPEAKER_00: There's emotional stages of grief, but there's also stages of reunion.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: People are so often stunned to learn that there's actually some sort of a map for this.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to hear your story there.
23:56
SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna start by saying that the one of the first things I heard in my very first support group in the early 90s was uh the roller coaster of reunion, and how it was described is how high the highs are.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: Well, guess what?
24:12
SPEAKER_02: So are the lows.
24:14
SPEAKER_02: And just my being able to say that to people is yes, there's lots of excitement, but there's also lots of sadness because you begin to face your loss in a way you've never faced it before.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
24:27
SPEAKER_02: So I think there's a lot to that.
24:29
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: Do you want to outline the stages, Elizabeth?
24:33
SPEAKER_01: Or I just think of the first two, but well, I think that overwhelm.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know that I necessarily think about specific stages uh uh of reunion.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's sort of as like a spiral.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: Sure, very similar to the adopted consciousness.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: It really is.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it really is.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: We're kind of popping all over the place.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: But I would say that overwhelm is probably the stage that I know personally I come in and out of all the time.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: Even I'll give an example I I just shared earlier today on a different podcast.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: I recently went to my uh birth uncle's funeral, and I hadn't been with the family in a long time, so I attended the funeral, and there were probably 80 to 100 people there that I was biologically related to.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: And that was just gobsmacking to me.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember after the funeral in the church, we went downstairs because they provided food for the family.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: The emotional support kitty is there in the frame.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Mom, it's okay.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: But I remember going into the basement.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: They said, anybody who's family, go downstairs.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: It was three quarters of the church went downstairs.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: And and my one of my brothers was standing there, and he's a big he's a big guy.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: All my brothers are big guys.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Nate, can you stand here with me against the wall while I just take this all in?
26:01
SPEAKER_01: That all these children running around, I'm related to them.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they share my blood, they share my DNA.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was just mind-blowing.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: And here I am 27 years in reunion, and I'm thinking, oh yeah, I got it, and we spend holidays and we text and we email and all this stuff, and then you have a a a big event like that, and it sort of sets me back a little bit.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: Whoa, how do I handle this?
26:26
SPEAKER_00: I totally can relate to that actually, Elizabeth, because in June, my birth grandmother, who was 99 years old, passed.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And she was a four foot six Italian woman, amazing woman.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: But of course, I'd only known her five and a half years.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: And going to that memorial service, I was proud of myself because I learned something about myself when I was there.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: I actually had offered to sing because I love singing, and it was a Catholic service, and I had no idea what they were gonna have me do.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: So I just showed up early and was off to the side.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And old Julie, early on reunion Julie, would have felt totally othered.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm left out, I don't belong.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: That's where I would have gone in my head.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: This Julie, who has worked, I'm getting the chills talking about this, who has worked so hard to heal that part of me that felt like belonging was found in them, was able to sit there off to the side, kind of like you, and observe everything and feel so filled up by it, listening to their sharing, learning things about this woman that I did not know and was fascinated by and go, I'm her granddaughter, stuff like that.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: I carry that DNA.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Sweet.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Things like that that I never would have known if I couldn't get out of my own freaking head and allow myself to just be there and observe.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And what I love that you did was you asked for support.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: You asked for your brother to come stand next to you to be there for you.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's so beautiful.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I wasn't planning on sharing that, but it just popped up when you said that.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: It's these things are beautiful when we if we allow them to be.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Right.
28:09
SPEAKER_02: I always say that reunion, what is, was the most continues to be a profound experience of my life.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: Childbirth is the only thing that comes up even close, and I couldn't tell you that reunion didn't beat the emotional level.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: That that honeymoon stage that you start in in the beginning, it is like falling in love.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: I was getting dressed to go out with my son, getting every bit of makeup just perfect.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: And then one day I thought, you act like you're going on a date.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: It's true though.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: It was so exciting and it's falling in love.
28:49
SPEAKER_02: And I'll go ahead and throw in here.
28:51
SPEAKER_02: That's the other thing that gets people going way too fast.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: Didn't your parents tell you when you're a teenager?
28:59
SPEAKER_02: If you go slowly, you can build a good foundation.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: When you're falling in love, going slow is the last thing you want to do.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: You're like, whoo, let me add it.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: But uh, but it really is important to go as slow as you can and to listen to some of us who have done this because we're lucky that our reunions, those of us who went faster than probably is the best bet, they made it.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: But lots of reunions don't make it, and that is the reason why.
29:33
SPEAKER_02: So don't ever think that's not a very important segment.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: The next thing that hit me, and I think both of my sons, was depression.
29:44
SPEAKER_02: Because all of a sudden then, and I mean depression like I'd almost never felt before, and I'd felt a lot.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: Uh all I could think of was all the lost time.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: I think that's what most of us do is oh my gosh, this is so neat.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: What if I could have had this all along?
