Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anne Heffron. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Anne , appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

If you and I were to sit down and talk for the first time, chances are good after a bit I’d say, “You should write a book!” I have this thing where I can see stories in people, almost like an X-ray might be able to see an egg inside a chicken, and when I see a book in you, I have a feeling of pressure in my abdomen, like, Jeekers, they better get that thing out! I saw firsthand what happens when someone doesn’t let the story be born when my mother died of pancreatic cancer. The good news was that she’d finally let herself start writing–the bad news was that she had waited too long and died before she could finish. In my own life, I carried the heavy, distracting need to tell my story for over thirty years but could not find a way to get it out even though I got a BA in English and an MFA in creative writing.
The miracle that happened was that someone, a famous writer, saw my story in me, and gave me literal space to write. For three months, I was in her fantastic East VIllage brownstone, finally writing my heart out–writing my egg out–and my whole life changed. I went from a person who carried her story inside of her to one who shared a story with the world. The best part was that people read my book and told me it changed their lives. Me too, they said about what I had written. Oh my gosh, they said, I’m not alone. Suddenly, my story was not something that isolated me. It was the thing that brought my people to me, brought me to my people.
Often we need someone to see in them what they can’t fully see in themselves in order to feel brave enough to dig and dig and dig until they, too, can see it. The other day, one of my writing clients said I’m like this gentle magical fairy but also like a big ogre that stamps around and says what she wants and thinks. I think that is hilarious. On my best days, I feel like that–winged and kind and huge and demanding. I want freedom for people. I want happiness. I want people to know it is better than okay for them to be who they are–it is their obligation to themselves and the world for, as Keats said, truth is beauty, and beauty is where it’s at.

Anne , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I don’t know where I was or with whom for the first ten weeks of my life after I was born in and released from a hospital in Manhatten. This gap of knowledge didn’t outwardly bother me much until I woke up one morning in my 40s and had a picture in my head of being born and then seperated forever from my birth mother. I was overwhelmed with questions. How could I have a confident sense of who I was with such a gap in my known history? If other people didn’t seem to think the details of my story mattered, did I matter?
I spent the next decade like a bloodhound, my nose to the ground, searching for the scent of my own story. Searching for meaning. Searching for purpose. In refusing the narrative I was handed–your origin story is irrelevant to who you are now–I found myself. I wrote three books about the process, two memoirs and one book of writing ideas for people who were adopted. I led and co-led retreats, online workshops, and online classes for adopted people who wanted to find ways to write about or just live their truth.
I have come in what feels like a full circle to realize it’s not adoption that makes me who I am–it’s not adoption that’s my story–it’s my humanness. All people lose their mother in one form or another at birth. Adoption is an extreme version, one whose impact is not yet understood by society in general. It is a powerful thing to have adopted people gather to validate each other and figure out how to best live with a generally often nearly-always dysregulated nervous system. (This also holds true, I know, for all people–we have the core need to feel seen and heard.) Adopted people have a lot to teach the world about the vital importance of connection and safety in relationships. My job, it seems, is to both work to express these needs and to help others find the tools as writers to express their own.
It doesn’t feel like a job, actually. It feels like a purpose, and to have a purpose that is in alignment with my deepest curiosity, compassion, and energies, feels like a miracle.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I risked what felt like everything to write my first book. I lived on credit. When I was done, I had no money, no home, no job, no idea how to move forward. People stepped in and helped me, gave me places to live, lent me money, helped support me mentally with their friendship and belief in me. This was when I started my own writing classes. I was so desperate I didn’t have the luxury of fearing failure. I had to make the classes work so I could eat. I had learned some powerful lessons while writing a book that had been blocked in me for thirties years, and I designed the class to quickly help people see what their story was, who they were as the narrator of their story, who their audience was, and how to make potential blocks into doorways of opportunity.
Today, I teach 6 online classes a week and have a waiting list of people who want to work with me.
If I hadn’t been driven into a corner, I never would have had the courage to assume I could teach others from this space of wild freedom I carry inside of me. I had taught writing at a university for about fifteen years, and it took a leap of faith to go from teaching from a place of “you should” and “this is how it’s done” to “what is inside of you?” It feels so good to teach not from a place of “are you right?” but from a place of “is that true for you?”
The kind of writing my writers create can’t be graded. It’s not about that–about good writing and bad writing. It’s about life. It’s about showing up and doing your best to express youself. That’s the best high-five a person can give life, in my mind.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Yes. I want every person who feels they have a story inside they want to share to have the ability to do so.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://anneheffron.com
• Instagram: anne_heffron

Image Credits

Susan Stojanovich,