http://intothewoodswellness.com/

Into The Woods Wellness, Salt Lake City, UT (2026)

02/18/2026

IN THE ABSENCE OF

•The one about winter, cute sports ball obsessed younger chelle, and of course, missing Cedar•

It’s snowing today. I feel an exhale to finally balance the horrified gasp of the dry dirt in Colorado, Montana, Utah…

I feel this immediate relief, not just because I know the earth is desperate for this season, but because in her absence, I couldn’t land in “the point.”

I loved sports growing up. I was mildly obsessed with competition, performance, and teamwork cohesion. It made sense to me.
Inevitably, there was always an athlete who I knew was “the point” - My competition, the one who would challenge me. How I would show up against and in relation to that player would determine the game (or at least I thought, in my very egoic and self-centered brain).

I would dread playing that athlete. It would give me so much pre-game anxiety I was listening to Bob Dylan while my teammates listened to jock jams
(Now, if that doesn’t date me…).

The worst, I realized, was not if she showed up and played well, like I feared. It was if she didn’t. If she was hurt, couldn’t play, or was just off in some way. I lost this mirror who would help me rise up to the athlete I could be, because I had to.

I’m not here to glorify the things that stress us out. An imbalanced ego loves importance, and I’m not here to celebrate that. I’m here to pay attention to the forces that show up and say, “Look. Listen. Pay attention. When I’m here, you either have to hide or you have to show up more honestly and bravely. You have to try at this in a way you usually don’t.”

Cedar’s absence is the same and different. Because of him, I “had” to go for a hike or walk everyday. I couldn’t be consumed by importance of work and productivity, because his eyes would pierce me with, “Look. Listen. Pay attention. When I’m here...”

I’m here to celebrate the tension that demands truth. The kind of truth that says you have to actually try, vulnerably and on purpose.

Winter, I miss you when you don’t show up. I know, more and more you are the resistance/rest I need.
And Cedar, bud, I’m going to go for a long, snowy hike in the trees today.
Meet me there, k? I’ll look for you.

01/08/2026

Cedar
2/12/18 - 1/7/26

I once heard that dogs experience time circularly instead of linearly. I believe that. I believe that cedar knew the first time when he was a puppy, when he stood between my legs and wouldn’t let me leave, that it was a knowing, not of our present, but of the whole thing. He wouldn’t let me run away. Hell, he wouldn’t even let me go to the grocery store without him. he would be glued to my hip, standing between my legs, going everywhere all the time with my busy-body self, but he wouldn’t let me run away.

I had never known someone who wouldn’t let me runaway if I really wanted to.

He chose me and he wouldn’t unchoose me.

His whole body and soul demanded that I notice. That I stay. And for the first time, I did. I have known a place of stillness and belonging that walked (or pranced) glued to my side for nearly 8 years.

And I think he has known, the whole time, that I would require it to this degree to believe it. And that I would need this much time, proof, and all 90 lbs in and on my lap everyday to maybe start to model it myself. That maybe I can choose to stay.
Maybe I could start to choose things I won’t and even can’t leave.

I hope everyone gets to know what being fully, un mistakenly, and non-transferably chosen feels like.

But I doubt it. Because there’s only one Cedar. And he chose me.

I know I have you stay. You taught me how. But I just really, REALLY wish you didn’t have to go.

I love you forever, Cedar Mesa Kai. It’s been the honor of my life.

12/16/2025

Single Flame: A Solstice Gathering

Sunday, December 21st

6:30-8:00 pm MST

Online: Zoom

$35.00

When spring comes, there is talk of seeds, planting, and the excitement that comes with possibilities…of growth…of something beautiful coming.

But who rarely gets talked about is this person. The one right now. It’s dark, cold, and she has so little to hold to. There are no seeds, no excitement, just a glow and a knowing that she must enter the cave. It’s hers, and hers alone to enter.

What is she going to sit with, next to that single flame, that DISTINCTLY personal glow in her winter cave? Can we enter that space of externally quiet, internally transformative fire …consensually?