30:01
SPEAKER_02: And the other thing that I had was adopted individuals think they're the only ones who lived in a fog, but let me assure you, whether you the rest of the constellation likes us borrowing that terminology, it's exactly birth parents have their own fog and adopted parents have their own fog.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: And I began to grieve all the time that I had lived in a cloud, that I wasn't fully present, that I was busy trying to be in this lifetime, but had all this stuff going on over here that nobody could know about.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: So I had part of me in public and much of me living in isolation.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we can relate to that as adopted people because we live divided ourselves.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth, you wanted to share something there too.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was gonna say part of why we named our retreat the long game, is because that's the goal, right?
31:04
SPEAKER_01: When you start off in those early years of reunion, the first couple months, the first couple years, you wanna have your eye on the horizon.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: You want to be looking down the road, saying, Okay, what do we want five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now?
31:21
SPEAKER_01: And then make decisions from that place.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think most of us do that.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: No, but because if we want to be in it for the long game, uh there's a lot of things you want to do to front load it to set yourself up for success.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's really I think what Leslie and I are really passionate about is giving people the tools to set yourself up for a successful long game.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's so important.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you just mentioned the honeymoon phase a second ago, Leslie.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: And I think that can be great initially, but it often gets much harder, even years in, because you're navigating something totally new still.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: And in your Facebook post, Elizabeth, when you were talking about this, you said you've been in reunion for years and something may still feel fragile.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's what you're referring to is this is a part of us learning how to take care of ourselves in reunion, all of us, all parts.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: And when I I talk on the show a lot about the body knowing before the mind can actually explain.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: And when you see reunion living in the body, that anticipation before the first call, the the crash potentially after that first visit, and the silence sometimes when contact goes quiet.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: What do you notice with those people that you work with?
32:44
SPEAKER_00: Where do you notice it shows up if they can identify it?
32:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: Or even with yourself in your body.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: So I had breathing issues since the beginning of time.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: I can remember being teased about it by family members.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: I could never get enough air, and I always they'd say, Close your mouth, the flies are coming in, because I walked around like that, trying to breathe.
33:24
SPEAKER_02: Hypervigilance for me, dysregulation.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: And then my absolute favorite was disassociation, which, for those who read The Girls Who Went Away, know I delivered my second child myself.
33:39
SPEAKER_02: I think that's what you call the ultimate of disassociation.
33:43
SPEAKER_02: And so that was that kind of protection.
33:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm now doing some body trauma work that's quite incredible, and I'm getting back my feelings in my body.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: And I said to my therapist last week, I decapitated myself.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: And that's literally what I did because my body was my enemy.
34:04
SPEAKER_02: You see what it caused me.
34:06
SPEAKER_02: So I just cut it off at the head, and I became it's all thought, all.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: And now I'm just at the ripe old age of 78 and three-quarters, getting back to my body and feeling things I haven't felt.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if ever, but I know in a mighty dang long time.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, what I love is that you're doing it.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: I do too.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter how old you are.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter.
34:33
SPEAKER_02: I know, and part of me has learned some of this, Julie, by doing plant medicine journeys over the last years, and friends look at me or younger people and go, my God, I can't believe you're doing that.
34:44
SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, I was doing it in the 60s, but I wasn't doing it intentionally, nor did I integrate it later.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: But it has for me, it's not for everybody.
34:56
SPEAKER_02: I'm not about to say that, but for me, it has been because ayahuasca was the first step of getting me back into my body, and it's been amazing.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: So that can be another adjunct therapy if it's right for you.
35:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Hey, before we keep going with the episode, I want to tell you about something I'm doing this upcoming Thursday.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: It's called Bring Your Burden, a free live gathering on Zoom this Thursday, August 27th at 6:30 p.m.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Mountain Time, 8:30 Eastern Time.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: No slides, no teaching, none of that.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Just a room for adoptees to bring the questions you've never said out loud, the ones that live in your body, the ones you don't say to your adopted family or maybe even to your therapist yet.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: I'll be there as a fellow adoptee, not a teacher.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: We're going to sit in it together for an hour.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: If you've been carrying something alone for a long time, I built this room for you.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: It's free, it's live, and I would love to see you there.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes, and I'll see you on Thursday, the 27th.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: I so agree with you.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: I actually had a plant medicine adopte D on my podcast because I really feel that's so important because we need to understand what's available to us if it's for us.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: It's important.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for sharing that.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you can relate to this, Elizabeth, but when she talked about our head being decapitated, I felt the same way.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: See, I felt the exact same way.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: My body was screaming at me.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, well, let me just go medicate that.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Let me just go because I just didn't want to listen to what I had to say.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: And I think, again, we share so much similarities, and we need to welcome that and have the conversations.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna say something to Elizabeth.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: Right.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, I was just gonna add to the conversation the the language around feeling like we're wearing a mask, feeling like a chameleon, feeling like a shape shifter.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: I think and this may be true for all parts of the constellation, but certainly as an adopted person, I always felt afraid to reveal my true self because I was afraid that I wouldn't be loved or appreciated or whatever.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: And so, and I've had friends and partners over the years be like, Well, you just have this mask up and you have this wall.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, yeah, what's your problem?
