Jackie Woods steps lightly along a forest path from Beneficial Foods to the Adawehi Healing Center. Her voice intermingles with the birdsong and the song of the creek. Woods endured a serious car accident in 1990 and was told she’d never walk again, but now she’s as sleek and graceful as a gazelle.

“I’m a healer,” she says with a wry grin. “I heal.”

Healers heal, but her journey hasn’t been easy. When her ex-husband left with the only car the family owned, she didn’t know what would happen to her or her children, but she persevered nonetheless. The children were 10 and 12 years old, and she had to make a living for all of them.

When her job in insurance ended, she made a conscious decision to devote her life to energetic healing.  Her reputation grew, and her business did, too, until she had a three-year waiting list of clients. Woods worked for more than 20 years in Atlanta, and then she started looking for land for her retreat. In 1998, she found the end of the rainbow in Polk County.

“I’m from the Ozarks, and coming here felt like coming home. The landscape’s the same, and the people. I love it here,” she says. “It took no courage. I simply took the next step, and the next, with no big plan or vision.”

Woods had planned for one building. The single mother with nothing but faith and friends has become the founder of Adawehi Healing Community, and it’s grown to more than 10 buildings and 125 acres. It’s worth more than any money could buy, Woods said. Woods craved community, and the small core of spiritual seekers has blossomed to 65 members. She’s manifested what she needed to find.