The Connections That Bring Turning Winds Alumni Back

Ashley had something she wanted the current clients at Turning Winds to hear. During the alumni reunion, she recognized feelings she remembered from her own time in treatment. She knew she could not give them the perspective that had taken her years to find. But she could tell them this: “I know you’re worth it, even if you don’t know you’re worth it today.”

That conversation belongs beside the painted rocks that began a new campus trail during the August 2026 reunion. Alumni were back with lives and friendships that had grown beyond their time at Turning Winds. As they talked with clients and painted the first stones, they were leaving something for teenagers who were still finding their way through.

Conversations with clients who are still here

Alumni spent time with current clients in small groups and also spoke to the group as a whole. They shared their stories, offered advice from their own experience and answered clients’ questions. The clients could hear from people who remembered being in their position, then ask about the parts that mattered to them.

Those exchanges gave the reunion a purpose beyond catching up. Alumni could look back with years of perspective, while the teenagers listening were still doing the early work of understanding themselves, building healthier patterns and imagining what could come next. There was room for both experiences in the conversation. Ashley’s words of encouragement came from remembering how hard it could be to believe in yourself while someone else was asking you to try.

People who kept showing up

For Ashley, the connection had never really gone quiet. She and Carl continued to talk or text, and he had come to her college graduation. At the reunion, she was three classes away from a master’s degree in family therapy and exploring whether she might return for an internship. Someone who had known her as a teenager was still part of her life as she considered the work she wanted to do as an adult.

Ashley described Turning Winds as laying a foundation she continued to build on throughout adulthood. Years later, she still thought about what she had begun to understand there. She could ask for help. People cared about her. She did not have to be perfect to be making progress.

Ashley had attended Turning Winds at an earlier location, so Troy was new to her. The feeling was familiar. When asked what Turning Winds meant to her, she answered:

“It means a lifetime of a family.”

Ashley, Turning Winds alumna

Her ongoing friendship with Carl gives those words their weight. So does the time she chose to spend with clients during the reunion. She remembered being angry herself. Sitting with teenagers who did not yet want to be there, she could recognize their frustration and still see something in them worth believing in.

What returning has come to mean to Justin

Justin’s return visits began with a wish to see Enoch and the treatment center again. Reconnecting reminded him how much that mentorship had meant. By the time of the reunion, he had been returning for several years, taking a picture on the way in and spending time with clients.

Arriving by choice mattered to him. He could come to a place that held so much of his younger life, enjoy being there, and then return to the life he had built. “Every time I come back here, I’m filled with so much joy,” he said.

The memories were wonderfully ordinary: a snowball fight for a friend’s birthday, basketball games, learning chess from other clients. He could still recall those days vividly, even when recent workdays blurred together. And one friendship had become part of his everyday life. At the time of the interview, Justin was living with his best friend from Turning Winds.

Justin described himself as a kid from New York and his best friend as a wrestler from Cheyenne, Wyoming. They spent about eleven months together at Turning Winds. Sixteen years later, they were roommates. The friendship gave his advice about keeping an open mind a very real meaning. People who might never have crossed paths elsewhere could become lifelong friends.

The first stones on a new trail

The rock trail began during this reunion. Clients preparing to leave Turning Winds will paint a rock and place it along a campus walking trail. The stone can represent burdens they are ready to set down as they move into the next part of life. It remains on the trail as a marker of how far they have come and a piece of hope for another client who is just beginning.

John Baisden Jr. connects the tradition to a backpack metaphor used at Turning Winds. Depression, anxiety, addiction or anger can feel like weight carried everywhere. Taking off that backpack can bring a sense of relief, and setting down the rock gives that change a physical expression.

“What do you want to leave behind? You’re giving yourself permission to leave that stuff behind.”

John Baisden Jr.

The returning alumni painted the first stones. As future clients add their own, the trail will hold many individual choices about what to leave behind and what to carry forward.

Justin painted the first rock. A tennis coach, he joked that he would stick with tennis. But being first pleased him, and trying something he rarely did was part of what he enjoyed about coming back. The rock gave that visit a place among the memories he could still call up so clearly.

Dante painted a river and sky. He wanted to make something beautiful, and he was thinking about what it might mean ten or twenty years from then. When the conversation turned to the trail taking shape that day, he thought about the client who might eventually walk it.

Someone else has been here, too

Dante remembered feeling alone even while surrounded by other clients. Far from home, he had wondered who these people were and whether this was what his life would be from then on. A trail of stones left by people who had once been clients could have spoken directly to that loneliness.

“You know it’s not just you and it’s not forever”

Dante, Turning Winds alumnus

Dante could picture the reassurance those rocks might offer a client walking the trail. Each was a quiet sign that someone who once knew Turning Winds as a client had moved forward and remembered those who would follow. The trail was only beginning. Its meaning would grow as clients added their own rocks.

Dante was already offering that kind of connection in person. A 2023 graduate, he said he came to campus every Saturday to spend time with clients, join trips and offer support. He wanted to work in this setting full time. Helping even one young person find a better direction, he said, would make it worthwhile.

Through the Turning Winds alumni community, former clients can remain connected beyond their residential stay. At this reunion, that connection had faces and voices. Ashley listened to current clients, Justin visited his mentor, and Dante shared time with teenagers beginning their own journey toward health and self-discovery.

That ongoing contact also appears in Turning Winds’ article about alumni facing life’s challenges, where Carl describes hearing from former clients who reach out to the person who helped them prepare to go home.

A place for the next client

For a family just beginning to consider treatment at Turning Winds, it can be hard to imagine the years beyond it. These alumni were still making plans, tending friendships and figuring things out. Ashley was looking toward work that would let her help others. Justin had friendships and a mentor he wanted to return to. Dante was finding purpose in being there for current clients.

Their reunion helped begin a tradition for those who would follow. A teenager does not have to know the person who painted a stone to feel a little less alone beside it. That was the possibility Dante saw in the trail, and the reason these first rocks mattered.

The stone stays. The client moves forward.