37:32
SPEAKER_01: That's keeping me safe over here.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: It's normal back off.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and of course now I'm I'm learning, oh, wait a minute, I don't have to have that up for everybody.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: And that I can be loved for who I am, warts and all.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: But I I do think that certainly adopted people are really good at we're really good at being in different situations and sort of sort of suss out the room, right?
38:00
SPEAKER_01: You walk in and you're like, okay, we're scanning the room for danger, right?
38:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, where's safe?
38:05
SPEAKER_01: What's safe and where should I go?
38:07
SPEAKER_01: And then if you don't feel regulated in your body, what's the first thing you do?
38:10
SPEAKER_01: Go get a drink, go get some food, go step outside, whatever, but you go do something to like calm your system down so that then you can move about the space that you're in.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so true.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: And I think we've talked about this already.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to understand that every single person, when they go into reunion, isn't going to do it the same as the other person.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: It's an individual thing.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: The one thing that we can all say, and we've already said it, when it comes to pacing with a reunion, both Elizabeth and I went too fast.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: We both would say that.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: I really feel like I re-traumatize myself by going too fast too soon.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
38:55
SPEAKER_00: The whole idea.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: Learning how to build your own capacity in reunion, I think is so important for the nervous system because it's so used to survival in the things that I share.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: It's that whole, I'm more familiar with hell over here than I am with an unfamiliar heaven, right?
39:14
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that I talk about in my work are the five C's, that it takes curiosity, clarity, capacity, connection.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: And the last one is consistency.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Those five things I think are so believably important when we're trying to build our own self-belonging.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, it's not other people that provide that to us.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: It's us learning how to trust our own nervous system, in my experience.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: And so I so much appreciate you bringing all of that up to bring it to that, because I just think it's important to sure.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: Anything you want to add?
39:50
SPEAKER_02: I would add, I I always say my ability to go slow was a gift from above because when I wanted to, much like adopted people, I realized when I gave birth to twins when I was 43 and I started watching them go through the developmental stages, here came all this grief.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: And it was my God.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: And I began to really experience what I lost.
40:18
SPEAKER_02: And that's when I turned to my husband, they were 18 months old and said, I've got to search.
40:23
SPEAKER_02: I had never planned to because I thought the adoption police were going to find me if I searched and arrest me.
40:30
SPEAKER_02: And so I wasn't going to do it.
40:32
SPEAKER_02: And I said, But I've got to do it.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: And he looked at me and said, We've been married two years and we have twins, and now you want to go find your older sons.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Could you wait till they get in kindergarten?
40:46
SPEAKER_02: A gift from above, because that was four years where I read, I started going to conferences, I found the community.
40:54
SPEAKER_02: It was accidental.
40:55
SPEAKER_02: I would have been off to the races too if he hadn't said that.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: But I thought, well, maybe I should listen to him.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I'm just saying that that accident is what I always said allowed me to have two full reunions for many years.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: One did shut down later, but but it was accidental that I went slow, but I realized how imperative it was.
41:23
SPEAKER_02: And so that's why I do emphasize that so much.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: So pasting reunion to me is just going slow and steady.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: Like I said before, like my parents used to say.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: If you want a relationship to last, you don't rush in because there'll be too much weight at the top and it'll fall over.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: You go here and you build it as slowly as you can.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: And still, as Elizabeth said, it's always more fragile than any other relationship you're gonna find in your life.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of care that needs to be extended.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: So the slower the better.
42:01
SPEAKER_02: And that's hard.
42:02
SPEAKER_02: We all know that.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: That's very hard.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that, Leslie.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh Elizabeth, you have a framework that I really believe helps with this.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna do a two-part question here.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to walk us through your Grace methodology and how it helps people in the thick of reunion who maybe hasn't even done their own work.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that question.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: So I talked about the Grace framework the other night on the nap at half the hour.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: And uh it was so interesting.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: Someone commented afterwards, she said, I've been in reunion for 34 years, and I learned so much from this.
42:49
SPEAKER_01: So that that was just so helpful and affirming to me that okay, we're we're on to something.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
42:55
SPEAKER_01: And this comes from my research, um, writing the book, and then also my own experience.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: So Grace stands for the G is Genesis, which is really about beginning with intention and remembering that we can begin fresh at any time in any relationship, in any part of our reunion.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's an important piece.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, the reconnection, which is about healing the threads, and there I'm not just talking about with other people, I'm talking about what I like to call SOS, self, others, and spirit.
43:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: It's it's reconnecting with yourself and you know, who am I and what's important to me, what are my values?
43:33
SPEAKER_01: It's reconnecting with with others and building that bridge and that relationship.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: But it's also what's your connection with spirit as you understand that God or universe as you understand that for you?
