What does it mean to TRULY come home? Not out of duty or obligation... but as an act of devotion... to yourself AND your lineage.

This curiosity is what guided me to dream up Awakening Blooms – a soul-led retreat I’m hosting in The Dominican Republic this March – and to create this scholarship fund.

My name is Yomairi and I am the daughter of Dominican parents who migrated to the United States in search of opportunities they never had access to back home. I was born in New York, but the island raised me. I lived in The Dominican Republic for the first nine years of my life, enjoying the abundance and simplicity that only this land can offer. Even after returning to the states, I continued to journey home every summer to soak up as much of the island as I could in that time. I didn't understand it at the time, but I know now that each journey back to the island allowed my soul to remember where it came from in ways I didn't have access to in New York. Now, as an adult, I feel an undeniable desire inside me to return, to slow down, to let the land mother me in the ways it always has.

Because the truth is...

America has never felt like my home, the way the island does in every cell of my being.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to understand the privilege (and the responsibility) of being able to return to this land intentionally... not just to visit family, not just to be a caretaker of anyone or anything else, but for MYSELF. And I want every daughter of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to have access to this too.

That is why I created The Returning Home scholarship fund.

I have a goal to raise $10,000 in scholarship funds to offer partial scholarships for Dominican and Haitian women to join me in The Dominican Republic for Awakening Blooms, to experience their ancestral land through the lens of healing, rest, and belonging... because for so many daughters of the Caribbean, “going back home” has never meant having time and space to rest. For most, a return home has meant responsibility, errands, caretaking, cooking for the family, and tending to whoever stayed behind. It has rarely, if ever, meant time to breathe, explore, heal, or reconnect with the land that made us.

Wellness at this depth is not always accessible – financially, logistically, emotionally.

And yet, these are the very women who hold our lineages together.

This scholarship is not charity.

It is reciprocity.

It is remembrance.

It is returning access to women who deserve to meet their homeland in a way they’ve never been allowed to.

Your contribution becomes a bridge

a bridge back to ancestral soil,

a bridge to community,

a bridge to returning home, both physically and spiritually.

When you support this fund, you’re not just helping someone attend a retreat.

You are helping a woman come home to herself.

You are helping her experience her home land in a way she’s never had the chance to... with ease, nourishment, and the space to simply be.

Every donation, big or small, opens a new path back home for a daughter of the Caribbean who is ready to bloom, but simply needs a doorway held open.

Thank you for helping bring her home.