Welcome to our website. You might be curious to know how we came up with the name heartsGROWTH and why we write it the way we do.
Our first retreat in 2018 was titled “Have a Heart”. The title came from a birthday gift Cheryl received from her sister, Shawn. It was a heart shaped box filled with little folded papers that had either a meaningful quote or a memory that spoke of Shawn’s love for Cheryl. The gift provided connection across the 2400 miles that separated them, and the gift offered comfort in the aftermath of Shawn’s untimely death in 2001. When Arlene & Cheryl decided to collaborate and offer their first retreat, they wanted to offer participants gifts from their hearts.
After that first retreat, we realized that the fundamental foundations for our work together were compassion and mindful self-compassion. We decided to further our studies and become trained teachers in cultivating compassion and mindful self-compassion. We spent time doing our own personal and silent retreats, and we shared many long discussions and reflections. Our colleagues, students, and residents were expressing problems sustaining compassion in their work. We saw that burnout was happening in our profession, and we knew that what we were creating in our business was needed. As our joy and satisfaction in our work and our lives increased, we wanted to share our passion, experiences, and practices with others.
When we were finalizing the name for our business, we wanted a company name that more fully represented our work together. We both agreed that keeping “heart” as part of the name was essential, but we needed to make it plural to represent multiple hearts growing together with common humanity. Our hearts’ growth was guided by our core values, and our growth was supported by practicing compassion and self-compassion. Our values included gratitude, resilience, openness, wisdom, trust, and honesty. Thus, combining the acronym GROWTH with hearts gave us the name heartsGROWTH.