Welcome to
the Homestead
Therapy for people who are done
Just talking about it.
You've done the work. You know your patterns and have the insight.
I mean, you can explain your childhood in a handful of paragraphs.
And yet — here you are, feeling like you are somehow stuck
Like all that effort just hasn't made much of a difference.
Something is signalling you need a different kind of approach.
Listening to that signal is the first step.
You don't need more understanding. \
You need your body to believe what your mind already knows.
The Approach
A very different
kind of therapy
Most talk based therapy is insight-driven.
What is offered on the Homestead is more.
It creates a container, holds experiences, and reconnects you to your deepest inner knowing.
The land, the animals, the garden, the pace — these aren't backdrops.
They are the ingredients for transformation to occur.
Here's what that actually looks like.
What to Expect
Your session begins
before you Even step out of the car.
You don't have to arrive ready. You just have to arrive.
The drive out to the property is part of the experience.
Country roads, open land, the sky opening up as you leave town. Your nervous system starts to shift before we ever sit down together.
Arrival
Settle in
Before you get out of your car, notice how you're arriving — body, thoughts, emotional tone. No right way to feel. On the walk to the office, let your senses orient to the land: the creek, the plants, the weather, whatever's there. Your nervous system is already doing something. We start from there.
Check-in
What do you need?
We pause and actually ask: What do you need today? Then you choose from a menu of options — movement, stillness, garden, animals, creative practice, tea. The session follows your nervous system, not a script. Not sure what you need? Perfect. That's part of it.
Closure
Carry it with you
Before heading out, we pause to notice the contrast. People often arrive braced, scattered, or worn thin. Most leave quieter inside — more grounded, clearer, more themselves. The insight that surfaced has somewhere to land because the body is settled enough to hold it.
Session Menu
Choose what your
body is asking for
-
For when the body needs to discharge before it can go deep
Moving alongside each other is one of the oldest forms of processing humans have. It discharges stress, opens the nervous system, and makes the harder conversations possible.
Walk & Talk — side by side, movement does the heavy lifting
Horticulture therapy — digging, pruning, soil contact
Gentle wandering outdoors without agenda
-
For when the system wants meaning or quiet structure
Oracle card draw — archetypal imagery as a doorway
Jigsaw puzzle — hands busy, mind resting
Listening, talking, and reflecting iption text goes here
-
For when the body needs grounding before anything else
Tea — warmth, ritual, the simple act of receiving
Simple snacks — sensory anchoring, steady blood sugar
Sitting with the land- no phone, no agenda, just being
-
For when care — not insight — is the primary need
Animal-assisted grounding — being near horses, petting the cat or visiting the chickens
Tending plants — watering, weeding, harvesting
Restorative Reiki Session
Sessions aren't scripted.
Direction follows your nervous system — which means sometimes we go deep into shadow material and sometimes you need to dig in the actual garden first.
Both are therapeutic.
Often the second makes the first possible.
The Root of It
You have been trained
not to trust yourself.
From the childhood reflexes — "You're not hungry, you just ate!" — to the endless scroll of self-improvement content telling you something is wrong with you and you have more work to do. You have absorbed, very deeply, the message that your own perceptions cannot be trusted.
And here's the kicker: you're probably doing the same thing with personal growth too. Doubting you're doing it right. Convinced everyone else is more regulated, more healed, more evolved. Failing at healing — that's a very particular kind of shame.
The practice here is simple, but not easy: slow down. Notice what you feel. Respond to it without judgment. (Let go of the "shoulds.") Let the land ground you. Repeat. That's how self-trust grows — the same way everything else does. From the roots up, in the dark, before anyone can see it happening.
Meet the Land
Come as you are and
leave the rest at the gate
There are no waiting room chairs here.
No white noise machine humming outside a closed door. No fluorescent lights, no box of tissues on a side table positioned just so. None of the things that signal you are about to do something uncomfortable and overly vulnerable.