A consensual turning of that doorknob to a room of intimacy. Intimacy with and for you. The only person you have to be next to and with forever and ever amen.

I have spent many winters entering the cave kicking and screaming. I still get amazing seeds to sow in the spring, I’m just more tired and beat up after. Entering consensually, holding my own hand is a far better choice, for me.

I hope you’ll join us

11/11/2025

I was walking along the beach in Central America and I saw this woman. American woman, super fit, gorgeous. Probably early 40’s and coulda kicked my 22 year old self’s ass and had some wisdom to go with it. She was reading a “self betterment” book I was familiar with. It was flying off the shelves and on all the podcasts I was familiar with in the states.

There she was. Alone in her chair, reading that book, alone, while her two kids played somewhat nearby.
And right next to her, within spitting distance on either side of were two groups of Latina women, dancing. Dancing, laughing, eating, drinking and playing in the water like children. They were mauling each other in kisses and playful tackles.

And all I could think was, if that doesn’t describe our situation perfectly. Here we are, alone, bettering …
While, possibly in arms reach, we could be eating. Touching. Laughing.

Together.

I met with some amazing, frankly favorite humans last night and we talked about the history, culture, and purpose of grief wailing. Often performed by women, together, making gutteral, primal noises and body movements to metabolize and symbolize our unity to land, spirit, and ancestry - creating the bridge for spirits to pass on and cross over.

The unifying sound, the messy wails, cackles, and snorts that connect us to our living - which is so valuable because we know this living ends.

So, maybe text that person. Text a couple. Even if you’re maybe sure you both wanna cancel, just see if a wine walk and practical magic could happen. Maybe you could cuddle close on the couch with a few/one person and just talk about something stupid. Or something real. For 10 minutes even. Or you could dance ridiculously together in the kitchen for a song. One song. Cry, laugh, moan, snort, sing off-key - scream even more off key (ideally to some early 2000’s emo music).

You’re not broken, so, let’s save some time on the fixing and create the invite you would want. Stick it to every system that said you have to do this alone. You have to do it pretty. And you have to do it quietly.

10/02/2025

The Oregon Chapter
A closing - complete with a heart broken open with grief and gratitude.

I came to Oregon consensually.
Looking at the wildfire of my life, I said,
“Alright, goddess/god/universe/chaos-creating creator, what’s there to lose? F- me up, I guess.”

Consent does not mean comfort. It means agreement.

And I sit here on this porch, on my umpteenth night over 3 years, and start writing through the tears.

My phone is much quieter these days. I am in contact with few, but the voices I hear and read are my heart. I have lived in a place where I’ve never been body-checked, noted on my clothing, felt like my productivity was a badge of honor, or asked to what my workout or wellness regiment is.

I am not more well. Not even remotely. My health is the least impressive it’s probably ever been on paper. Not ideal. But, the ego trying to chill is a helluva thing. I don’t think I realized how often I was undermining change as betterment. “It will be better!”
No.
How lame.

It will be honest. It will be whole. Not better. Not worse.
I’m not any better than I’ve ever been. But im ridiculously more whole.
I’ve been forced into stillness with myself, kicking and screaming the ENTIRE time. And only at the end, always at the goddamn end, do I see why I needed all 3 years.

As I make my way to Colorado, I can’t breathe with the gratitude I have for Oregon. For the maternal hug she’s given me to love all parts of me, not just the performative ones.
Thank you, Oregon. Your land and its creatures have given me more acceptance, pain, and “Don’t let the bastards get ya down” energy than I could have dreamed.
The inhabitants here don’t trust quickly, but when they do, they swallow you completely and whole.

WHOLE.

that was the point.
How could the caterpillar ever have guessed. It was never about the pretty wings…

08/25/2025

The Oregon Chapter
(And of course, some ramblings)

You hear about this in my sphere, someone being on their “healing journey.”

Healing, implying sickness. Broken. Wrong. Now there is healing. Fixing. Correcting.

