Change your story, change your life.
Reclaim yourself and step into your power to rewrite the ending.
It’s your story. Own it.
What would it look like to reconnect with your wounded parts, and welcome yourself home?
This 6-session, transformational journey through time is an invitation to recover your authentic self, in a supported and therapeutic environment of non-judgment, care, and connection.
In this live online workshop, you’ll be guided in somatic mindfulness practices, reflection, grief work, and writing prompts to support you in welcoming yourself, reconnecting with your inner child, and soothing your wounded parts. Our focus will be on identifying our core experiences and how they shaped our sense of belonging in the world. Through writing and meditation we will offer ourselves the care we did not get to have when we were young and put new possibilities on the map for our relationships to ourselves and others.
The program will include live, guided practice and writing sessions bi-weekly (Fridays 10:30 am-12 pm MST), with an opportunity to reflect on and share your experience through therapeutic small-group processes. This series will be facilitated by Dr. Cynthia Garner, a certified mindfulness instructor, somatic psychotherapist, and author. Space in this program is limited. Email questions to info@cynthiagarner.com. Enrollment closes February 22, 2024.
Cost: $600
“Resilient”
By Cynthia Garner
An excerpt from Thrown from the Nest: A Memoir and Trail Guide for Surviving Relational Trauma and Healing Attachment Wounds
There is no birth story. No tales of water breaking, or rushing to the hospital, or a frantically pacing father. There are no pictures of me resting on my mother’s chest, or smiling playfully from a cradle or stroller. There is just the emptiness of not knowing.
In some ways it’s kind of like I was never really born at all. I just appear magically in my adoptive parents’ life at 18 months old, outgoing and smiling, not needing much, and never fussy. Supposedly, I adjust quickly to my new life as a “daughter,” bouncing back even though before then I have only ever been a “foster child,” a too-much to handle, mistake, eternal reminder of abuse, fear, and bad choices.
They say I am resilient. My adoption is a success story. I know I am “adopted,” but have little context to understand what that truly means, other than knowing that my birth mother could not take care of me, so I have a new mom and dad now. They aren’t my real birth mom and dad, but they are my parents.
They do the best they can to put a positive spin on me being adopted. They tell me I am a gift to their family. That they chose me, I am just what they wanted, and they are so glad to have me join their family and become the daughter they could not create on their own. But despite their valiant efforts, a pervasive sense of not being connected to a lineage, of being unlike anyone else in my new family, follows me through my childhood.
When you are “adopted,” the question of family and belonging is complicated. Read more.