43:43
SPEAKER_01: Because I think without that spiritual grounding, I mean, reunion is such a complicated thing where we really lose our footing.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: And so having that grounding is just so critical.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: And even it's just hiking in the woods and hugging trees.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: If that works for you, great.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, I do that a lot.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: Or I talk to the mushrooms like I did yesterday.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, not like taking the mushrooms.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: That that's Leslie's thing.
44:08
SPEAKER_02: Talking back yet?
44:10
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, couldn't resist.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: So then the the A in grace stands for authenticity, which is really being real.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: It's being raw.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: And and this is risky, right?
44:21
SPEAKER_01: Because it's vulnerable to speak your truth.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: However, I think it's Brene Brown that teaches us, right?
44:29
SPEAKER_01: That connection is what happens when we're the authenticity.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when we're comfortable.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: The C is for communication, which is really building that bridge as we're building our relationship.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: So my five C's, although I like your five C's, really, those are great.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: I wrote those down.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, ooh, those are good.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: My five C's are compose, clear, consistent, considerate, and complete.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: So I think a lot of times in reunion we make assumptions about something that we want.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: So for example, a family member might say to another one, I'd like to see you for the holidays.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, great.
45:04
SPEAKER_01: But what does that mean?
45:06
SPEAKER_01: I would like to spend Thanksgiving with you, and I'll be traveling at this point.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: And can I plan to maybe either stay with you or can I get a hotel and get as specific and detailed as you can with your request because I think that otherwise we misinterpret so much.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: So much.
45:25
SPEAKER_01: And then the the E is about evolution and expansion.
45:29
SPEAKER_01: It's about growing in a spiral and knowing that with each turn of the wheel, with every year, with every life experience, with every interaction that we have with our family members, we're going to continue to grow and evolve.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: When I first met my birth family, my youngest sibling was three and I was 29.
45:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: So when I just went to my uncle's funeral, I stayed with my youngest sister, and she's now a mama with two kiddos.
46:00
SPEAKER_01: And we had a couple hours together, just the two of us.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: And I remember Julie said to me, She said, Elizabeth, I think this might be the first time that we've ever had time, just the two of us.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: Because there were always so that is such an example of the evolution of that relationship, right?
46:23
SPEAKER_01: When she was little, I was a grown adult.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, but now we're both grown adults and we're raising children.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: So that's the Grace methodology and just helping people to touch in to that at different points to give a different perspective on their reunion.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: So good.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: So, so appreciate you sharing that.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: And Leslie, from your four decades in practice, I say it like that because it's so amazing.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: What actually predicts whether a reunion relationship will last?
46:51
SPEAKER_02: If I picked a single thing, I would say it's the commitment that each individual makes to doing their own work.
47:00
SPEAKER_02: We all come to reunion, don't even know we're doing it, but with that little fantasy in the background that that's gonna fix everything.
47:08
SPEAKER_02: Right.
47:08
SPEAKER_02: That meeting that other person is gonna heal me.
47:12
SPEAKER_02: Nope.
47:13
SPEAKER_02: It is gonna help a whole bunch if you get to, but that's not it.
47:18
SPEAKER_02: It's we each have to do our own work, and guys, it's long term.
47:24
SPEAKER_02: Did you hear me say 79 this October?
47:29
SPEAKER_02: I'm still working my booty off, and I will continue to until I'm pushing up daisies because I get so much back from doing this work, and that's the commitment each person needs to be able to make rather than coming still wounded and dumping our stuff on the other person who may be more wounded, less wounded, but probably less educated than we are that have been going after it for a while.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: So whatever that work entails, whether it's psychotherapy, somatic work, all of the above, plant medicine, healing through coming out of isolation and letting the community wrap you up, those are all the things that are gonna work, but it doesn't stop.
48:16
SPEAKER_02: I just went to, well, it was at that same retreat that Elizabeth mentioned last year.
48:21
SPEAKER_02: I had my oldest son come and some issues came up around some of that, and I had to do even more work and more healing.
48:32
SPEAKER_02: And it was almost equivalent to some of the work I had done early in reunion, and I've been in reunion with him 26, 27 years.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: So it never ends, and when those things come up, they feel big, yeah.
48:46
SPEAKER_02: But we have to be ready for them.
48:48
SPEAKER_02: Nobody else needs to do it for us.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: No, and they shouldn't.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: So, with all of that, I'm curious, especially because you've experienced this, what does repair look like when reunion has ruptured, gone quiet, gone sideways, or even ended in secondary rejection?
49:06
SPEAKER_00: These things are hard.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: So, what does that look like trying to repair?
49:11
SPEAKER_02: I can give you an example because I have been working on that not intensely because my one of my sons closed the reunion and I realized this past year, in fact, I realized when I was out up on the stage using my topic cub, that it had been 10 years since we had spoken.
