Personal Growth Workshop

Reaching True Identity and Orientation Empowerment for the LGBTQ+ Community

A 5-day experiential workshop created as a safe space for LGBTQ+ individuals to embrace their true identity and orientation, gain empowerment and overcome past hardship and isolation.

Coming Home is an experiential workshop created by Rio Retreat in 2019 specifically for the LGBTQ+ community. Why? Because we recognize that these individuals — wherever they are on their journey and however they identify, as a gender or sexual minority — have lived unique experiences. The opportunity to come together in a safe space with others who have also walked that path brings a sense of belonging and deep acceptance that is longed for.

The primary goals of this 5-day workshop is for individuals to embrace their true identity and orientation, gain empowerment, and overcome past hardship and isolation. Led by staff who identify in the community, Coming Home will help participants step into resilience, as the powerful individuals, they are meant to be, with their identity and orientation being a part of that. In this workshop, we will explore therapeutic healing without the burden of heteronormative assumptions and perspectives or fear of discrimination. Instead, participants will process the intersectionality of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, age, and other factors that make them who they are.

Participants will learn that empowerment is about feeling comfortable in their skin, feeling liberated from others’ constructs about who and how they “should” be, and giving themselves unshakable permission to be themselves. Empowerment in identity and orientation is truly about coming home to yourself.

Topics include:

• Minority stress and heterosexual and cisgender privilege
• Coming out, again and again
• Grief and loss as a part of the community experience
• Body image and self-confidence
• Visioning your future

There will be ample time to experientially process your journey, including trauma, hardship, and isolation that may have been acting as a barrier to resilience and empowerment.