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Resilience Is Earned, Not Automatic: Why Adoptees Adapt (An Adoptee Remembrance Day Episode) · 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.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: 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, and to reconnect with the truth, identity, and belonging that were always yours to come home to.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the podcast, everybody.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is just me today, and it's been a while since I've done one of these on my own.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for being here with me.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a tender week for me, and maybe for you too.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow, October 30th, is Adoptee Remembrance Day, a day set aside to honor the adoptees we've lost.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And on Saturday, October 31st, it's my adoption day.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's also exactly one year since I launched this podcast.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I chose that day on purpose because it was the first day of what became a permanent caregiver in my life, even though my nervous system was very unsure at seven weeks old if this one would keep me.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: More on that later.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: So with all of that sitting in my body this week, I want to talk about a word I've been carrying around for a long time.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's the name of this podcast.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the name of the free Facebook group I started a few years ago.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it's a word I've had a complicated relationship with for most of my life.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: That word is resilience.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're adopted, you've probably heard some version of this.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Kids are resilient.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: She bounced right back.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: He adjusted so well.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Look how well you turned out.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I named this podcast the Resilience Project because I believe it.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I believe adopted people are some of the most resilient people on the planet.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've said for years that if you look up resilience in the dictionary, adoptee should be listed right next to it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I've also come to believe something else.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Resilience isn't something that just happened to us.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is something we have had to build and something that we're still building.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the version of resilience most of us were handed as kids, that's not the whole story.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So today I want to tell you what I've been learning from a book that I can't put down, from my somatic training, and from the last few years of my own life, which have asked more of my resilience than I ever expected.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've been reading the book, The Adoption Paradox by Jean Kelly Whitner, and I'm so excited because Jean is going to be on the podcast in the near future.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So consider this a little preview.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's a section in her book simply titled Resilience, and it opens with the sentence, So many of us grew up underneath.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Kids are resilient.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jean asks the question I want us to sit with today.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: What is resilience?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: The simple definition she offers is the ability to be tough, to withstand great pressure, to adapt and overcome hard circumstances more readily.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: More readily.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I underlined that entire definition because when I read it, I thought that's us.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's adopted people.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Adapt, withstand, overcome more readily than most.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: We learned to read a room before we could read a book.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: We learned what made the adults around us relax and what made them pull away.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: We learned to be easy, helpful, good, low maintenance, and grateful.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: We adapted.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Sunderland, who has done so much to help the world understand the Adoptee experience, has said in his lecture on addiction and adoption, and I will link this in the show notes because I think everyone should watch it, that adoption should really be called adaption.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I agree with him completely.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because from the very first moments of our lives, adaptation was the job.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jean includes something in her book that I starred in the margin.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: A woman named Jen Winkleman remembers attending a conference with Dr.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce Perry, one of the leading voices in research and treatment for children who've experienced trauma.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And she recalls him saying, and I quote, separation from the birth mother is the single most traumatic event a human being can survive.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: The single most traumatic event a human being can survive.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to stop on that for a moment.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: That word survive.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because tomorrow is Adoptee Remembrance Day.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that day exists because not everybody who's adopted has actually survived.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a day to honor adoptees whose lives were lost to suicide, to abuse, to mental health struggles, to violence, to deportation, to abandonment.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them have been people you knew, people you loved, people who sat in support groups with you, or showed up in your comments, or carried the same questions you carry.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to say something really clearly, because this is an episode about resilience.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: The adoptees we've lost were not less resilient than the rest of us.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: They were carrying something no one should have to carry alone.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And too often they were asked to carry it alone anyway.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Resilience was never a test that some people failed.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if it feels right, I want to invite you to take a moment of silence with me for the adoptees we've lost.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to honor the day tomorrow, many adoptees light a candle on the evening of October 30th.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be lighting mine.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Adoptee Remembrance Day is also a call to change what's still happening to adoptees who still can't access their own original birth certificates, to international adoptees who were never given citizenship and have been adopted.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Remembering isn't only about grief, it's about refusing to let it keep happening.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this is exactly why I want to talk about resilience honestly today.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because right after that line about separation, Dr.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Perry went on to say that resilience is not a given.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to say that this is Jen Winkleman's memory of Dr.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Perry at a conference, as shared in the Adoptee Paradox.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So here's where I want to gently challenge the way we've been talking about adopted people.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: When someone looks at an adopted child and says, kids are resilient, what they're often seeing isn't resilience, it's adaptation.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a nervous system doing exactly what it had to do to survive.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Going quiet, going good, going numb, and going along.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the same thing as being okay.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Jen says it so plainly in the book, it's dangerous to camp out in the hope that a child's resilience will spare us the impact of a traumatic event.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: We can't bank on it and keep drawing from that account.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then she says the line I boxed on that page.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Resilience is earned.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: That word did feel like praise to me.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it kept me in my own perfectionism and performance for most of my life until my 40s when I realized that wasn't working for me anymore.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, I still think Ad D belongs in the dictionary next to resilience, but not because it was easy for us, because we've had to earn it, and because no one should have to earn it alone.