What are the new things that are going to be added for everybody?

Well, the new things, mostly I think the new things are that we're, we're creating a lot of spaciousness, and we're separating the, the larger group into the two smaller groups so that we each get some really good, uh, small group time to do, do our individual modalities.

And then the groups will swap and have time with the other person throughout the weekend.

But what's really exciting is that now because we are extending the time a little bit for the retreat, it's an extra day that we didn't have in May, and it's all in one location, that we're going to be putting the film on Friday night as a sort of arrival and evening activity, a shared activity, and then letting people sit with it before we get into the work, right? Instead of kind of mashing it all together.

And that's, as you said, that's really important for the integration.

We...

It's the...

Mm-hmm.

So where did that come from? And what does it mean to you when you watch a room full of adopted people start to actually live it?

Yeah.

I mean, it's in my book.

I'm pretty sure that that was one of the strokes of genius that I had in my life.

And as I was writing my book, which is adult adoptees and writing to heal migrating toward wholeness, which explains each of the five core principles.

Each chapter is about one of the five core principles.

And somewhere in there, I came up with this, this idea that more stories equal more connection and more connection equals more healing.

So how does your framework relate to this whole idea of increasing capacity and returning back to yourself?

Can you expand on that, please, a little bit for us?

A lot of adoptees have the experience of being silenced by culture, right? Being silenced by the culture of adoption, which tells us that we should be grateful that we were chosen, that we were given a quote unquote better life, that sometimes that our first mothers were not good people and that we were lucky to be saved from them, things like that.

And whether these are things that are explicitly said, they're things that are coming at us sometimes from our families in, I was going to say insidious ways, but I don't know that that's quite the right word.

But unintentionally, because of the way that the media and the dominant narratives about adoption continue to exist, Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

become internalized.

And also, by virtue of the fact that the beginning of my life as an adopted person began with a complete lack of agency.

And if that's the case, how much do you encourage adoptees to share? How much do they keep personal for themselves and how much is for the consumption of other people? Sorry, that's a long question.