Carly Baumann is a certified yoga instructor and Yoga Nidra guided meditation facilitator with specialized training in trauma-sensitive yoga, based on the South Coast of Massachusetts. For over thirteen years, she has guided classes and workshops in yoga studios, schools, community centers, and nonprofit organizations, offering accessible practices that support nervous system regulation, deep rest, and self-inquiry.
After discovering she is an NPE, Carly’s journey has been deeply supported by Yoga Nidra, a guided sleep-based meditation practice that helped her navigate identity exploration, integration, and healing. Her lived experience continues to shape her commitment to creating compassionate spaces for reflection, belonging, and restoration.
In addition to her yoga and meditation work, Carly is a lifelong educator working in environmental nonprofit programming, connecting youth and community with meaningful experiences in local natural spaces.
Inner Compass: Explore, Rest, and Reset
Intention can be understood as an inner compass that helps orient us from within during times of identity discovery. This 90-minute session invites participants to slow down, reconnect with their inner experience, and use intention as a grounding practice.
Drawing from training in Yoga Nidra and trauma-sensitive yoga, as well as lived experience as an NPE, Carly guides accessible practices that support awareness, nervous system regulation, and deep rest.
The session includes gentle movement, a reflective exercise on attention and perception, and the creation of a personal intention statement. Participants are then guided through Yoga Nidra, a deeply restorative meditation that supports integration. The experience emphasizes choice and self-paced engagement, offering practical tools for reflection, emotional regulation, and reconnection during periods of transition.
Participants are welcome to bring blankets and pillows for comfort when lying down or may sit in a supported position. Yoga mats and some props will also be available.

Annette Becklund, LCSW, NBCCH is a licensed clinical social worker, clinical hypnotherapist, trauma-informed therapist, author, and lyricist. She specializes in identity, trauma, and neurodiversity, and began working with NPEs, adoptees, and donor-conceived individuals after discovering in 2018 that she herself was an NPE. Annette has presented on Inner Child healing, autism, and misattributed parentage at various conferences and workshops including Untangling Your Roots, Right to Know, and Hiraeth Hope and Healing. Her work is published in the Social Work Desk Reference and Journal of Integrative Medicine, and her memoir Ancestry Discoveries: What Happens Under the Sheets Doesn’t Stay There chronicles her personal journey through DNA truth. “The Looking Glass,” “The Lesson,” and “Penmarks & PJs” are songs with lyrics by Annette and music by Mauro Melleno which can be found on all streaming applications. Ancestry Discoveries: Finding Your Way Home is a book currently under construction which looks at the effects of DNA discoveries on others in the MPE’s life. Annette blogs at AncestryDiscoveries.com and offers clinical resources at AnnetteLBecklund.com.
Go Deeper and Come Home
This experiential session invites participants to reconnect with parts of themselves that may feel distant following identity disruption or life-altering discoveries. Through reflective and creative practices, Annette Becklund gently guides participants in exploring what remains present beneath grief, confusion, or disorientation.
Grounded in shared experience, this session offers space to rediscover inner resilience and reconnect with enduring aspects of self. Participation is always optional. Some may engage actively, others may observe and take in the experience. Both are welcome.

Amy Ebbeson, LCSW is the Clinical Director of Worcester ACTs (Addresses Childhood Trauma) and a Lead Consultant for the Collaborative for Youth and Community Justice at Clark University. She has Master’s in Clinical Social Work from Boston University and has worked in a variety of social service agencies, including the Department of Mental Health. Since 2000 she has taught Mental Health and Community Health, among others, at area colleges including Worcester State University and the Wheelock College School of Social Work. She consults to the Department of Public Health and served as Chair for the Worcester County Commission on the Status of Women. She is the 2018 recipient of the YWCA Erskine Award in Education. She considers herself a lived experience practitioner and will be speaking about the lifelong impacts of untreated trauma in early childhood.
What Wasn’t Wrong With Me: Understanding Adaptation, Family Rules, and the Wisdom of Survival
This interactive session reframes common trauma responses through the lens of family systems and survival adaptation. Amy Ebbeson guides participants in exploring the unspoken family rules that can shape identity, relationships, and emotional patterns over time.
Through reflection and discussion, participants consider how responses such as hypervigilance, people-pleasing, anger, or withdrawal may have developed as protective strategies. The session centers self-compassion and invites a deeper understanding of the wisdom within these patterns, with space to explore how they may shift over time. Participation is always optional. Some may share, others may simply listen. Both are welcome.

Victoria Hill is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker that lives in Wethersfield, CT with her husband, daughter and son. She is co-owner of a wellness center in town and works part-time at Hartford Hospital. Victoria’s NPE/DCP discovery happened in January, 2020 and she has spent the last five years connecting with other NPE/DCPs and advocating for more awareness, legislation to address various types of fertility fraud and DCP protections.
The Science of Who I Am

This experiential workshop is designed for donor-conceived people, NPEs, and adopted individuals to understand identity trauma as both an emotional and neurological event, including the impact of the primal wound and pre-verbal trauma that can shape the nervous system long before conscious memory forms. When a person’s origin story is disrupted, the brain regions responsible for identity and memory must reorganize, leading to disorientation, hypervigilance, and deep emotional responses that are actually adaptive survival mechanisms. The workshop offers neuroscience-based insight alongside practical tools like parts mapping, CBT strategies, EMDR resourcing, and guided reflection to help participants make sense of their experiences, develop language for often unspoken feelings, and begin integrating their story on their own terms, all within a space that prioritizes being witnessed, understood, and supported rather than “fixed.”

