get ready to unleash your inner child at adult summer camp

Do you remember how easy it was to make friends when we were kids? You’d go up to them, ask if they wanted to play, and then bam. You’re now best friends at the playground. Maybe you’d see them again, maybe you wouldn’t. Didn’t matter.

I don’t know about you but I grew up going to camp each summer. I remember clinging to my mom until the very last second, anxious and nervous to be left on my own. What if I don’t make any friends? What if no one likes me? She would leave, I would usually sit by myself, and then I’d be put in a group and slowly but surely come out of my shell. By the time my mom picked me up a few days later, I was pleading with her for 10 more minutes to say bye to everyone and get their contact info to stay in touch.

Maybe you’ve had a similar experience as a kid. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience as an adult. What I do know is that whenever I’ve gone to events as an adult, there is always a tipping point. When you can go from “omg I know no one here” to “I am so glad I came.” 

How many times have you been in a situation where the tipping point arrives, the moment comes to mingle, and instead of leaning into the discomfort and going up to someone and introducing yourself, you got on your phone to not look like a loser? I know I’ve done that countless times. And looking back on the events where I sat and stayed on my phone instead of trying to “make new friends on the playground”, those were the events I didn’t get that much out of. Maybe it might’ve just been better to stay home. All because I didn’t want to risk putting myself out there.

I have created this camp because one, there is important restoration that happens when you spend time outdoors, two, because I’ve personally experienced the magic of going to a retreat or an event with a group of strangers and walking out with 10+ new best friends, and three, because in the last few years I have heard from more and more of us that “It’s so hard to make friends as an adult.” “I wish there was somewhere to meet people that wasn’t a bar.” “I don’t feel like I have a life outside of work.”

And I am a firm believer that if you wish something existed, thats the universe giving you a chance to create it. And that is how awc was born.

This camp is for the people who, for one weekend, are willing to put away their phones, meet themselves a little bit more than they have before, and most importantly, are brave enough to go up to a stranger and say “hey, can I play?”

I hope you’ll join us!

- Joelle Riding