About Chauntell

 

Mu names (as you probably read above) are Chauntell Dietrich and D'Yana Rey Waroway.  I'm a Registered Social Worker, Animist Minister, therapist, artist, and founder of Earth in Sky and Therapeutic Animism, a relational approach to healing based in Hamilton, Ontario. 

My work brings together trauma-informed therapy, nervous system awareness, spirituality, mythology, creativity, embodiment, and community through an animist lens that recognizes we are shaped by our relationships with ourselves, one another, the living earth, and the unseen dimensions of life.

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Personal Foundations

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I didn't arrive at this work through education alone, nor through my own efforts. None of us walk our path alone. Mine has been shaped by family, mentors, clients, nature, heartbreak, imagination, video games, myths, legends, animals, grief and the many people who helped me find my way when I was lost.

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I grew up in a family where love and suffering lived side by side. My earliest memories include both deep care and deep pain. I watched how grief, trauma, alcoholism, depression, and disconnection could ripple through generations without anyone intending to pass them on. I don't tell that story to place blame. I tell it because it taught me that people make sense in the context of their lives, and that healing rarely begins with judgment.

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As a child, I often felt like I didn't belong in the world around me. I was neurodivergent (with no label for this), struggled with dyspraxia and dyscalculia, and lived with health challenges that weren't well understood. I spent many years believing I was simply less capable than everyone else. School often left me feeling inadequate, but the woods never did.

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Some of my fondest memories are of making imaginary worlds with my cousins, drawing imaginary worlds, becoming completely immersed in video games (especially final fantasy), and listening to my Grandpa Stanley read stories where animals spoke, forests were enchanted, and the world itself seemed alive. He never called it animism. He simply lived as though the world deserved wonder.

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Looking back, I can see that those stories stayed with me. They offered me a different way of understanding life—one built on relationship instead of separation.

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As I entered high school, I experienced a period of profound depression. I desperately wanted to understand how people found joy, meaning, and a reason to keep living.

I reached out for help through the mental health system available to me at the time. I tried counselling and medication, hoping they would offer the answers I was searching for. Instead, I left feeling unseen and discouraged. While those approaches help many people, they didn't help me make sense of what I was experiencing.

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So I began searching for myself.

That search became one of the greatest gifts of my life.

I immersed myself in psychology, philosophy, spirituality, mythology, ecology, creativity, and human development. Rather than finding a single answer, I discovered that each offered a different perspective on what it means to be human. Together, they painted a richer picture than any one discipline could offer alone.

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Along the way, I kept returning to the same questions.

Why do so many people feel disconnected from themselves?

Why does time in nature change us?

Why does creativity restore us?

Why do ritual, story, symbolism, and community matter?

Why do our struggles often make sense when we understand the relationships and circumstances that shaped them?

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Those questions eventually became the foundation of my work.

Therapeutic Animism wasn't born from having the answers. It emerged through years of lived experience, professional practice, and an ongoing commitment to learning. It reflects my belief that people are not simply diagnoses to be managed or problems to be solved. We are relational beings, shaped by our histories, our bodies, our communities, our culture, and the living world. Healing begins when we reconnect with those relationships and rediscover our place within them.

 

Professional Path

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For over twenty years, I've had the privilege of walking alongside individuals, families, and communities through some of life's most challenging moments.

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My professional background includes child and youth work, hospital and community mental health, counselling, psychoeducation, crisis intervention, outreach, domestic violence services, shelter work supporting women and children, and group facilitation. Alongside this, I spent years leading outdoor youth programs and nature-based experiences, where I witnessed firsthand that healing often unfolds through relationship, creativity, movement, play, community, and time spent with the living world—not only through conversation.

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Throughout my career, I've been deeply grateful for the wisdom, compassion, and dedication of the people I've worked beside. At the same time, I often found myself asking questions that extended beyond the boundaries of conventional practice.

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Why do so many people leave treatment feeling like something is still missing?

Why do belonging, beauty, purpose, ritual, imagination, and our relationship with nature so often sit at the edges of conversations about mental health?

Why do we so often ask, "What's wrong with you?" before asking, "What happened to you?" or perhaps even more importantly, "What relationships have shaped you?"

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These questions weren't a rejection of social work or psychology. They were an invitation to expand them.

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Over time, I came to understand that while evidence-based therapy offers invaluable tools, healing is rarely confined to the therapy room. It also happens around campfires, in gardens and forests, through ceremony, creative expression, meaningful conversation, community, grief, laughter, silence, and the countless relationships that make us who we are.

 

That understanding became the foundation for Therapeutic Animism and Earth in Sky (where I offer my services).

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Today, my work brings together evidence-based social work with animist philosophy, nervous system awareness, mythology, symbolism, ritual, creativity, and ecological perspectives. Whether I'm offering counselling, facilitating groups, teaching, or creating community experiences, my hope is always the same: to help people rediscover a sense of authenticity, belonging, and meaningful relationship with themselves, one another, and the living world.

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I don't see healing as becoming a better version of ourselves.

I see it as remembering that we were never meant to heal alone.