Is it healing for a caterpillar to move towards a tree and become mush?
Is it healing for a river to push the sediment of its runoff to become its own river bed and shore line?
Does a tree heal as it blooms, drops, rests, composts, etc?

Have we turned our NATURAL rhythms and required evolutions into products, betterment recipes, and ‘revolutions?’

We talk about the work of a chrysalis, this great undoing of a caterpillar. what if we saw that undoing as the caterpillar’s mistakes. Like it had been ‘wrong’ in the body it had before, or it was pure, then broken, then finding its way back to purity again? Ridiculous.

I read recently that if a caterpillar doesn’t make a cocoon/chrysallis, it will most likely starve and dehydrate, not because it will stop eating, but because it can’t be nourished by that body anymore. It has to evolve.

So, as Ive been in another intense and wild portal- I have to be grateful for the audacity of my caterpillar body. For continuing to know I have to climb the f-ing tree, I have to in order to stay alive. It isn’t nobility or healing. It’s honest. It’s whole.

I want to be so clear, If u are shedding old stories, clarifying your voice, evolving beyond the patterns you were dealt and becoming something made up of your parts but something entirely different… you are not some abstract enigma. You are a river. You are a butterfly. You are a damn tree.

This is the most natural thing in the world. You are doing EXACTLY what you were always meant to. It’s anything saying u weren’t supposed to, anything blocking or negating that process, or says this is a bizarre “crisis” or “radical behavior” - that is manufactured.

Keep flowing, river-butterfly-tree baby.
You’re doing exactly what you were meant to.
And as that water turns more & more aquamarine clear, & you see your reflection anew, while also including every being you’ve ever been - we can be sure,

YOU’RE RIGHT ON TIME

05/21/2025

•Cedar for student council president•

I was social VP of my senior student council, and it felt like the title I was born for. I love the idea of a summer swim party - the whole neighborhood there. The laughs and the mayhem massive. The welcome sign big enough that everyone feels welcome under it. My version of belonging is big. Which feels somewhat counterintuitive. I want the whole neighborhood to know the secret handshake. So, how is it then “secret?”

Cedar is different. He has had 6-10 people he’s chosen since he was a puppy. They’ve never changed. I’ve been #1 on that list since I picked him up, and he’s never veered from the podium standings. It’s a small group. The choosing is potent and particular.
I know he’s here to teach me everything about quality, potency, slowness, and undeniable, FIERCE loyalty. Even if the fierceness looks like a scared 90 lb lap dog who can’t be left… not left by just anyone, left by me.

The confusion lives in where/what I say I am, vs what soul/beings I gravitate towards.

I guess this has no answer or grand revelation. I think im saying I think belonging looks different to everyone. And you can know what you gravitate towards and also what you need to learn.
We are all so certain our belonging lives in where we agree. And yet, my greatest belonging lives with a creature I would have zero tolerance for in a human. And, as I write that, I delight to admit that my best friends since middle school are people I would never know or have met as an adult. They are also fiercely loyal, irrelevant and wildly themselves people.
I will never back down from being Cedar’s person. So… his belonging is now mine. And mine his.

May I forever learn from my favorite teacher. This needy, sensitive, and forever MY creature. Where you feel comfortable is not always where you will find the truth. It might live where you harshly judge. It might be in the place you would have never said yes to had you seen the future.
But you’ve never loved this big. Or this beautiful.
Your edges might be your community. Your judgements = your mentors.

Cedar for student body president.
And me, still reigning social VP.

Pretty epic team

04/21/2025

•Naturally Occurring Turtles•

This last weekend a friend picked me up for an outing to a mountain lake. We packed too many snacks, too heavy of books, and not enough paddle boards.

We made a hilarious amount of trips and decisions before finally making it to our little cove.

She spotted turtles on almost every log and I gasped, “THERE ARE NATURALLY OCCURRING TURTLES HERE?!”

She laughed, “What else would they be besides naturally occurring?”

