The Inspiration..
I chased enlightenment.
Books, gurus, practices..all to become a “better” version of me.
But no one warned me about the spiritual bypassing.
How healing can turn into self-abandonment.
How chasing light can make you reject your own shadow.
I tried so hard to be new that I forgot to be whole.
But the pain didn’t leave — it lingered.
Because what you don’t face, you carry.
And what you don’t love, stays unloved.
And after a while, that shit gets heavy.
The real healing came not in the teachings,
but in the stillness of the woods while the chaos of my thoughts
and the wild, messy, honest parts of me came to surface.
That's where reconciliation led me to wholeness.
Sitting with your past. Holding your shadows.
Choosing love — especially when it’s hard.
Wisdom in the Woods was born from the truth that breakdowns birth breakthroughs
and the most powerful version of you lives on the other side of your truth.
You are the bridge your past has been waiting for. The one who chooses to rise, reclaim, and remember.
It's time to to heal so we can rise.
The healing of one is the healing of all. Your healing is my healing. Our healing is the world’s healing.
About Maria
My Mission
Hi, I’m Maria — a 3/5 Emotional Manifestor here to ignite healing, spark truth, and lead others back to their power.
I lead from the trenches.
My story is raw, real, and full of lessons from the peaks, the valleys, the breakdowns, and the breakthroughs.
Healing isn’t linear. And it sure isn’t always pretty.
But it’s real, and it’s worth it.
I’m here to initiate transformation — to help you remember who you were before the world told you who to be.
To reconnect you to your wild truth.
Wisdom in the Woods was born from that mission —
A heart-led space for women to come home to themselves.
To heal. To be held.
To root deep in nature, in sisterhood, in emotional truth.
To shed, awaken, and become.
This is a call to the women who feel the pull.
The ones who are done playing small, hiding, or self-abandoning.
It’s time to rise into who you’ve always been.
About Me
I’m into all the woo woo spiritual things—Tarot, Astrology, Human Design. I can't get enough of it and have to remind myself to come back down to Earth sometimes.
As a Sagittarius rising, I’m a lifelong learner, truth-seeker, and freedom-lover who’s always chasing meaning and adventure. I’m deeply into spiritual development and mindset work—almost to a fault. Thankfully, my Libra moon keeps me craving balance, and my Cancer sun slows me down, nudges me inward, and reminds me that my biggest strength as a water sign is to feel deeply and nurture myself (even if..especially if.. it means crying a river).
In the last few years, I’ve been heavy in my Human Design experiment era. Learning I’m a 3/5 Emotional Manifestor was the permission slip I didn’t know I needed. It lit a fire under me to heal old wounds, own my role as a trailblazer, and rise into the powerhouse initiator I was born to be. So yeah… Human Design is definitely a love language of mine.
I was born in the Philippines, raised in the PNW, and I live for joy, mountains, water adventures, early sunrises, and chasing sunsets. I’m also a sweets-and-coffee-loving mama to my 14-year-old daughter—my greatest teacher and the love of my life.
A deep feeler and thinker—always exploring the bigger picture and our purpose here. I value connection, family, and soulful relationships. With connection and impact as some of my guiding values, I’m always observing, reflecting, and piecing things together
—so I can help others make meaning, shift,
and grow in their own lives.
My Story
Ten years ago, if you told me I’d be leading a business, building teams, or hosting retreats…
I would’ve laughed and said, “What in the actual FCK?!”
Back then, I was a single stay-at-home mom with quiet dreams.
Engaged. Exhausted. And completely disconnected from myself.
I didn’t have the language for it then,
but I knew something was off.
I had faded into the background of my own life.
And when I finally leapt…everything fell apart.
But that fall is what saved me.
It cracked me open and stripped away what wasn’t mine.
It showed me just how much strength was buried beneath my fear.
That leap didn’t end my life —it started it.
What followed was a decade-long initiation:
grief, growth, motherhood, solitude, leadership.
I rebuilt myself from the inside out.
That season taught me:
you don’t have to be fully healed to lead.
You just have to stop abandoning yourself.
Starting my business was another awakening.
It pulled forward the masculine energy I’d never truly owned —
discipline, strategy, vision.
But it also unearthed old wounds I still had to meet.
Victimhood. Perfectionism. The lie that I had to carry it all alone.
So I did the real work:
I held my inner child. Honored my inner teen.
Made peace with every version of me that got me here.
And just when I thought I was done digging —
Life invited me deeper.
The Healing Continues
About a year ago, my dad had a heart attack on my birthday.
I remember the gut-wrenching moment I got the call.
The unbearable silence. The dread. The uncertainty.
And then—being in that room, making the impossible decision
to take him off life support.
It was a nightmare my family had lived before.
Twenty years earlier, we faced the same pain
with my brother's passing.
The machines. The cold, loud silence. The deep ache in my heart.
Grief cracked me open again.
Everything I had been holding back came rushing forward.
Grief, rage, tenderness, truth all begging to be seen,
reclaimed, and honored.
I took the chaos as a signal that I should consider
revamping my life.
It was how I survived—how I coped.
But this time, I realized maybe I wasn’t evolving…
maybe I was running.
The real message was:
To soften. To open. To finally love me.
Not the next version. Not the healed one.
But the woman still standing in the fire.
I think of my dad often.
Now, I honor him and my ancestors not by surviving,
but by living fully.
By creating something new from the ashes and meeting life
with presence and heart.
Healing, I’ve learned, isn’t about bypassing pain or rushing to feel better.
It’s about feeling it all. Letting the pain move.
Letting the wisdom land.
I’m still healing, BTW.
But it’s no longer about fixing the past but embracing it to love wholly wildly without apology.
I offer this space to truly feel to heal, to integrate.
That’s how we alchemize. How we transform.