This photo may capture Therese better than anything I could write. Mystic, healer, Catholic, mushroom obsessive, crystal collector, and one of the most delightfully multidimensional people I have met.

Since leaving Montana, Subí-stein, Sylvie, Allove, and I have kept moving east, following whatever seems interesting enough to explore next.

There was never really a plan for this journey.

I did not leave with a mapped-out route or a sequence of destinations I was trying to accomplish. I have been following curiosity, invitations, people, places, and whatever feels worth leaning into.

Missouri has turned out to be a particularly interesting chapter.

I spent a week onsite with Topher Gardnerand his crew at Beartaria, a 100-acre campus owned by Owen Benjamin that hosts gatherings including Beartaria and the Elementals Gathering. I originally went because I wanted hands-on experience with earthbag construction, specifically the cylindrical earthbag bathrooms they are building on the property.

I definitely got that.

But, as usually happens when I spend enough time inside a project, I ended up going much deeper than the construction method itself.

I learned a tremendous amount about the earthbag process while providing volunteer project support, but I also found myself studying the building envelope as a whole: natural building versus conventional construction, concrete, moisture movement, and the difference between permeable and non-permeable assemblies.

That sent me down another rabbit hole comparing natural plaster systems, cement-modified earthen plasters, and conventional stucco.

Natural building is fascinating because materials cannot really be considered independently. A wall is a system. The climate matters. How moisture enters matters. How it leaves matters. What is inside the wall matters. What you put over it matters.

It reinforced something I keep learning again and again in hospitality and construction: you have to understand the entire environment before you can really design for it.

From there, another unexpected opportunity appeared.

I had been invited to be a guest on the hospitality podcast No Show, and I needed somewhere quiet with reliable Wi-Fi where I could record.

That search brought me to Greene Acres.

And the podcast itself turned out to be one of the best interview experiences I have had.

Matt was incredibly thoughtful. His introduction made me feel like he had actually taken the time to understand my work, and his questions were so well researched and specific that the conversation went far deeper than the usual hospitality interview.

There is something rare about being interviewed by someone who does not just read your bio, but seems to understand the architecture behind what you are building.

The episode will be released next Wednesday, and I am genuinely excited to hear the conversation back.

What I thought would simply be a quiet place to stay for the recording also turned into an entirely different kind of creative project.

Greene Acres belongs to Therese and Rich Greene.

Therese has quickly become a dear friend and someone I would absolutely consider part of my inner circle.

She is an extraordinary mystic and healer, deeply Christ-centered and rooted in her Catholic faith while also having a profound relationship with crystals, Tibetan singing bowls, the Akashic Records, sacred objects, herbs, oils, and other mystical and healing traditions.

What I love about her is the juxtaposition.

She is deeply intuitive, extraordinarily sensitive, and seems at times to live between dimensions, yet she also runs with the Catholic Church crowd and leads a remarkably normal life.

There is something wonderfully matter-of-fact about the way those worlds coexist in her.

Then there is her apothecary.

Therese has an entire room in her home dedicated to it, filled with tinctures, oils, herbs, remedies, and all kinds of things she has gathered and worked with over the years.

It is not a little shelf of wellness products staged for Instagram.

It is a working apothecary, and like so much of Therese’s world, it reflects decades of curiosity, knowledge, intuition, and experience.

And apparently I have found my own role at Greene Acres.

As soon as Therese found out about my chef training, I was quickly promoted to private chef, possibly my favorite role of all.

Fortunately, Therese and Rich have a beautiful home with a wonderfully appointed kitchen, stocked with whole foods and seemingly every piece of equipment imaginable.

For someone like me who loves cooking when I have great ingredients and a real kitchen to work in, it has been heaven.

So while Therese is moving between the mystical and the Catholic, I am usually somewhere nearby figuring out what we are having for dinner.

We obviously connect over the crystals and all the strange and beautiful things collected throughout the house, but maybe even more than that, we connect over mushrooms.

Therese and Rich’s property outside Salem is more than 100 acres, and from the photographs and stories, it becomes something of a magical mushroom forest when the conditions are right.

It has been too dry since I arrived for us to forage, but I have seen photographs from wetter seasons and heard stories about the incredible variety that appears throughout the property.

Therese at Greene Acres with one of the mushroom harvests from a wetter season. Her and Rich’s 100+ acres outside Salem become a remarkable mushroom forest when the conditions are right.

It has already made me want to come back when the rains return.

More than anything, I love being around someone who notices the natural world at that level.

Not just admiring it, but paying attention to it.

The fungi, the plants, the weather, the soil, the animals, and the subtle changes from one part of the land to another.

And once again, what was supposed to be a short stay became something much bigger.

Therese and I started talking about her work, her healing, the apothecary, the crystals, the bowls, and this extraordinary collection of things surrounding her, and I quickly realized that what she had was not really a conventional wellness business.