49:31
SPEAKER_02: Now, what I tried to do, it's what I've told all my clients to do so that it didn't ever close down, was I always sent him a Christmas present and I sent him a birthday gift and I would do an occasional card, but not much, because he let me know he didn't want anything.
49:49
SPEAKER_02: But I noticed he didn't send back his birthday or his Christmas or his whatever card.
49:54
SPEAKER_02: So I do that, but just three or four times a year.
49:58
SPEAKER_02: This year, I wrote him a letter because sitting up there I realized it's been 10 years.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: I apologized to him for what it was that he got upset with me about 10 years ago, but I'm 10 years older.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: I could see it a little better.
50:12
SPEAKER_02: And I said, you know what?
50:13
SPEAKER_02: I got it what you said 10 years ago, but I didn't get it, get it.
50:17
SPEAKER_02: And now I got it more.
50:19
SPEAKER_02: Ten years from now, I'll probably get it even more.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: But I sent him a letter of apology.
50:25
SPEAKER_02: I did not get any answer, but you know what I had?
50:28
SPEAKER_02: I had the community.
50:29
SPEAKER_02: I had some male adoptees who would read my letter and say, mm-mm, get that out of there.
50:34
SPEAKER_02: Mm-mm, don't do this.
50:36
SPEAKER_02: And so I had all this support and information that I could utilize this go-round.
50:42
SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't hear back.
50:44
SPEAKER_02: Was I disappointed?
50:45
SPEAKER_02: A little bit.
50:46
SPEAKER_02: I didn't expect to, but I can't say that I wasn't a little disappointed.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: But I know that I'm doing everything I can to let him know I'm here.
50:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:55
SPEAKER_02: If you ever change your mind, if you don't, I respect that.
50:58
SPEAKER_02: I honestly know that he was terribly damaged in utero.
51:03
SPEAKER_02: So I I don't don't fault him a bit for any of that.
51:07
SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, that's well and can I comment on that as someone as a friend and colleague who witnessed you go through that process?
51:18
SPEAKER_03: Yes, you did.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: One thing that I I really witnessed with you, there was a lot of emotional turmoil as you were composing the letter.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: But once you got it to a place where you felt good about it and you released it and you sent it, you sent it with love and then you detached.
51:36
SPEAKER_03: I did.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: And and as you said, yeah, you were a little dis disappointed, but it didn't wreck your life.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: You've gone on with it.
51:43
SPEAKER_01: And so I think there's something so important when we're doing repair, be honest with ourselves, be authentic, do the work that we need to do, put it out there and then let it go.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: And you said that really beautifully.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: So thank you for the feedback.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:00
SPEAKER_00: I love that because you guys have been in relationship and she's been able to watch it.
52:04
SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
52:04
SPEAKER_00: It also speaks to your grace methodology, that SOS that you talk about.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: She really did the work on herself so that she could communicate with others, and then she included others in the help, the community to help her, which is beautiful.
52:17
SPEAKER_00: All of that, you that's just amazing.
52:20
SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for sharing that.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: So, so beautiful.
52:24
SPEAKER_00: So, guys, let's move into the details of the deets, as the young people say.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: And I'm probably gonna be, oh my gosh, cringy.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so tell us about the weekend, the long game.
52:36
SPEAKER_00: What can people expect?
52:37
SPEAKER_00: Give me the details.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: Date, where, who's it for, all of that information.
52:41
SPEAKER_00: And if you miss something, I'll ask.
52:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you want me to start?
52:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, go ahead.
52:46
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
52:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I want to start with the details.
52:49
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's Friday, November 6th to Sunday, November 8th.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we'll start just Friday evening.
52:54
SPEAKER_01: We'll go to Sunday around noon, so people will have some travel time.
52:58
SPEAKER_01: But it's near Asheville, North Carolina.
53:00
SPEAKER_01: And so for people who are listening from all over the place, if you haven't been to Asheville, it's a really magical spot.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: These mountains are the oldest in the world.
53:11
SPEAKER_01: And people come here literally to have to have pilgrimages to come here and do their healing work.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: So we scoured, I can't even tell you how many retreat locations.
53:23
SPEAKER_01: Leslie and I drove all over Western North Carolina, and then we found the perfect spot.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: It's a hundred-year-old home that's called Quietude.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: And it's this sweet little space.
53:37
SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna have a lot of people, we're gonna capitate 20 people, so it's gonna be an intimate group, but it's by a stream.
53:44
SPEAKER_01: There are beautiful gardens.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: You can feel the energy when you walk into the house.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, one of the pieces of art on the wall when we walked in was a very simple, it was a calligraphy thing, and it says, This is it.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: And Leslie and I were like, oh, okay, this is it.
54:03
SPEAKER_01: This is where we're supposed to do our retreat because this is where the work happens.
54:08
SPEAKER_01: When when you can come together in person and have a magical container, it's just three days, really two and a half, right?
54:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but to have the the real life work.
