Empower Bodhi's Vision for a Holistic Take on Grief Therapy

Hello, my name is Bodhi and I would love to introduce you to Willow & Root: Healing Arts & Grief Center , an alternative therapies consultation and support company and part of a fully immersive healing retreat that, I'm excited to share finally share with the world. Willow and Root is my vision of healing made tangible for individuals who need more than traditional therapeutic services and would like to enhance their healing journey utilizing creative, non traditional, and holistic alternatives to traditional coping methods for grief, trauma and other emotional mental health struggles.

My first love is death work, grief, trauma, and life transition work, which was inspired by my work as a medium and tarot reader and an amazing Death and Dying Class in my early college years. During my career as a psychic medium and clinical psychology student, I’ve found tarot and similar practices are rarely used solely as a divination tool by those who utilize such options, which is actually a lot more people than you think. More often, it serves as a means of healing and self-care for people, with individuals turning to tarot for deeply personal issues—trauma, grief, toxic relationships, and fears around death—often using daily readings in place of traditional, and more costly, therapy. However, this practice can fall short of what therapy provides and may become biased or even harmful if misused.

This realization has led me to explore how tarot and traditional therapy could be integrated to utilize empirically tested psychological methods and supported by therapeutic ethics, while embracing the intuitiveness of tarot and better aligning with individuals' personal growth and healing, thus complementing both spiritual needs and traditional therapy. This thinking has actually led to a few psych papers, and I am currently working on a book to further support this, but this is the seed and the growth that has been growing into Wanderlust.

Again, the focus is on grief and trauma, so as I've been exploring, as a clinical therapist, the most effective modalities of giving voice and form to such topics, I have found a loving and creative outlet in art therapy, my master's-to-be project. Art for me has proven to be so healing and provides what words and emotions can't for so many people. My own beliefs in how therapy should work has been given new life now that I am integrating art more frequently into my daily life and watching it's effects more closely on those around me. The power of art it is to bring to the surface what is difficult to express with words alone, and that the overall effect through creation to exhibition, is to lend itself to others who have also experienced their own traumas as a call of "me too". The act of art in any form is very freeing for the mind, and I want to bring that to my clients as well.

So I am currently and intentionally building my wheelhouse and educational pedigree to promote a holistic companion to traditional therapy that I hope gives those who find traditional therapy inaccessible or not as desired an ethically guided and empirically supported resource, while also providing an outlet to support those already in therapy and wanting to add to it in an APA-guided, but holistic and proactive way. And we are in motion now to launch this first part of a much larger community retreat and healing center come to life, but it's going to take more than just me to launch this project and make it a success. So if you're willing to join me, I will jump the hoops and do the work, and I will most definitely bring you along for the ride as we promote our journey, write the books, take the classes, host events and classes, and welcome our first clients. But before we can help that first "Hello" we need a secure building renovated to support our community and their creative healing journeys. So if you can, as a few dollars to our goal which includes land, buildings for offices, kilns, art, and a gallery along with a small gift shop and apothecary/tea room to help levy the costs of services making this hopefully non profit center and community, accessible to everyone who needs it.

"Journey Beyond the Ordinary: Holistic Guidance for Mind, Body, and Spirit."