It was an entire world that had never been fully articulated.

That became Divine Earth.

What started as a conversation evolved into a complete brand and business strategy and, quite possibly, one of my favorite websites I have created to date.

One of the most important parts of the strategy was making sure the business actually fit Therese’s life rather than requiring Therese to reorganize her life around a business.

A traditional online store made very little sense.

It would require managing inventory, constantly creating product listings, updating availability, dealing with fulfillment, and maintaining all the mechanics of e-commerce.

We would essentially be creating another job for someone whose real gift has nothing to do with running an online store.

Therese’s gift is helping people heal.

So we designed Divine Earth around that.

Instagram becomes the living collection.

I am styling things now, and Therese is excited to keep doing more of it herself. There is something deeply enjoyable about playing with her collection of stones, crystals, Tibetan bowls, rosary bracelets, beads, pendants, and other sacred objects, arranging them into beautiful settings and vignettes that let their character come through.

A glimpse into Therese’s extraordinary crystal collection. Part of what we are building with Divine Earth is a way to let these pieces be seen and experienced without turning them into a conventional catalog.

That is a very different experience from what an online store would require.

A true e-commerce setup would mean photographing every single stone and object individually, often in a light box, documenting all the details, managing listings, updating inventory, and turning a living collection into a catalog.

What we are building is much more organic than that.

The Instagram page allows the beauty of the collection to make its way into the world visually, while still leaving room for curiosity, conversation, and connection.

It lets Therese share what she has without reducing everything to product photography and administrative work.

And when someone is drawn to something, the relationship can begin there.

Therese is not simply selling someone a crystal.

She can help someone determine which stones they might actually want to be working with and why.

The apothecary works the same way.

Rather than turning that beautiful room of tinctures, oils, herbs, and remedies into hundreds of product listings, it can remain what it already is: Therese’s apothecary.

Someone can come to her, have a conversation, and allow the right combination to emerge from there.

Her healing work can happen remotely or in person.

Eventually, there may also be the possibility of restorative stays at Greene Acres, although we have not put that on the website.

That would be something arranged through relationship rather than another accommodation someone simply clicks to book.

Everything we are building comes back to the same thing.

Healing and wholeness.

The business is simply the container that allows Therese to offer her gifts without burying her underneath the administration of offering them.

To me, that is part of good business design too.

The goal is not always to make something bigger, louder, more automated, or more scalable.

Sometimes the most intelligent business model is the one that protects the life and gifts of the person at the center of it.

And I am having an absurd amount of fun helping bring it to life.

I have been styling, arranging, photographing, editing, and documenting Therese’s collection while we slowly build out the visual language of Divine Earth.

My role is not really to manufacture a brand around what she does.

It is to notice what is already there and make it visible.

That realization has also clarified something about my own work.

I have worked with wellness practitioners before, so this is not a new category for me.

What I am realizing is that I may prefer being in this space.

There is something different about working with people who understand intuition as an essential part of how I work rather than something I need to downplay, translate, or hide in order to be taken seriously.

In this world, intuition is not a liability.

It is part of the value.

I can walk into a property, a business, or someone’s body of work and very quickly begin seeing the architecture underneath it: what belongs, what does not, what should be emphasized, how the pieces connect, and how someone on the outside needs to experience it in order to understand its value.

That process is strategic, but it is also intuitive.

And I am increasingly interested in working in spaces where both are welcome.

Sometimes that architecture is an earthbag wall.

Sometimes it is a hospitality experience.

Sometimes it is a healer surrounded by singing bowls, rosaries, mushrooms, crystals, tinctures, and herbs in the middle of Missouri.

Sacred objects, stones, and devotional pieces are woven throughout Therese’s world. These rosary bracelets are part of the Divine Earth collection, where beauty, faith, and healing are never really separate.

Apparently this trip is becoming an exploration of all three.

Which is why I am now considering pointing Subí-stein toward Columbus, Ohio next week for the Mind Body Spirit Show, with Sylvie following faithfully behind.

Not because Ohio was ever on some master itinerary.

There was no master itinerary.

That may be why this journey keeps surprising me.

I have been following what feels alive, entering places deeply enough to understand them, and seeing what reveals itself once I am there.

Sometimes that leads me onto a construction site.

Sometimes onto a podcast.

Sometimes into the home of someone who becomes a dear friend.

Sometimes into a business I did not know I was about to help create.

For now, you can see what Therese and I have been creating at www.divine-earth.com and follow the evolving collection on Facebook and Instagram at @divineearthcollections.

And next Wednesday, you can hear the No Show conversation that helped bring me to Greene Acres in the first place.

Then we will see where Subí-stein and Sylvie take me next.

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Originally published on Substack.