My Healing

Journey

I have lived many lifetimes in this vessel to be here now.

With a journey filled with one crash course after the other enduring endless lived experiences, all while growing and expanding, I have accumulated an array of knowledge, tools, resources and wisdom in supporting you to heal from absolutely anything you set your mind to, while finding genuine joy in the process.

You have the choice to have agency over the things you never thought possible and I would be honored to help you navigate all self-limiting belief systems and loops your brain may be trapped in to guide you toward action through sustainability.

Hello I am Chel! My story starts with my spirit’s choice to incarnate into this lifetime, learning some incredibly valuable lessons, lessons that I will be able to channel to support you accessing authentic joy.

From the start, I experienced a challenging childhood, as many of us do. However, some of these challenges a child should not have to endure, resulting in losing innocence at a very young age, as I developed unhealthy coping strategies that protected me, keeping me in survival. I held onto these coping strategies through adolescence. Since as long as I can remember, I lived with undiagnosed PTSD, disordered eating, phobias, anxiety, depression and ADD, which added extra layers onto my already uphill battle.

Without the proper self-advocacy and self-worth, I found myself gravitating towards those in the party scene, living a faster, less youth-filled lifestyle. At the age of 17, I was forced to homelessness while navigating substance use and a toxic relationship. By the skin of my teeth, I found myself in an abstinence-based substance use treatment setting at the age of 19, and began a journey of healing. At this pivotal moment, I started finding my own understanding of the universe and how to begin cultivating a relationship with it/her. This guidance led me to study Reiki, becoming a Reiki Master at the age of 23, becoming a teacher a bit later on.

For over a decade, I existed in a tight knit and rigid long-term abstinence-based recovery community. I spent years working in this capacity, for a recovery and mental health community based non-profit developing programs, managing grants, leading services and facilitating contracts. I co-created a very successful accredited coaching program, training hundreds of individuals on a statewide level, which was recognized nationally, bringing me significant success and feelings of deep accomplishment and impact in this world. However, there were still so many layers of self that I had yet to uncover, understand fully and heal within myself that I hadn’t felt I even cracked the surface on. I immersed myself so deeply into everything this specific community had to offer, and for a very long time it truly saved my life. But there was still some missing piece to my healing journey- as my PTSD, anxiety, depression, and ADD were causing such deep pain, further wounding and halting my growth.

A necessary move out of my hometown catapulted me into making incredibly difficult decisions for my betterment and for my expansion. It was almost the first nudge I received from the universe that I could very much not ignore the call from. During this time, I was also in a long-term relationship with a beautiful human I met in the recovery space a decade prior. He also chose to take this leap with me into the unknown. Soon after making the trek, I made a difficult decision to embark on a new recovery journey, which exiled me from our community.

Finding a brand new life away from home for the first time was a doozy. I had no idea who I was without this identity that I existed in for ten years, as this was the totality of my whole reality in my adult life up until this point. This was my very first interaction with a companion I had no idea I would be so close to for the rest of my life… grief.

A new chapter, as painful as it was going to be, would be the catalyst as to why I am here today wanting to be of service to the world in the most passionate and profound ways. I began working for the cutest children’s theater in San Francisco, as the first love of my life was always dance and theater. Still not entirely sure how this would aid in my growth, I worked with kiddos in a way that fostered child-like wonder and play, skills that were always innate for me.

Then the pandemic hit.

We all have our own stories of impact. For me, life shifted immensely during this time in this new environment. As many of us can relate, my mental health began to plummet. My already existing mental health issues began to heighten and hopelessness was constantly on the surface. A dear friend of mine had mentioned an organization, known as the San Francisco Psychedelic Society, was running a first ever training for individuals interested in learning more about microdosing psilocybin, or “psychedelic mushrooms”. My friend shared that they had heard of the many benefits of microdosing for mental health, as well as many other advantages to utilizing this medicine. I was always very curious and pro psychedelics, as they have been the one substance that led me to expansion. At this point, I was ready for any way I could receive the support needed to heal these parts that were keeping me stuck.

The folx at the San Francisco Psychedelic Society, along with Flow State Micro, the Microdosing Institute and with the grandfather of microdosing James Fadiman opened up an entirely new world of hope for me, my healing and the care I wanted to provide to this world.

I began my own personal journey while taking this training, as I lived in the only city in the country, at the time, where it wasn’t criminalized. I followed the protocols, created rituals, journaled my experiences, and I immediately felt lighter. The number one tool I received from the get go was that microdosing was not a quick fix solution. The best way for the medicine to do its job in rewiring new neural pathways was to accompany the microdosing with other modalities of healing, which I took very seriously.

Building new habits, setting intentions and diving deeply into the knowledge of the mycelium, provided me with openings in so much of what I had experienced throughout my life that was not activated within me any longer. I felt as though I was an observer to my experiences and to my thoughts and began to heal on the deepest level yet. This healing opened my eyes to a cellular change that I never thought possible, healing generations of trauma and fear.

At this point, I knew supporting others in a journey of rediscovering self through these tools was my calling, so I began hashing out my future. That is, until the most devastating of life experiences would be thrown my way. My life partner of 11 years died tragically. Life stopped, dreams halted and time stood still.

As soon as the snow globe of early grief allowed me to stop spinning so fast and so hard, my next chapter would entail the greatest surrender to consciously grieving. This process cracked me open. I received an inner awareness, on the deepest levels, about the impermanence of life, attempting to make any sense out of where I was to travel to next.

As time circled, and my head cleared, I made a tough decision to sell all of my belongings and hit the road. I spent 6 months traveling, and grounding myself. I gathered more tools, received certifications and met incredible people who I would soon collaborate with on exciting ventures. This chapter in my journey unlocked what I now know to be the “missing link” in my life. Equipping me the skills, knowledge and inner knowing of my life’s work, incorporating inner child healing and play, spirituality, grief work, community care and art into an all encompassing business to support people by Evoking Joy.

I started working with people drawn to the mission, drawn to healing on this level, and the confirmation that this work was a necessary gift to the world catapulted me to bring it to the public.