The Salka Story

When I was a young child, I loved to play alone, in the company of myself and my imagination. Some of my happiest moments were the times I spent inhabiting the imaginative worlds inside my own mind. I grew up in suburbia in the 90s, during a time when television, video games, and MTV were competing with children’s innate capacity to play and create. Somehow, I never felt drawn to the flashy appeal of the advancing tech world; I preferred to exist in the world of my own imagination. My imagination helped me to feel connected to something bigger than myself, and it also helped me escape the confusing, scary, and destabilizing moments of my childhood.

Adolescence brought a time of tremendous pressure to perform. To set aside the creative and imaginative and to focus instead on the practical. Time to say goodbye to the rawness that I encountered in my favorite books. Time to polish my people-pleasing skills and let everyone know that I was “good”. I played the academic game well - memorizing information in order to achieve a desired grade, gathering degrees and accolades.

By my early 20s, my “good person” armor began to crumble. I was working as a young novice teacher in New York City when I began to experience anxiety attacks, developed body dysmorphic disorder and struggled with feelings of self-hatred. At first I attributed these challenges to be the result of a stressful work environment. It wasn’t long before I realized that they were covering something much deeper.

Leaving the teaching profession and enrolling in social work school was one of the first steps I took toward self-healing and reconnecting with my Salka spirit. After graduation, I spent nearly a decade offering counseling and therapy to children who experienced abuse, neglect, and violence in their homes and communities. The children and teens with whom I had the honor of working were some of my greatest teachers. They reminded me of the beauty - and fierceness - of raw emotional expression. They taught me that no matter what we go through in life, the human soul wants to be known, seen, and set free. Spending time with children in such an intimate, powerful way also helped me to do the necessary work of healing my own inner child.

After nearly a decade of work as a therapist, I thought I was all done healing. Physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically - I felt much better. And then I had my own children, and they offered me a portal into the profound soul healing that was awaiting me. Watching my 10 month old daughter dig her hands into dirt awakened something deep within my core. I knew instantly that I needed to live my life in nature and grow a family amidst wet dirt and towering trees. Nine months later, we left the urban environment of Denver, Colorado for a new life in Vermont. Relocating during COVID, experiencing a miscarriage, and later giving birth to pre-term twins landed me in yet another sea of emotional overwhelm and disorientation. None of my previous tools seemed to help - yoga, meditation, crying, talking, journaling, exercise….I felt lost and alone in my suffering.