54:18
SPEAKER_01: So, Leslie, do you want to talk a little bit about what we're gonna be talking about?
54:23
SPEAKER_01: Um you want me to do it?
54:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I do want you to do it.
54:27
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna underscore one line there that she just said because we moved to Asheville eight years ago.
54:34
SPEAKER_02: I had a career and raised a family in Atlanta.
54:37
SPEAKER_02: And for all the friends that contact me and say, How do you like it now that you're there a while and now you've got the feel for it?
54:45
SPEAKER_02: And my quote is always the same.
54:47
SPEAKER_02: Elizabeth's heard it a million times.
54:49
SPEAKER_02: I dive and went to heaven.
54:51
SPEAKER_00: I've heard that.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: I've been there.
54:53
SPEAKER_02: It's beautiful.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: This is the most magical place, spiritual place.
54:59
SPEAKER_02: I I get chills saying that out loud.
55:01
SPEAKER_02: I've ever lived in my life.
55:03
SPEAKER_02: And so, yes, I do think we did travel all over and we looked at a couple of spots that were uh lifting your wig.
55:11
SPEAKER_02: They were so spiritual and incredible.
55:14
SPEAKER_02: But that is a big piece of why I feel so good about inviting people here because you're gonna get the retreat.
55:22
SPEAKER_02: But I know I saw somewhere, maybe Elizabeth said the other day, take a day on before and after and see this community.
55:29
SPEAKER_02: You won't believe it.
55:30
SPEAKER_02: I often say it's the first place I've been able to pop off my mouth and say everything I feel and be comfortable doing it because I know nobody's gonna run their car over me or say something ill about me.
55:43
SPEAKER_02: It's just a loving community, like nothing I've ever seen.
55:48
SPEAKER_02: So you can go ahead with the outline, my dear.
55:51
SPEAKER_02: Go for it.
55:52
SPEAKER_01: So we've we've designed the retreat weekend to be for anyone experiencing reunion.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: So that can be adoption consolation members, adoptees, birth and first parents, adopted parents.
56:02
SPEAKER_01: It can be partners, it can be grandparents, it can be siblings, whatever.
56:06
SPEAKER_01: But we also want to be sure that people know that it's also for NPEs or MPs.
56:12
SPEAKER_01: So people who found out later in life that a parent was not their parent, a raising parent was not their genetic parent.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: Or donor conceived people who are then reconnecting with their donor mom or their donor dad.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: And they're building those relationships too.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: So this isn't just for the adoption community, it's really for anybody who's reconnecting with genetic relatives after a period of separation.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: So we we're trying to be really inclusive about that.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean, and what we'll do throughout the weekend, I mean, Leslie's gonna be talking about the roller coaster reunion and the stages that we go through.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: I'll be introducing the Grace methodology and we'll be walking people through lots of exercises.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: There'll be some private time for journaling and introspection.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: There will be perhaps some dyad work, maybe some role plays.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: We'll have some group stuff.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: So, but one thing that's really important to us is we're really gonna customize this retreat.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: So we're sending out surveys to people, uh, questionnaire to tell us about them and their stories, and then we're gonna make sure that we're customizing this for the people who are showing up.
57:17
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's really important.
57:19
SPEAKER_00: It is really important.
57:21
SPEAKER_00: So, what happens when all those perspectives sit in the same room?
57:26
SPEAKER_00: I wanna I wanna talk about that because I think it's different than separate spaces, adoptee spaces, birth parent spaces.
57:34
SPEAKER_00: So, what happens in that?
57:37
SPEAKER_02: I think we find our commonality.
57:39
SPEAKER_02: One of the things I said, and the reason I'm always bringing the third-party reproduction in with donor conception and now the MPEs and everybody through DNA that's finding out they were disconnected or they were lied to, or whatever it was.
57:55
SPEAKER_02: It's we find what all we have in common, and we have a lot.
58:00
SPEAKER_02: It's not 100% across the board, but guess what?
58:03
SPEAKER_02: Nothing is.
58:03
SPEAKER_02: We're human beings, we have our differences, but there's a lot that joins us together that is in common, and I think that's important.
58:14
SPEAKER_02: I also say I know adoption is not going anywhere anytime soon, but guys, it really is going down, and guess what's coming up?
58:23
SPEAKER_02: And I'm now advocating for all these women across the world who are surrogates, who are being abused and used.
58:31
SPEAKER_02: Do you know who what that feels like to me?
58:33
SPEAKER_02: Here, let me have your body and make babies with it, and then we'll go on and take them and uh-uh.
58:39
SPEAKER_02: They're doing the same things over, and these numbers are rising astronomically.
58:45
SPEAKER_02: The infertility world built all their rules about contact and who should talk to who on the adoption guides.
58:54
SPEAKER_02: And I said at the time, oh great, I've been working to undo that for the last 30 years.
59:00
SPEAKER_02: And now you're But they have turned a quicker corner than adoption ever did.