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I find so hopeful about that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: If resilience is built, then it can still be built today, at any age, in any season.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: In my somatic training certification, there was a line that stopped me.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Clinical research has explored how resilience relates to immune function.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Some trauma survivors show resilience in the face of adversity, and studies have linked psychological resilience to better immune function.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that for a second.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Resilience isn't just a mindset.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't just a personality trait.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't a pep talk.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It lives in the body and shows up in the body.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that matters so much for adopted people because so many of us were told our resilience was something we either had or didn't have, something we were born with, something that should have kicked in by now.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if resilience lives in the body, then it can be practiced in the body.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not by pushing harder, by learning over and over that we can feel something hard and not disappear inside of it.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is capacity.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not never feeling overwhelmed, but staying connected to yourself while emotion is happening.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's what resilience actually is, I think.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not toughness, returning.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be honest with you about why this word has been on my mind so much personally over the last few years.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Really, the last six years of my life have been a lot.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: In the last 16 months, I've moved three times.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I went through a divorce.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: In the last six years, I've lost five people I love.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And four people in my family have received a cancer diagnosis, some terminal.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think the cancer situations in my family are the most prominent in my mind right now because they're the ones that I'm dealing with freshly in the moment.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think what's helped me is making sure that I'm present and praying for them and supporting them as best as I can, but not abandoning my own emotions in the process and allowing myself to experience the anticipatory grief as it arises.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And as for the moves, my body has felt all kinds of jitters with each one.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: The anticipation, the pride I felt with driving cross-country from Virginia mostly by myself.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: My biological father helped me actually with the first two legs, which was amazing.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And realizing that I can do hard things by myself.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Home for me has become wherever I am now.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And settling into my first apartment recently in the last few weeks has been a part of that too.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Building bar stools, building the patio furniture that I have, my dad helping me put together the coffee table, which we both couldn't have done individually.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: So many things that I never would have done if I wouldn't have even given myself a chance to do so.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed the old adopte pattern wanting to kick in when I moved here to Utah the first time back in February.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: When I moved into my dad's basement, I felt that whole be strong, be easy, keep going, don't need too much.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still getting used to having family that I can ask for help.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sisters, a whole new concept for me over the last five and a half years.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had sisters.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So all of this is still so very new to me.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I just have to be compassionate with myself and understand that this is still a learning process.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think when people would tell me when I was younger that you are strong, and even now, with everything that I've experienced over the last six years, I hear that you are strong.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: You are handling it so well.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: It reminded me of that when I was a kid and how I wanted to perform and be perfect to make sure I could maintain that image.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember that being well behaved or being well adjusted, a part of me just wanted to fall apart and say, I don't want to have to be strong anymore.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just want someone to cherish and take care of me.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what I've noticed: when life gets hard, that old adaptation comes back first.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: The part of me that learned early that I needed to keep it together, to not be too much, to keep moving, going, be busy in order to not allow my thoughts to take over, to make everyone else comfortable, to not be an inconvenience.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: That part of me kept me alive once.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm grateful for her.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not resilience.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's survival wearing resilience's clothes.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's been different this time in my life.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: The things that I've done to actually stay with myself in the overwhelm instead of pushing through are my continual consistent somatic practices that I do every morning and every night.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hand over heart, hands open when I'm in stillness, allowing myself to receive my time in prayer, my time reading, meeting new people in the community, holding the community events like bring your burden and the refuge, giving myself time to rest and having an actual Sabbath day on Saturday that I really protect, and asking for help when I need it.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: All these things are just a taste of the things that I do.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: The resilience I'm building now really does look different.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like letting myself grieve instead of just functioning.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like when my body is bracing, noticing it and letting it soften.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like letting people in.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it looks like a lot of small, unglamorous moments of coming back to myself again and again and again.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to pause a moment today because I want to invite all of you to something.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of you have done the work, have read the books, have gone to plenty of therapists, have maybe even prayed, meditated, all the different things that you've tried, and still something heavy sits underneath.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's because adoption didn't just happen in your mind, it happened in your body long before you had words for it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm bringing back Bring Your Burden.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a free live gathering for adult adoptees on Zoom tonight at 6:30 Mountain, 8 30 Eastern.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: No slides, no teaching, just a steady room to bring the real version of your story with people who understand it from the inside.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to share.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can just listen if you want.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't make it live, register anyway, and the replay is yours.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just remember you don't have to carry it alone for another day.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get back into today's episode.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's an adoptee in Gene's book named Fred, who says something I think so many of us know firsthand.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: He says it's hard to heal when you're stuck in the muck.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: He talks about seeing so many adoptees stuck in an explosive anger phase.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Something triggers it, and some people stay bitter most of their lives.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Others slowly start to work it out.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to say anger isn't the enemy.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's often the first honest thing that we feel.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to be really clear about this.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anger is not a failure of resilience.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Anger is often the first sign of it.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: The first time the body says, something happened to me and it mattered.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: The question isn't whether we feel the anger.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: The question is whether we get to keep moving through it.