The Alkhemaerie, LLC

22/01/2026

While the weather gets cold and icy this weekend, keep in mind that next weekend my Food as Medicine: Winter Wellness class will teach you some of my favorite ways and recipes for staying warming and healthy this winter!

I'll have a nourishing breakfast rice congee to taste, and you'll leave with a study guide, recipes, and some winter teas to sample.

Anyone who loves making nourishing food is welcome in this class!

06/11/2025

Join me this Saturday for the family-fun Fall Festival & Healing Day at The Ruby Ranch NC!

Ask me any astrology questions and check out beautiful handmade beaded necklaces and waist beads by a Maasai women’s collective in Kenya!

🥰 I am loving the community being created by Be Well Asheville - thank you Travis for your vision and support! A fellow Collective member, Samantha Lee, will be joining us at the festival to teach EFT tapping!

🌱 Meet Cara Helene, founding member of the Be Well Asheville Wellness Collective! 🌿

Cara is a holistic medicine woman, soul guide, and seasonal astrologer devoted to helping people reconnect with their inner wisdom and the healing rhythms of nature. The creator of The Alkhemaerie and a passionate advocate for nature-connected living, she empowers soul-driven women to trust their intuition, release burnout, and align their lives with purpose and flow.

Join Cara this Saturday, Nov 8th, for the Healing Fall Festival at Ruby Ranch—a family-friendly day of yoga, sound healing, EFT tapping, live music, and more in support of wellness and community. Explore Cara’s work on Instagram and her Substack here for nature-based wisdom and inspiration.

Let’s celebrate and support Asheville’s vibrant wellness leaders! 🌄✨

30/10/2025

🌿 The Land Is Preparing for Winter — Are You?

Have you noticed how the air smells different lately?
That mix of woodsmoke, wet leaves, and something softer — like the Earth herself is exhaling after the rush of summer.

The trees are trading their green for gold, and the mornings are calling for a bit more willpower to crawl out of bed.

Our bodies feel it too. They’re noticing the shift and starting to prepare for winter — just like everything else alive on this Land.

The wooly worms have already warned me, so I’ve made fast friends with my wood stove. There’s a quiet peace in heating my cottage with fire that I hadn’t expected.
(Thank you to some kind Canadians on YouTube who helped shorten my learning curve!)

Stacking wood, cleaning the stove, tending the fire — these simple acts give my mind a break and remind my body what it feels like to do something real that matters.

That’s my Capricorn showing — a love of practical work that makes a difference.

It’s also what inspired me to create our Reclaiming Women’s Medicine seasonal class series.

A few weeks ago, I co-taught the first Autumn Season session with my friend Dr. Jenn Conte, and the feedback was so heartwarming 🥰:

“OMG, you’re teaching me a new way to THINK about wellness, not just giving me some system to memorize.”

“I’ve studied Western and Chinese herbalism, but the classes were so overwhelming it was hard to bring it into daily life — this broke it down so I know how to access it now.”

“I feel like I can go home and actually use this today. I don’t need to buy a whole bunch of stuff — I’m seeing I already have medicine in my kitchen at home!”

“This class is rebuilding my confidence in my intuition — that I do know what my kids need.”

That’s exactly *why* we created this class — to make holistic wellness feel doable. Real. Grounded in the rhythms of nature and the wisdom you already carry inside you.

We had so much fun teaching it (and yes, even making the handouts, lol) that we decided to offer ✨Reclaiming Women's Medicine: ONLINE - AUTUMN Season next Tuesday, Nov. 4th from 1–3:30pm EST.

If you’ve been curious about natural remedies, Chinese medicine, or how to support your health through the seasons — without overcomplicating it — I’d love for you to join us.

You’ll leave knowing how to care for yourself and your family using what you already have at home.
(And if you can’t make it live, you can sign up to receive the recording.)

This is part of our ongoing seasonal series, with new content each time based on the rhythms of Chinese Medicine. The Winter Season opens online on Dec. 2nd. ❄️

And if you’re local to Asheville, you’re warmly invited to join us at these upcoming gatherings:

🌿 Dirt Church at Ruby Ranch: Nature, Kinship & Mountain Magic —Sundays, Nov. 2 & 23, 9–10:30am
A biweekly nature connection circle that’s quickly becoming a space for both people and the Land to be nourished. We share tea, tend the fire, and let the morning teach us what we need to know.

