Welcome to well & wild

I’m happy you found this space.

I’m Samantha, a multi-hyphenate millennial with a burning passion for wellness and travel.

My life has always involved healing of some sort —whether it be learning the homemade concoction passed down from my Southern mama for my ailments as a kid or my first experience on a yoga mat in college— wellness has always been an innate part of my life.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become enriched with deep wisdom and knowledge of holistic wellness through the decades-long practice of yoga, meditation, and Pilates, becoming a certified well-being educator during the global pandemic, and becoming educated in food sustainability and nutrition. My almost 20-year career as a writer and journalist has helped hone my research skills to help me find the patterns, disparities, and mysteries of health and wellness.

Now, after starting a new chapter as an empty nester and seeing my only child off to begin his college career, I’ve found myself returning to my decade-long dream of wandering the world to find the most salubrious places on Earth.

That’s where this blog, Well & Wild, comes in.

Well & Wild came to me after I had a mental and spiritual breakthrough when I was faced with conquering my life-long fear of drowning on a whitewater rafting trip along the Nantahala River in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the summer of 2020.

Since then, I’ve continued to receive and nurture a deeper understanding of self and wellness over the past few years. Last year, Well & Wild evolved into a digital travel and wellness brand birthed from the healing I had on the Nantahala and continue to find in nature. This blog, this brand, and my wellness work are inspired by and dedicated to the healers of my lineage and of the African diaspora.

For the next nine months, I’ll be traveling across the globe searching for undiscovered places of wellness and nature. As I travel, I will chat with local healers and wellness practitioners to learn all I can from them about their perspectives on health and wellness and how they heal themselves and their communities. I will challenge the narrative of typical travel by showcasing the connection between healing and nature while reclaiming the wellness space for myself and the people of the diaspora.

This journey is 10 years in the making but the knowledge of travel, healing, and wellness have lived within my ancestorial lineage for lifetimes. Come with me as I rediscover what it means to live a salubrious, healthy life everywhere I go.