http://intothewoodswellness.com/

Into The Woods Wellness, Salt Lake City, UT (2025)

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.

07/30/2024

https://mailchi.mp/aafdba636681/rubbingelbows-6748848

07/25/2024

It’s quite a time. Big shifts, big wounds, and tired feet, heart, and brains from carrying all of it.

So, from this dude’s wounded but still pumping chest (check out cedar’s badass scar recovery) to yours, here’s a poem that reminds me:
Whatever brave darkness you’re in/headed towards, let’s put that headlamp on our chest, eh?

It leads us better.

•For Joel at 94•

They say that miners in South America strap small lamps around their chest, that this works better than the light coming from the center of your head.

They say the head can be fooled, but the heart can’t turn without the body. This makes me think of you digging your way through your long life, lighting everything with your heart.
It’s a good way to live. And when we sit at the end of the day, our hearts illumine the day and we see each other in its radiance. I can tell, it reminds you of many circles you’ve been a part of. It’s a good way to measure time.
To make our way on Earth by the light coming from our heart — This is what you’ve taught us.
Is it any wonder that what you touch, including us, glows.

-Mark Nepo

06/26/2024

There’s a certain flavor of bravery I’m intrigued and in awe of lately.
When there’s been a shift - you dated men and now you date women (or vice versa), you no longer believe in something, your body looks different, you’re awake in some way you can’t go back to sleep in, you say the word “no” now, etc, etc.
When there’s a big shift and you are called to return to a place, person, or community. And more specifically you are returning people to a place where that shift hasn’t been seen. It has yet to be acknowledged as reality.
Answering that call and … staying. Being seen as what you are now.
Not knowing (or knowing fully well) if you’ll be accepted in your evolved home-self.
There are many flavors of bravery. I just really, REALLY admire this one lately.

Anyway, another flavor of bravery is being seen in our intimate forms of expression. So, here’s a little something I wrote recently, from my tender lil heart bits:

DESERT CANYONS

Do you know the desert?
Wide
Expansive
An unending playground of thought and body
Her changes slow,
erosion
Broad perspective - the most ancient bird’s eye view

And how could we forget
the un-and-ever giving
sun
all that brightness and heat
blinding
opening

But to know the desert is to know she is also canyons.
Winding
Dark
Full of water-seeped rocks
Moss
Hard to fit through slits and ledges

A different sort of playground of thought and body.

Few are ever truly invited to these hallways of stone
River beds minus shorelines
The temperature far cooler
The change more sudden
A landslide
A flash flood
Carrying her sand back to the ocean from whence she came

She understands water more than most
The desert
Especially in her canyons. Where she holds all of remembering

Please, stand on her sand mountains
Look long and far and think of bones

Knowing, lest we forget
she is gently, quietly making her way
(Carrying you unknowingly along)
back home

06/13/2024

This is such a casual moment from last year’s retreat.

It’s not the most epic or photogenic.

It was dinner time and everyone gathered after romping around camp, playing bocci, drinking margs and seltzers, connecting in small conversations, and solo walks and sits.

But it’s one of my favorite moments.

This effortless moment.

There are no phones. No chores. No expectations of social reputation.

Just us, this group of people being with. No performance needed, whether it be spiritual, funny, likable, smart, outdoorsy, or whatever-the-hell else we think we are supposed to be.
No requirement of “how to be.”
Just being.

It’s these moments I crave.

It’s how I want to be “with.” That’s why I keep going back. I want to live in “of course land” with you.

“Of course we wear whatever makes us laugh and dance comfortably.”

“Of course the conversations are unrequired, but full of authenticity and connection if they spark.”

“Of course we live into what feels good and playful.”

“Of course your silence is sweet and perfect.”

“Of course our histories and tears are not only ok, but held and celebrated.”

“Of course we want the wholeness of you!”

Of course…

It’s not even a question here.

2025 RETREAT!
~ June 3-7, 2025 ~
Link in bio

02/21/2024

I fight, almost daily, with my guitar.
I call her a judgmental bitch.
I avoid her.
I say she demands too much.
I beg her to be more forgiving.
But mostly, I want her to stop taunting me.

I could say the same fight often happens, almost verbatim, with my yoga mat and my pen.

See, I’m pretty bad at the guitar. I know, every mother heart out there is screaming, “there is no bad! Just more or less practiced!” But I assure you, I’m no natural. I’m also not very impressive on the yoga mat. I can’t do most yoga poses that you see on magazine covers and my practice is more and more avoiding the extra chaturunga offered in class.

I also love writing. It’s my scariest and deepest care-bear truth. I love it. And, I’m no best selling anything or, hell, even published.

But, I find that’s the thing, often. That it’s because we aren’t naturally proficient at the thing that signifies why we must care about it. It’s almost exactly why those things are our teachers. I can’t cruise on by my guitar without knowing I’ll learn more about myself and what I fear and crave if I pick her up. A lot of that is learned through the endless mistakes.

Don’t get me wrong. I avoid the honest places ALL the time in different seasons of life. I fight and tantrum at them, begging them to let me cruise on by, just once.

Whenever I’m brave enough to show up to one of these spaces, they hold me gently and remind me why I’m there.

I get to care. Not about the song, the pose, or the prose, but about myself. I get to learn to care about me by being fully honest and present with, well… me.
I can’t hide in the places that require my attention.

So, I guess I’ll just keep fighting with my guitar. Even though She always wins.

*speaking of mistakes in the places we care about …Cedar cares about soft landings… no matter their acceptance of him or his size. 😂

02/15/2024

Happy 35th birthday, baby girl.

Your style, abhorrent snacking behaviors, and fierce loyalty to joy are reigning more and more true.

I love you. Thanks for every single thing. All of it.

Chelle

Into The Woods Wellness

05/21/2025

04/21/2025

03/05/2025

02/20/2025

01/06/2025

11/19/2024

07/30/2024

07/25/2024

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