I guess this silly example feels like the point. You, me, we are naturally occurring … creatures.

We are meant to be in this wildly feral, decaying and becoming body. Our preferences are as they should be. Our quirky little ingredients are potent and perfect.

I paddled by in awe of these armored backed and soft, vulnerable fronted beings. Same for you. Same for me.

Whether it’s your dog, a turtle, your mud-ridden toddler, or the muddy self you’re trying to remember, we wanna gather around a campfire and remember, TOGETHER. With remembering there’s a grief of ever having lost that knowing, and/or the grief of losing the being that held the heart of your knowing. We wanna gather with all of it.

Link to the Creature Campfire is in my bio as well as website. See you in the mountains, around a fire, with all our creature selves.

03/05/2025

•THE LAST AND FIRST SPEED BUMP•

Making Shel Silverstein proud, I live where the side walk ends and the last speed bump on the exit from town. Or, seen another way, the first speed bump leaving the freeway and entering a quieter world.

It’s a fascinating study. To look up as the bump claims another rebel, victim, and/or refugee. And a great way to exit screen land from my office, or take a break on the front porch.

Who exits or enters the slowness with ease, a bit reluctant to speed up towards the interstate, or a relief to finally sloooow down. And then there’s those that just exit the chaos, and those wildly excited to enter it. And with every bumping bass, window down song they flip-off that ask, “please, just tap the brakes.”

There are also those too busy looking at their phones or handing screaming toddlers a snack to realize there was a bump at all.
In primary school there was a song that had every child lift their butts completely off the seat on the word “beam.”
“Jesus wants me for a sun——BEAM!”
That’s what they look like as they jolt, stuccatoed inches above their seats.

I think this might be what dying is like. The first and final speed bump.
I think it’s also what living is.
I like to think I’m meant to live right here. Right now. On this particular corner. Noticing how tricky, relieving, infuriating, etc it can be to slow down. How a lot of us hope by going EVEN FASTER the bump will just become unnoticeable. The result on the body, the vehicle, the other passengers… the lemonade stand and pedestrians unnoticed.

Mmm… To have enough awareness to not need to SLAM the breaks.

Slowing down. On purpose.
Have a place where you can do that, consensually, safely, and honestly. Doesn’t make the bumps go away. Just changes how we approach and move over them.

Not everything needs to be a metaphor, but also, why the hell not?

02/20/2025

•Efficiency•
I love words. I deeply care about them. And, I also like to do what I want with them.
Efficiency is often described “More money for less time and less effort.”

I hate this definition.

Could be that I suck at the definition. I’ve never been described as efficient. Ha! Quite the opposite.

I’ve been sharing my definition a lot lately, and in case you might resonate more with mine, here it is:

Get What You WANT Sooner.

That’s it. Get exactly what you want, sooner.

Everything I love the most in my life I got from the second definition. Not the first.
Driving through neighborhoods instead of the freeway doesn’t save me time, but it gets me what I want.

Living in Italy before grad school, when I had no money and no idea how to survive once there, was seen to many as “inefficient.” But I got everything I wanted. I changed my entire course of study and now live by wildly more aligned principles because of it.

I once had a friend tell me she drove an extra 18 hours to give a heartbroken-hearted friend a hug. That hug did for both of them what no card, phone call, or future plans could have done.
Efficient as hell, if you ask me.

Or another friend who is considering taking a job that pays less than her current one. But what she wants right now is new connections, to see new places and be filled with wonder. Her current job doesn’t offer those. At least not anytime soon.
Get what you WANT.

I make a lot of choices that don’t save me money, effort, or time. But I really believe when I do the work to figure out what I truly want, and vulnerably go after that thing, now matter how ridiculous the path looks to others, I end up exactly where I wanna be.
Way sooner than if I planned, budgeted, and edited for approval and minimal mistakes.

So, this all begs the actual question:
Do you know what you truly want?
AND
Do you see the (likely ridiculous) “chelle’s efficiency”route to it?