Theresa Knorr is an adopted person in recovery with more than 30 years of experience in addiction treatment, recovery, education, and community support. Throughout her career, she has served as a clinician, program director, clinical supervisor, trainer, facilitator, community educator, recovery coach, and curriculum developer.
Theresa is a member of the New York Certification Board (NYCB) Trainer Registry, an OASAS Education and Training Provider, and a FOR-NY Best Practice Trainer. From 2016 to 2025, she served as Senior Director of Recovery Education and Training for Friends of Recovery-New York and has also served as a subject matter expert on peer supervision for NYCB.
Her work extends beyond traditional recovery services to whole-person wellness and reflective practices. Theresa completed training in holistic medicine and Tai Chi through Green Mountain Institute's College of Oriental Medicine and Eastern Cultural Studies in 2000 and began teaching Tai Chi the following year. She has taught meditation and esoteric psychology in the community since 2002 and has trained recovery coaches since 2016. She is particularly passionate about staff wellness and facilitated self-care.
Theresa currently holds credentials as a Certified Addiction Recovery Coach (CARC) in New York and Recovery Coach Professional Facilitator (RCP-F) through CCAR. She previously held credentials as a CASAC in New York and CADAC in Arizona.
As both an adopted person and longtime recovery professional, Theresa brings lived experience alongside decades of professional practice to the spaces she facilitates.
Rewiring Negative Beliefs Using Our Own Voice
In this interactive session, participants explore how difficult and traumatic experiences can shape deeply held beliefs about ourselves, our relationships, and what we believe is possible in our lives. Drawing from positive psychology and the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, Thais Gibson, and Dr. Gabor Maté, the session invites participants to recognize negative or self-limiting beliefs that may be connected to NPE experiences, donor conception, relinquishment, adoption, family separation, and other identity-related experiences.
Through guided reflection, participants will identify one belief they would like to reframe, develop a more affirming self-statement, and recall memories, experiences, emotions, and images that support it. Participants will then create a personal recording in their own voice to use as an ongoing reflection and reinforcement practice. The session concludes with discussion of ways the recording can be incorporated into moments of rest, meditation, movement, or other reflective practices. Participation and sharing are always optional.

Andrea Lomboy brings both lived experience and professional training to her trauma-informed work supporting individuals navigating identity disruption and late DNA discoveries. With more than 30 years of service across medical, civic, faith, government, and military settings, her work integrates public health practice with whole-person approaches to emotional and physical wellbeing.
A personal DNA discovery revealed Andrea is a three-time NPE/MPE, deepening her understanding of identity disruption and late-arriving truths. She is a Harvard-trained Lifestyle & Wellness Coach, a graduate of Dr. Gabor Maté’s H.E.A.L. Method Master Class, holds a Master’s Degree in Education, and is an ordained minister. Andrea currently continues her training through the mindbodygreen Health Coach Certification Program, with anticipated national board certification in 2026.
Acceptance as Ground
In this trauma-informed workshop, wellness coach Andrea Lomboy explores acceptance as a stabilizing step after unexpected identity discoveries. Through guided reflection and gentle grounding practices, participants are invited to consider how acknowledging reality can create steadiness and support personal meaning-making at their own pace.

Janet Nordine, MS, LMFT, RPT-S, is one of the few Registered Play Therapist Supervisors (RPT-S) in private practice in Las Vegas, Nevada. With hundreds of hours of specialized training and clinical experience, Janet has honed a unique skill set that allows her to connect with children through their natural language of play. Her approach helps children express their inner worlds, emotions, and needs in a safe and supportive space. She views each child and adult as a delight and works to make them feel safe, seen, and heard in every session. Janet also works with adults who have experienced trauma, attachment wounding, and life struggles.
Returning to the Self: Identity, Grief, and Embodied Healing through Creative and Sand Tray Expression
In this experiential session, Janet Nordine guides participants through a trauma-aware sand tray and expressive process exploring identity, grief, and attachment. Using symbolic materials, participants are invited to externalize complex emotions and gently engage with what may feel lost, missing, or still waiting to be known.
The session weaves grounding practices, somatic awareness, and reflective witnessing to support a sense of continuity and connection within. Emphasis is placed on pacing, consent, and choice, with an integration process that invites participants to identify an inner anchor they can carry forward. Participation is always optional. Some may create and share, others may observe and reflect. Both are welcome.

Pamela Powell was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the day after a blizzard. A former sailor and boat captain, she has spent more than a decade writing her memoir, Sea Change, which explores the stormy beginning of her life, her search for her absent father, and the unexpected DNA discovery that reshaped her understanding of her identity. After learning of her Jewish heritage and discovering that her biological father was not the man she had always been told, her journey took an entirely new direction.
Sea Change has been accepted for publication by Sibylline Press and is scheduled for release in April 2027.
Pamela has led writing groups for more than 30 years. She is the mother of two young adults and lives in a cohousing community in Vermont.
Writing Our Way Through Our Early Beginnings
This reflective writing session invites participants to gently explore early beginnings through guided prompts and quiet free writing. A brief meditation helps settle into the experience, with space to write privately and, if desired, share with the group.
Led by Pamela Powell, this session centers creativity, authenticity, and connection. Participation is always optional. Some may choose to share, others may simply write and listen. Both are welcome.

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Massachusetts Cranberry Coast Fall 2026 Retreat Facilitator Bios & Session Focus