In November 2023, The Wellness Farm Foundation officially opened its doors as a nonprofit organization that helps “provide support for grief and trauma...” in Utah.

Much like the reconditioning of the property itself, the 2.5-acre retreat in Bluffdale has paralleled the emotional and mental reconditioning for licensed clinical social worker and founder Camille Hawkins who experienced her own loss and grief five years prior.

Hawkins and her husband currently fund the operations of the farm from their own pocket and rely on a staff of volunteers to help facilitate the monthly retreats and weekly workshops, geared towards adult participants. The retreats and workshops focus on a range of topics that are often associated with grief and trauma including divorce, suicide, substance abuse, infertility, and loss due to death or non-death experiences, in addition to parenting support.

The Wellness Farm, “intentionally create(s) a space where humans, nature and animals come together with the goal of fostering safety, connection, restoration, and empowerment.” Participants therefore are encouraged to look toward the farm’s two- and four-legged creatures as a mode of support. A mini horse, an emu, a mini donkey, bunnies, cats, goats, a pig, and a blind dog named Ray all live on the property and are available to help participants in their healing.

“What we're trying to do here is like...bring the realness,” Hawkins said.

Much, if not all of what happens on the farm is evidence-based as outlined in the volunteer facilitator training handout. 

“Like with death grief, we've sort of changed the terminology to not get over your grief, but learn [and] grow with it,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins has had the experience and training to approach grief and trauma in terms of biology, taking into consideration the way certain chemicals and hormones made in the brain can lead to happiness. However, she knows well that connection is another vital means of healing.

“In order for us to go through something hard and then integrate it so that we can be happy and well-adjusted and live life, we need the right kind of support,” Hawkins said. 

A time to grieve

Originally from Davis County, Hawkins, who was interested in medicine and psychology, earned her undergraduate degree in social work from Utah State University. She spent time shadowing a medical social worker in the Intermountain Health McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden. Her first position was on the obstetrics floor, in the neonatal intensive care unit. 

“I really enjoyed the populations I worked with,” Hawkins said. “But I did actually struggle with being in the hospital setting.”

During her time at USU, Hawkins met her future husband Palmer, an engineering major, and the two were married in 2009. 

Several years into their marriage, the couple began to realize that they were unable to grow their family and struggled with infertility. Despite her personal trauma, Hawkins started a support group for those experiencing the same things as she and her husband were, which subsequently led her to founding the Utah Infertility Resource Center in 2015 where she served as the executive director for three years.

After unsuccessful attempts with in vitro fertilization, the couple turned their attention toward adoption. Present for the births of both of her daughters, currently 9 and 10, life had, at that point, seemed good.

In 2018, the same year her daughters turned 3 and 4, Hawkins found out she was pregnant.

“We were shocked,” Hawkins said. “And you know, sure enough, it was the real deal. There was a baby growing.”

Hawkins’ joy was suddenly overshadowed by loss as she birthed her stillborn daughter Everly in November 2018.

“That was tragic and heartbreaking, and I was in the hospital,” Hawkins said. “And I was like, this is so odd, because I am usually on the helping side.”

In anticipation of being home with her newborn Hawkins had already stepped down from her position with Utah Infertility Resource Center. A blessing and a curse according to Hawkins, not having to go back to work after losing her child allowed her the downtime she needed to navigate that first hard year.

“And so, you know, I just started to think, Ok, well, what do I want to do?” Hawkins said. “I had all this love for my baby, and she's not here, so I needed that energy to go somewhere.”

Still on her own journey to healing, she started her private counseling practice. Her first client was a woman who had lost a baby 20 years prior due to sudden infant death syndrome and subsequently became addicted to substances to deal with the grief.

Looking back on that period of her life, it wasn’t clear how she would help others work through their grief as she still reconciled her own.

“For me, at that time when my baby's heart stopped beating, I was like, how is my heart continuing to beat? Because I feel dead inside, and I want to be dead,” Hawkins said.

Like a scar from a bad wound, grief never goes away, but it will heal eventually.

Voices
of
trauma

Healing comes at various times for various reasons. Volunteer Jamie Sheranian has worked through her grief and trauma for many years after losing both her parents to drug overdose, her father when she was 3 and her mother when she was 19. As she mourned and grieved the loss of her parents, the notion of why people feel such a heavy emotion was made clear to her.

“We grieve because we love,” Sheranian said.

Formally diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Sheranian found community at the Wellness Farm and likeminded people dealing with similar trauma.

“Even just like a couple months ago when I first came here, I feel like I've broken out of my shell even a little bit,” Sheranian said.

Both Hawkins and Sheranian invite those who are in doubt to experience what the farm has to offer for themselves.

“Until you experience it yourself, you're not going to understand,” Sheranian said. “Or even if you're not experiencing grief or trauma, these tools are things that we can use throughout our whole entire life, not just when grieving someone.”or those looking to give back and volunteer, donate, or those interested in retreats or workshops, visit the wellnessfarmut.org.