🍁 Fall Festival & Healing Day— Saturday, Nov. 8, 11–4p at Ruby Ranch
A beautiful day of sound healing, yoga, EFT tapping, live music, and seasonal food and fun for the whole family.

🌟I’ll be hosting an “Ask the Astrologer” table (come get a mini reading for you or your kiddo!) and selling gorgeous beaded necklaces and waist beads from my dear friend Hanna Hart’s Maasai women’s collective in Kenya — turning artistry into life-changing income.

The Earth is teaching us how to prepare for winter — slowing down, rooting deep, tending the fire.

Maybe this season, that’s the medicine we all need too. ❤️

13/10/2025

Sometimes it's easy to forget that the quiet work of parenting is deep culture work too. 💝

Send a message to learn more

29/09/2025

I wish this class had existed 13 years ago, before my kids were born.

Back then, I was trying to keep my family healthy with Google searches and guesswork — and it was overwhelming. That’s why I’m so excited to teach Reclaiming Women’s Medicine this Sunday at Ruby Ranch.

This one-day workshop is part of a seasonal journey through Chinese & herbal medicine for caregivers. Come learn what foods, practices, and medicine support well-being in each of the 5 Seasons.

🍁 In our Autumn session, we’ll focus on:
✨ immune resilience,

✨How to use elemental energetics — hot/cold, wet/dry, fire/earth/water/air — to take the guesswork out of home care,

✨powerful yet easy-to-learn herbal, moxibustion, acupressure practices you can confidently (and safely) use at home with your loved ones,

✨tuning into your intuition,

✨lung and gut health, and

✨tending grief.

🌿 You’ll spend the day in a supportive, nature-rooted space (including time for a nature connection experience!), practicing together so you leave feeling nourished and equipped to care for yourself and your family.

Join us and take home the kind of tools (and confidence) I wish I’d had all those years ago. 🌱

Send a message to learn more

23/09/2025

We all deserve support (and a hug) right now. 💚

The world feels heavy — chaotic headlines, uncertainty, so much unraveling at once. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed, but Mother Nature keeps reminding me that we’re not alone.

One of the simplest ways I’ve found to stay centered, is to connect with the Earth. 🌎

🌱 Step outside, feel the ground beneath you, let your shoulders soften, and remember: you are held. Even a few breaths like this can bring you back to yourself.

Last week in my newsletter, I shared the full version of that practice, along with the reflections on the necessity of finding joy even in heavy times, plus details on upcoming gatherings at Ruby Ranch (yes, there will be plenty of hugs 🌿).

💌 If you’d like to receive these practices + seasonal wisdom, then I invite you to join my list (link in comments below).

And because I’ve seen how much we’re all carrying, I created Voice Note Conversations — support that flows with your real life instead of adding another appointment to your calendar.

💬 You share what’s alive for you, and within 24-36 hours I respond with intuitive reflection, grounding questions, and seasonal wisdom. Often, Nature herself joins us — a bird call at just the right moment, or the rush of wind through the trees. 🌿

There are two ways to begin:
💡 The Gut Check → a grounding voice note when you need clarity in the middle of the noise.
🌟 The Solution Finder → two weeks of back-and-forth voice notes that give you space to hear yourself clearly again, receive grounded wisdom, and find the courage for your next steps.
✨ Learn more on my website (in comments below).

07/09/2025

One moon cycle in, and this land keeps teaching me what really matters. 🌙✨

🌿 A full moon cycle has passed since moving into Spider Cottage, and what a month it’s been.

Between carpentry adventures, unpacking boxes and old grief, and celebrating what would have been my mom’s 74th birthday, this move has been more than settling into a home after a year adrift — it’s been a reclaiming of myself. 💖

The Land here is wildly generous: surprise pumpkins in the field, hummingbird greetings, deer peeking in the windows. Living this close to nature strips away what doesn’t matter and brings clarity to what does.

As the dust (and sawdust) settles, I’m excited to begin sharing new offerings:
🦋 Cross the River — where soul meets strategy for change-makers ready to build a better world
🌿 Women’s Medicine Seasonal Series — starting Oct. 5th @ The Ruby Ranch NC with Jenn Conte of Sacred Lines Acupuncture (holistic care, herbs & acupressure for home use)
🌎 “Dirt Church” — a new way to root into peace + belonging through nature connection

Here’s to laughing through the learning curve, trusting the living Land, and creating space for what really matters. 💛