If so, can you trust the little knowing inside of you that knows what magic is waiting if you go, go get it? Time isn’t linear. A version of you already knows why you want that thing right now… trust it.

These pics all represent moments of true Efficiency

01/06/2025

I used to be one of those evangelists spouting anger for the new year, “Why do we do this in winter?! This should be done in spring, when new birth makes sense! Curse Puritanism and the horse it rode in on!” Yadah, yahda, yadah,…

And don’t get me wrong. I can still preach that sermon with vigor and a passionate rage, reclaiming our paganistic and witchy ways with seasons, moons, cycles, and equinoxes. You don’t even usually have to ask.

But, I don’t know. Something has shifted for me. I think it’s because I’ve had a lot more years to see what ‘new’ really is.

It’s hearing a client say, “I refuse to leave myself for the comfort of another person.” Casually, as if they’ve always believed it. Or, “I’m angry. And the truth of what I’m actually sad about lives in this anger.” Or one I heard just last week, “I realize I’m living my ideal day. I’m living that day every day now.” This is all said without fanfare. Without a firework being released or someone singing, “Auld Lang Syne.”

It’s more like the solstice. It doesn’t just get to December 22nd and we have a full day of sunshine. No. It’s just moments, maybe a few minutes lighter the day after the darkest day of the year. A sliver more hope than the day before.

So, I guess I’m a bit of a believer in New Year’s being celebrated just 10 days after the darkest day of the year. Barely even whispers of a lighter future at sunrise. That’s what ‘new’ starts as. The whispers of something,
something only you can hear.

There might not be fireworks when it is actually born, the reality of the ‘new.’ But I’m honored that I get to be there, on the other end of the screen, tears rolling down my face, in awe of the evolution born from these magical beings’ brave beginnings.
The one that happened in the dark, with just a sliver of hope,
that spring is real,
and it’s coming…

11/19/2024

I am currently befuddled.

Dramatically rainy, dark places are often the medicine.
Befuddled. Because I am often so sure it should look a helluva lot more like this pic - in Costa Rica.

Let’s discuss my befuddlement.

I was recently spending some time with a loved one recovering in the hospital near the Canadian border.
It rained nearly all day, every day.
It was dark by 4:30.

But being there… it was the warmest I’ve felt in a while.
The people.
I didn’t sit next to a single fire, but I felt like I had been cozying up to a hearth for over a week.
I felt a warmth in my bones.

About 2 years ago I wrote about a music festival in a small Alaskan town. How the water seeped streets filled with all ages to rock, blues, folk and mosh-pit punk, all dancing in their knee-high extra tuffs. Sideways rain and darkness seemed like the needed ambiance for all the warmth and light beaming around. Like the town welcomed it… somehow.

I repeat, almost an annoying amount, how Ireland is the most magical land I’ve ever been to. How the soil felt like it knew me and the conversations sounded like singing. Always singing and the song sounds like, “sit next to me a while, let’s share a (fill in the blank - a pint, a laugh, a dance, a hug, a cry, or just share a pause - together).

What is it about these rainy, sunless winter havens?
Don’t you worry, I ask each lovely, new friend I met, (and yes, nearly everyone feels like a friend), “How do you live here in the winter?”
The answers don’t vary much. It sounds something like, “We are all in this together. We gather a lot. We know in order to make it to the lighter days, we have to come together, make each other laugh and feel joy inside each other’s homes.
AND, you have to buck up and put on your raincoat.”

I don’t know. I think maybe these communities remember every winter something a lot of us spoiled sunshine/mild winter kids get to forget.

I don’t really know how to end or summarize this.
I’m befuddled. But I’m not, when I sit and breathe about it. It all makes a decent chunk of sense.

Into The Woods Wellness

02/18/2026

01/08/2026

12/16/2025

11/11/2025

10/02/2025

08/25/2025

05/21/2025

04/21/2025

03/05/2025

02/20/2025

01/06/2025

11/19/2024

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