59:05
SPEAKER_02: And there are recipient parents and and donor parents who are meeting each other and understanding how important it is for the child from the early years.
59:16
SPEAKER_02: So that community is coming a around a little faster, but I just think it's important that we see because who knows what's coming after donor conception, but there'll be some other way they'll figure it out.
59:29
SPEAKER_02: And we have to try to get ahead of and say, maybe these all aren't the best ideas.
59:35
SPEAKER_02: Or or if you're gonna follow them, we could do it much more ethically and kindly for the people that you're making and that are involved in this.
59:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: I appre oh, did you want to say something, Elizabeth?
59:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, I just I just wanted to circle back to the retreat weekend itself because you had said what's gonna happen in that space together.
59:55
SPEAKER_01: And I think to elaborate on what Leslie said about finding our commonalities with one another.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: But I think when we come together with other people who have a similar experience, we get to integrate in a different way.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the adoption spaces that exist out there.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_01: I know a lot I have a lot of friends in the adoption community who don't have long game reunions.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: They they maybe met somebody or they met a couple times, or maybe they were in relationship for a few years and then it's totally gone.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: So to be able to be with other people who are actively working on it or are considering a reunion or want to actively re-engage, then that's a shared conversation that everyone's coming to the table to have.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_01: And I would just hope that the people are gonna leave with a sense of peace and hope and belonging and okay, I can do this.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna give people some really good tools that they can leave and take home with them and not just one-on-one, but like with their families.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you said it at the beginning, Julie.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's this web of relationships that we all have.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_01: You're talking about your 99-year-old grandma.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: That's just amazing that you got to know her before she died and to say, yeah, I am part of that lineage.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just such a beautiful thing.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, so all the relationships.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_01: So if people come, we want them to take that back to their families then.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's so crucial.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for reiterating that.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_00: So I just want to repeat the practical details for listeners.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_00: So it's yes, it's capped at 20 people, listeners and viewers, because there's going to be people that view it.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: Capped at 20 people.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_00: You can actually have family members attend with you, and all of the pricing will be in the links that I include in the show notes.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: You can attend together.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_00: It includes the full program, three shared meals, is my understanding, correct?
1:01:46
SPEAKER_00: And two, I think this is important.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_00: Two bonus group coaching calls, right?
1:01:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's important.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_00: One before and one after the weekend.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_00: The only other thing is that lodging is on their own.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: Correct?
1:01:58
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm saying, and of course, travel there.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: Just wanted to make sure people knew all those details.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_00: So, what do you hope people will carry home?
1:02:07
SPEAKER_00: And I'm using this because of what I do, in their bodies when they leave on Sunday.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_02: I think something you said a little ways back about us needing to be face to face, us needing to be able to touch, us being in person.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_02: We know since COVID, we've been doing so much of this online, and it's good and it's fine, and it's it helps a lot of things.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_02: However, nothing beats being with someone, feeling that.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_02: And that's what I'm hoping people are gonna leave with, knowing that they're not alone, but feeling that they're not alone, having experience this with others.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_02: Also, hearing that their trauma is very real.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_02: They're not a wuss.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_02: If they get it online too much, they'll get all this feedback about, oh, you're just angry, or oh, you little weenie, or whatever people want to say.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_02: But this is the biggest trauma there is, folks.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_02: Come on.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_02: And if they can begin to recognize that, they can feel, hey, maybe it's not me.
1:03:15
SPEAKER_02: Maybe some things happened and they're pretty big, and I deserve to do whatever I can to fix it.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and there's a lot to learn about trauma.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_02: So I just think in community, it can be so healing, and that's what I hope they go home with.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_02: Uh that's it.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Leslie.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_01: What about you, Elizabeth?
1:03:37
SPEAKER_01: Or just add to that, I think increasing the capacity to hold the both hand.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: That we can hold the grief and the gratitude side by side.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_01: And that when we witness one another in that, celebrating the good stuff and honoring the really hard stuff, that helps us to feel seen.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so many of us, right?
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: Birth and first mothers felt so invisible for so long, and adoptees feel alien because we don't feel like we fit in.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_01: And then adoptive parents have their own set of othering.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_01: Um and so I think when we bring people together and really witness one another and say, I I see you and I hear you, and I'm with you.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's where healing and the magic happens.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and I think I'll just say one other thing.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_00: It's not about having to fix anybody.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_00: None of us need to be fixed, right?
1:04:29
SPEAKER_00: It's about us being able to be with our lived experience and allow ourselves to witness each other in it and be with each other in it.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_00: There's something so powerful about that community, like you guys said.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_00: Renee Brown says it so beautifully when she talks about that shame cannot survive in community spaces.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_00: That's not really what she says, but that is basically what she says.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's the essence, yeah.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the essence of it, and it's it's beautiful.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_00: So for both of you, I'd like to ask you this last question for the listener or viewer who is newly in contact and terrified of messing it up, or the one who's 20 years in, like you, Elizabeth, and quietly grieving what the relationship isn't, meaning they wanted something different.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_00: What would you want them to hear today?
