Jose Aponte

Review of Second Nature Wilderness Progr...

We have a daughter who after attending Second Natu...

We have a daughter who after attending Second Nature begged us to please send her to Anasazi Foundation in Arizona at a time she herself recognized the need for help. When comparing one with the other, it is easy to see why with 42 reviews Second Nature has only 3.3 stars, while Anasazi has 4.9 stars with 214 reviews. If this is not enough to make a decision, perhaps sharing our experience might. We welcome anyone who would like to connect with us and we openly would share why we recommend Anasazi Foundation and further warn any parent who has a choice, to send their child to Anasazi vs Second Nature. Ultimately, it will come down to the desired outcome. Just like yours our family was hurting, not just our daughter. Our desire to spend unlimited resources was not to fix her, but to help the entire family commence healing. With that, we needed help turning our daughter's heart to ours (including her siblings), but although we didn't recognize it, we further needed help turning our hearts to hers, that together we could heal and walk the long journey that takes place after wilderness therapy...because that's when the real work begins. We further needed individual support and connections to her experiences in wilderness therapy, but by design Second Nature's program is not able to provide that to the extend Anasazi does. The entire program at Anasazi is inclusive of the family, and in building connections that will last long after treatment. Although not on the trail, with the support of the staff at Anasazi we worked just as hard in healing and improving while she was gone. Anasazi by design invites for such, and in such a way that the family can continue to work and heal as one during and long after the child moves into the next phase of treatment. Such has been our experience and expect if any parent had to do this twice, such is what they would experience. It is our opinion that Second Nature might be a good program for a child whose parents are not or do not look to be involved, perhaps for young adults who need to take the rest of the journey on their own...but Anasazi Foundation is clearly designed for a more realistic journey, one that is inclusive of the entire family. We're not expressing Second Nature is not a good program, only that it does not support the family, only the child...and according to our daughter, one vs the other by far invited more healing than the other. But we would let our daughter provide her own review. Ours is from a parents perspective only. This should not take away from our already expressed gratitude to the staff at Second Nature. They did the best they could with what they're design allows.