I'm Haley

I created Rooted Soul from a place that was very real, very human, and very unfinished. The story below isn't a polished testimony or a step-by-step guide for how to heal. It's simply the story that brought me here—the pain, the wrestle, the questions, and the moments that slowly taught me how to come back to my own life again. I'm still learning. I'm still growing. And in many ways, that's the entire point.

My story is not polished. It’s not put together. It doesn’t have a pretty bow on it.

Rooted Soul came out of my own lived experience of finding my way from pain back into reality. The purpose of this space is to help people do the same—to hear the birds again, to smell the fresh cut grass and feel the whisper of a gentle breeze, to come back into what is actually here.

I have had to fight for my own humanity. Deportation that turned the beginning of a marriage into chaos of figuring out a completely overturned life. A marriage that fell apart little by little. Church spaces that didn't address the version of suffering I lived in. Friendships that couldn’t hold the weight of what I was walking through. Little by little, I disappeared under it all.

And I had to find my way back to living again:
Not just in therapy spaces.
Not just in church spaces.
Not just in my relationships.
Even in my relationship with God—this was the hardest place of all.

I wrestled with whether I could bring the full truth of what I was feeling without cleaning it up first.
I wrestled with whether I could actually hear God through my pain.
I wrestled with whether my reality could be trusted at all.

And I fought for healing. I grew in awareness. I gained insight. I deepened my dependence on God. But the turning point came when I started learning how to be present with my actual reality instead of trying to manage it.

I’ve spent much of my life building my own kingdom. I’ve chased a deep longing to be seen, chosen, and loved, while also carrying the ache of feeling unwanted.

None of that became clearer than in the unraveling of my marriage.

I had fought for my relationship. I had stayed through deportation, displacement, and years of holding a life together across two countries. But even all of that effort couldn’t stop me from slowly losing myself under the weight of it.

I thought I knew what the story was supposed to be. I thought if I worked hard enough, prayed hard enough, understood God more, loved hard enough, I could get there.

And then life didn’t cooperate.

And I had to face something really uncomfortable:
Some of the deepest suffering of my life has come from reaching the end of what my effort can accomplish.

Not because effort is bad—but because there are things love cannot force. There are things persistence cannot hold together.

Shortly after the collapse of my life, I sat on the floor in my nana’s house and stumbled across nervous system healing and the idea that the way through our suffering is by feeling the pain, not figuring it out and controlling it.

I paused. I felt my breath. I felt the lump in my throat. I felt tears prick my eyes. I felt the plush carpet beneath my toes. And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t trying to fix anything—I was just there.

And something shifted.

Not because life got easier, but because I experienced presence.

Since then, I’ve been learning how to stop striving and start being.

Not because longing disappears—but because releasing control creates room to actually live inside my life again.

To hear the birds.
To notice the wind in the trees.
To feel the ordinary moments my pain had made me miss.

These things don’t erase longing—but they return me to life.

Rooted Soul may not be about healing in the way most people mean it.

I think it’s about surrender.

Not the version that gets said easily—but the lived version.

The version where I breathe through the ache of not getting to know the ending first.

People often spend years fixed on a destination, until life eventually asks:
Can you be here?

Not forever.
Not because this is ideal.
But because this is where life is actually happening.

My story is still unfolding.

But I’ve found something I didn’t have before: presence, grounding, and a kind of steadiness I didn’t know was possible.

And that is what Rooted Soul exists to support.

Find Your Rhythm

Professional Experience

I completed my Master of Social Work at University of Kentucky and am a licensed social worker in the state of Minnesota. I have post-graduate clinical experience in trauma, addiction recovery, and school based child and family therapy.

Much of my clinical experience comes from my time working at the Department of Veterans Affairs providing care in an inpatient addiction recovery program. In that role, I carried a caseload of veterans and facilitated both group and individual therapy during their time in treatment.

That experience gave me direct, day-to-day exposure to trauma, PTSD, attachment wounds, nervous system dysregulation, and the ways people survive overwhelming life experiences. While I had academic training in these areas beforehand, my time at the VA is where that knowledge became deeply lived and relational.

In addition to clinical work, I spent six years working with a nonprofit missions organization focused on international partnership work. I served as Operations Coordinator for Cuba, where my role included building and sustaining relationships with local pastors and communities, assessing community needs, training and supporting local staff, and coordinating and leading international mission teams.

That work placed me in the role of cultural bridge—between visiting groups and the communities we were partnering with. I worked with a wide range of groups, from high school students to adults and seniors, across multiple countries including Cuba, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and several U.S. locations.

Across all of these experiences, what has shaped me most is not just the professional training, but the lived exposure to people in transition, in suffering, in rebuilding, and in meaning-making.

Professional Disclaimer

Although I am a licensed social worker, Rooted Soul is a coaching practice. Services provided through Rooted Soul are offered solely in a coaching capacity. Rooted Soul provides coaching services and educational support. Coaching services provided through Rooted Soul do not constitute psychotherapy, counseling or mental health treatment. Coaching is designed to support personal growth, faith Integration, embodiment, self-awareness, and intentional movement toward personal goals. Rooted Soul does not provide diagnosis, assessment, treatment of mental health conditions, crisis intervention, or healthcare services. Participation in Rooted Soul services does not establish a client-therapist relationship. If you are experiencing a crisis, please contact local emergency services, 911, or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.