Rooted and Raw: "Cracked Open: When it breaks you, it brings you"

When we talk about healing, we’re quick to reach for the checklist — green smoothies, clean skincare, a few yoga flows, maybe a deep breath between a hundred to-do’s. But real healing? It doesn’t live on the surface. It’s not until life cracks us open — usually when we least expect it — that we realize how far we’ve drifted. From our bodies. From our roots. From our truth.

Healing begins when the illusion shatters — when we’re finally forced to feel what we’ve spent years avoiding. That’s when we remember: healing isn’t about doing more. It’s about coming home. Raw, unfiltered, and rooted in what matters.

You don’t just wake up one day and decide to live slower, cleaner, or more connected. Pain does what comfort never could. Disruption has a way of revealing what’s been quietly unraveling. In the rush to keep up, it’s easy to forget how to slow down. But it’s in the chaos that we’re called back — back to purpose, to a soul-led life, to the medicine in food. Above all, back to the sacred act of slowing down.

Healing isn’t a straight road. It’s a battlefield. A dance. A rebirth. Some days, you rise like fire. Other days, you burn like one. Healing isn’t linear. It’s not a destination or a quick fix. It doesn’t move in a straight line or ask for perfection. It’s ugly before it’s beautiful. It can bloom and break in the same breath. It is a return. A remembering.

In a world that profits off our exhaustion and self-doubt, the most radical thing we can do is come home to ourselves — again and again. Back to the dirt.

Back to the fire. Back to the truth. To the forgotten medicine in food. To the power of prayer. To the stillness we once feared. Rooted and Raw isn’t about picture-perfect wellness. It’s not curated calm or clean aesthetics. It’s real healing — the kind that starts in your bones, calls on your spirit, and slowly reshapes how you live in your body, your home, and your life. 

Each week, I’ll bring you pieces of the journey — nourishing recipes that feel like medicine, rituals that speak to the soul, holistic wellness, and ancestral truths passed down through the bones. These aren’t fixes — they’re reminders. We’re not broken. We’re returning.

Rooted and Raw is my offering — a space to return, reconnect, and remember. Together, we’ll explore the kind of wellness that doesn’t come in a bottle, but grows from the inside out — passed down through blood, soil, spirit, and story.

From my healing hands to yours, 

Ashlee Taylor Henderson