What there is:
Four acres of western North Carolina land, nestled between the mountains, that has absolutely no expectations of you. Two gurgling creeks. A working permaculture garden that's always mid-becoming. Animals who are genuinely delighted to see you, no matter how put-together you are when you arrive.
No two visits look the same here. The light is different. Something has bloomed or gone dormant. The creek is louder or quieter. The animals are near or they aren't. Paying attention to what's changed — and what hasn't — is its own practice.
You don't have to prepare for this. You don't have to know what you need or how to ask for it. You just have to get yourself down the road and out of the car. The land takes it from there.
Who you will Meet
Scooby Doo
Sometimes all we need is for someone to simply stay close
A gentle, ancient, mostly deaf German Shepherd who will follow you room to room and simply lie down nearby. He doesn't demand much — except occasionally a head rub. He sheds impressively, moves slowly on his wobbly back legs. Scooby is our fourth senior dog to live out his days here — we are, apparently, a retirement home for good dogs waiting to be called across the rainbow bridge.
Chris Rinaldi
You have never stopped sending yourself signals. The healing is in learning to listen and unapologetically respond.
Equal parts clinical training and hard-won lived experience. Grounded enough to sit in the mud with you. Gritty enough to stay there until something shifts.
Spiritually attuned and not afraid to go there with you. Irreverent enough to make you laugh in the middle of the hard stuff; and the human behind this whole beautiful mess.
Barn Cat
Patience and presence build trust.
He arrived feral, ear clipped, assigned to guard the barn. He hissed. He hid. We didn't push it — we just kept showing up. It was Scooby, eventually, who cracked him open. Came up to him one day and Barn Cat just started purring.
From there he opened up slowly, on his own terms, until the cat who was never supposed to come inside became a full-on couch lover.
He still decides when connection happens. But when he chooses you, you feel it.
Milo
Curiosity is what brings us to life.
Feisty, vocal, and deeply into everything —especially, the catnip plant, where he can frequently be found in various states of abandon. Milo loves people, greets everyone with loud opinions, and will insert himself into whatever is happening with zero hesitation. His energy is exuberantly feral in the best possible way. A reminder that enthusiasm, even when slightly unhinged, is a form of being fully alive.
Magic
Slow down. Everything you need is already here.
A grounded, wise mare who knows more about stillness than most of us will ever understand. You don't need to do anything with Magic — just be near her. Her presence has a way of slowing time down. You may notice your breathing change before you realize why. There is no agenda with Magic, no technique, no doing. Just two beings sharing the same space until something in you remembers how to rest.
Jasper
Show up with your whole self, ask for what you want, and don't apologize for taking up space.
A curious gentleman who is fully convinced he is a dog. Toothless and unbothered, Jasper's primary therapeutic offering is comic relief, shameless treat-seeking, and an uncanny ability to walk directly into your personal space at exactly the right moment. He doesn't do subtlety.
the Flock
There is medicine in being completely absorbed in exactly where you are.
A small flock of chickens who are busy, curious explorers and surprisingly meditative to watch. There is something quietly regulating about a creature that is fully absorbed in exactly what it's doing. No rumination. No second-guessing. Just pecking. And you might go home with a dozen fresh eggs!
The Stone Hollow
When the Weather Has Other Plans…
And in western North Carolina, it often does!
We can move inside.
The indoor office is tucked into the hillside beneath the Homestead: a long stone-walled room with a fireplace, trailing plants, an altar, and a kitchen that is frankly nicer than the one upstairs. It is cool in summer, warm with candlelight, and feels exactly like what it is — a space held by the earth itself.
The same session unfolds here. The land is still present. Nothing is lost when we come indoors — you've just found a different way to be held.
The Hearth
Stacked stones, candles, and a grounding embrace
The Puzzle Table
Mindful easy focus is sometimes exactly what we need to figure it out
The Reiki Room
The table, the altar, the intention ;a place to reconnect to Spirit and yourself
The Crafting Kitchen
Full kitchen. Real tea. Art supplies, drying herbs and magic simmering