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Whether we get support, whether we find the tools.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Fred found his tools in recovery.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as a professional who worked in addictions and recovery for many years, I know those tools well.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's Vicky.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Vicky shares that when she was about 16, a friend asked if she ever wanted to meet her birth mother, and she said, No, absolutely not.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why would she want to meet someone who didn't love her enough to keep her?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And her friend looked at her and said, Maybe she loved you enough to give you a chance.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Vicky says her whole frame flipped in that moment.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Moment.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And for the first time, she started wondering what it had been like for her birth mother.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, not every adoptee will resonate with that reframe, and that is okay.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: The point isn't that Vicky found the right story.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's that she found a story that let her shift her perspective.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, I'm not telling you that reframe is your reframe.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: For some of us, it isn't.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's okay.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what I take from it.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right before Vicki's story, Jean writes that people benefit when they find their agency and take control of their own narrative.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And in the margin, I wrote one word next to this.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what resilience is at its core.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not kids are resilient, not you turned out fine, but I get to be the author now.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: I get to take back the pen.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd like to invite you into a little bit of practice today.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a resilience practice together right now in this moment.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not something you need to get right.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's nothing you need to perform.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if it feels supportive, you're welcome to join me.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if it doesn't, you can just listen.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to invite you to start by noticing where you are, your feet, the floor beneath you.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever is holding you up right now, whether the chair, the bed, the car seat.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice and maybe even feel the sensations of that holding you, whether it's soft or hard, maybe even pressing your feet into the ground a little to notice that support and that it's not going to fall beneath you.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice that support and realize that you don't have to hold yourself up all by yourself in this moment.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now gently bring to mind one hard thing that you've survived.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not the hardest thing, but just one thing.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Something you can touch lightly.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Notice where it lives in your body.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a tightness somewhere, or a heaviness, or maybe there's almost a buzzing feeling.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe there's nothing at all.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now let your attention move somewhere in your body that feels a little more neutral.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your hands, maybe your feet, maybe the place where your back meets the chair.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Let your attention rest there for a breath or two.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now gently go back and forth.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: A moment with the hard place.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And a moment with the steady place.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: And forth.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is resilience in the body.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: You may recognize this practice from the capacity episode.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's called pendulation.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: The important thing is not never feeling the hard thing.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's feeling it and finding your way back to something steady.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Over and over.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if it feels supportive, I would encourage you to place a hand somewhere in your body and just say to yourself quietly, I'm still here.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going anywhere.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: You've been coming back to yourself your whole life, sometimes without anyone noticing, sometimes without even noticing yourself.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: That counts.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: So here's where I've landed.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, adoptees are resilient, but not because we were born that way, not because kids just bounce back, and not because love fixed everything, or because we were too young to remember.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're resilient because we adapted when we had to.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we keep building resilience every time we choose something more than survival.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every time we feel instead of freeze, every time we rest instead of perform.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every time we let someone see us, and every time we take back the pen.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I named this podcast the Resilience Project, not because resilience is a finish line, because it's a practice, a project, something we build together, one return at a time.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: So as we close today, I keep coming back to that line from Jean's book: resilience is earned.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: For a long time I think I heard that as something heavy.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like one more thing I had to prove.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: But now I hear it differently.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: It means nothing about you is too late.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: It means the resilience you need for this season doesn't have to already be there.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: It can be built in your body, in your relationships, in small moments of coming home to yourself.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: On Saturday, it'll be my adoption day.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of adopted people, that day is complicated.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: It marks the beginning, yes, but it also marks an ending.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: The day the paperwork made official something our bodies already knew.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna light a candle for what I lost, how far I've come, and for the version of me that is still growing.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: One year ago, on that day, I launched this podcast.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was me taking the time to reframe and refresh what I'd lost into something I'm passionate about advocating for now.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't choose that day to erase what it means.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: I chose it to add something to it.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what resilience is.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not pretending the loss isn't there, but building something alongside it.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: One year in, three moves, a divorce, five goodbyes, four diagnoses in my family.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not on the other side of all of it, y'all.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Building, returning, practicing.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this podcast and every one of you who listens or watches has been a part of how I've kept building.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm reminded of the Free Resilience Project Facebook group being where this all began, and it warms my heart.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: So tomorrow, if you light a candle for the adoptees we've lost, I'll be lighting one with you.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And on Saturday, I'll be celebrating one year of this project, not because the hard things are behind me, but because I'm still here.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so are you.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really glad you're here.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: If this one stirred something in you, don't rush past it.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: If it feels supportive, put a hand where you feel it and breathe there for a moment.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget about Bring Your Burden, the gathering tonight at 630 Mountain, 830 Eastern.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: All adoptees are welcome.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes, and I hope to see you there.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Just want to remind you to stop outsourcing belonging and insource it.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you next Thursday.