1:05:14
SPEAKER_00: I would say honor where you are and remember.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_01: I have a a friend who follows Buddhist philosophy, and he's always texting me one word, and that word is impermanent.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: Things change.
1:05:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_01: So where we are right now, we want to be present and be with it, and we want to hold lightly that it might be different tomorrow or next week or next month or next year.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's good.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I just think um yeah, just really honoring that journey.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_01: And and the other thing I would say is if you're feeling alone in this and Where you are, you need to seek support.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_01: You know, whether it's coming to a retreat like ours or the work that you're doing, or working with a coach or a therapist like Leslie and you and I, Julie.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_01: But finding support because you don't have to navigate this alone.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_01: I think so many people in our community are like, oh, well, I'm just gonna go do it on my own.
1:06:21
SPEAKER_01: Talk to the people who've been through it and be guides and mentors.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, and to use a little example, Elizabeth and I do a face-to-face group here in uh Asheville support greet we started just this week.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_02: There were two new people who came and and they were like, What?
1:06:40
SPEAKER_02: It's over in an hour and a half?
1:06:42
SPEAKER_02: What?
1:06:43
SPEAKER_02: Can't we stay longer?
1:06:44
SPEAKER_02: Could we stay till midnight?
1:06:46
SPEAKER_02: You want it to go on forever.
1:06:48
SPEAKER_02: And you do need to find spaces where you can get a little more of what you need and begin to hear from other people that there's still hope.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh, what if I heard one other person say that so-and-so cut me off years ago, but then five years later, I knocked again or they knocked again.
1:07:08
SPEAKER_02: Give that gives each other hope.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_02: And if it's not a good outcome, if it's nope, they've never talked to me again and they sent back the present I sent them.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_02: Then at least again you know you're not alone.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_02: There are other people who are feeling this and you can connect with them and have a place to commune with the hard parts.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_02: None of it's gonna be a smooth journey.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be like this, guys.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_02: Just remember that.
1:07:38
SPEAKER_02: But it's better, it's better like this, is all I can say.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_02: That we do it together.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_00: So as you're if you are not watching, what Leslie was just doing was literally with her hand showing you what a roller coaster looked like.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_00: That's what was just happening.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_00: I thank you guys so much.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_00: Before I close us out completely, I just wanted to say I'm honored to be in your presence, to be what I believe is a part of something that I think is going down in history, a retreat like this.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for wanting to be on the podcast.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having us today.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: We hope it's the first of many.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_01: So too.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_01: This this is, I think, a gap in the community, and there's a need that, and we're hoping we can fill it.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, can.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, friends, I hope you heard what I heard in this conversation that reunion is not a finish line.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_00: It's not the end of the adoptee story, and in so many ways, it's the beginning of a much longer one.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_00: It's like everything we talk about on this show, it's not something we think our way through, it's something we live through in relationship, in the body over time.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's why they called it the long game.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_00: So if you're in reunion right now, and if it's newer to you than you expected, or harder than you expected, or more tender than you know how to say out loud, please know this.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_00: We've already mentioned this, but I want to speak it again.
1:09:05
SPEAKER_00: You're not doing it wrong.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_00: You are doing something enormous, and you don't have to do it alone.
1:09:11
SPEAKER_00: That's the beauty of these retreats.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: The long game is happening, like we talked about November 6th through the 8th, in quietude in Black Mountain, North Carolina, just outside of Asheville.
1:09:22
SPEAKER_00: It's capped at 20 people.
1:09:23
SPEAKER_00: The spots are already moving, the registration link will be in the show notes.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_00: I want you all to know that I will also add Elizabeth and Leslie's information in the show notes.
1:09:33
SPEAKER_00: Their work is a gift to this community, and I want to make sure you hear this.
1:09:38
SPEAKER_00: Leslie's still seeing clients, y'all.
1:09:40
SPEAKER_00: A few, a few.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_00: If this con, and so is Elizabeth.
1:09:44
SPEAKER_00: So if this conversation stirred something in you and you want a therapist or you want a coach who has lived this terrain for four decades, and also 50 total years of reunion, you can reach out through their websites, through their emails.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_00: I will obviously link that information below.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_00: And if something came up for you in this episode, you can DM me on any of the socials or schedule a chat with me.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear from you and where you are in your own long game, and I can refer you on to them if need be.
1:10:12
SPEAKER_00: And if you would be so kind as to drop a five-star review if anything has resonated with you, or even a written review that would help this podcast be seen and heard by more adopted people and those who love them.
1:10:25
SPEAKER_00: And just remember, it's been said multiple times you are never alone.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: And as always, please stop outsourcing belonging and insource it.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you next week.
1:10:35
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, too.
1:10:38
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.