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LOGISTICS
The philosophy and practice
What is Earth in Sky?
Earth in Sky is a House of Elemental Care in Hamilton, Ontario, exploring the intersection of mental health, spirituality, creativity and imagination.
There is the care and reflection of a therapeutic environment, the curiosity and experimentation of a creative studio, the meaning and ritual of a spiritual space, and the play and discovery of an experiential learning environment.
The space grew from a question about the changing conditions of human life: as our lives become increasingly mediated, accelerated and disconnected, what helps us remain connected to ourselves, each other, the places we live and the wider living world?
Earth in Sky responds to emerging challenges around loneliness, belonging, meaning, technological mediation, ecological disconnection and the loss of spaces for creativity, play, reflection and shared experience. It explores how we might cultivate ways of living that support connection, imagination, participation and a meaningful relationship with the world around us.
Earth in Sky approaches mental health, spiritual life, creativity and imagination as interconnected parts of being human. The ways we make meaning, express ourselves, relate to our inner lives, connect with others and understand our place in the world can all contribute to a rich and meaningful life.
Grounded in professional social work practice and animist ministry, Earth in Sky creates opportunities for therapeutic support, creativity, ritual, conversation, movement, play, reflection and the exploration of meaning.
Fantasy, myth and magic are welcomed here as forms of imagination, symbolism and creative meaning-making. They offer ways to explore experience, engage curiosity and bring greater depth and wonder into everyday life. This imaginative approach is held within a reality-grounded and psychologically informed framework. Earth in Sky values discernment, agency and connection to shared reality alongside spiritual and symbolic exploration. Mythic language is used as an invitation to imagination rather than as a claim about objective reality, and therapeutic practice remains grounded in professional social work ethics and scope of practice.
An ordinary place can be imagined as a realm, a gathering as a hearth, a transition as a quest and something discovered along the way as an artefact. The imaginative layer adds meaning to experiences that remain rooted in real places, real relationships and everyday life.
The magic of Earth in Sky is found through deeper participation in the world around us. A walk through the city can become an adventure. A changing season can inspire ritual. A creative practice can offer a new way of seeing. The living world can invite relationship, story and mystery.
In this way, imagination becomes a resource for engaging more deeply with life while remaining connected to ourselves, our relationships, our communities and the world we share.
Earth in Sky creates space for connection, expression, imagination, meaning, wonder, belonging and re-enchantment. It is a place to receive care, explore, create, play and discover some of the magic available within the strange and beautiful experience of being alive.
Same world. More of it.
The founder and the vision
Who is "in charge" around here?
My name is Chauntell Dietrich, is my legal and profesional name, and D'Yana Rey Waroway (“she who walks the path between the realms of night and day”), my Animist Ministry name.
Some roles I play are that of Registered Social Worker, Animist Minister, energy worker, intuitive mover and artist.
I was born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario and have had the privilege or travelling to many places on this beautiful planet.
I love to study life and death on earth, society, humanity, spirituality, religion, philosophy and how to live a good life.
My work has grown at the meeting place of social work, creativity, Earth and Spirit. Through therapeutic practice, I have come to understand human wellbeing within the wider context of our relationships, communities, cultures, environments and the conditions of our everyday lives.
Animism extends this understanding into the living world. I understand humans as participants in a larger ecology of relationship with Earth, animals, plants, places, ancestors, spirit and one another. These relationships can be sources of belonging, meaning, responsibility and care.
Over time, these perspectives came together in what I call Therapeutic Animism, an approach to care that brings therapeutic practice into relationship with animist ways of understanding the world. It makes room for psychology alongside spirituality, creativity, symbolism, embodiment, relationship with place and the ways people make meaning from their lives.
My path has also been shaped by my own experiences with mental health struggles, depression and burnout, and by the ongoing process of learning what helps me feel connected to and in love with my life here. Alongside therapy and other forms of support, creativity, spirituality, energy work, movement, nature, play and mythology have all offered me ways of relating to difficult experiences, expressing what can be hard to put into words, and finding my way back toward meaning, curiosity and aliveness.
I work intuitively with movement as a form of expression, exploration and relationship with the body. Art-making, symbolism and creative experimentation have similarly become ways of exploring experience, making meaning and giving form to parts of ourselves that may not always be easily reached through words alone.
Another significant influence has been my lifelong love of fantasy and video games. During different periods of my life, imagined worlds have offered more than entertainment. They have given me places to explore questions of identity, belonging, courage, grief, relationship and purpose, while reminding me of my own capacity for curiosity and wonder. I have always been drawn to worlds filled with travellers, healers, strange creatures, elemental forces, hidden places, quests and landscapes that invite exploration. What has stayed with me most is the feeling these worlds can evoke: possibility, adventure, belonging and the sense that even a small encounter might carry meaning.
As I grew older, I became interested in what it might mean to bring some of those qualities to life here. Not by escaping this world, but by using imagination, creativity and story to love and participate more deeply in the life I am already living.
I became interested in worldbuilding within the world we already inhabit.
My wider path has been shaped by professional practice and education, the people and communities I have worked alongside, creativity and art-making, energy work, intuitive movement, spiritual practice, ancestry, fantasy and storytelling, and my own relationship with Earth and spirit. My educational background includes Sociology, Child and Youth Work and Social Work, and my professional life has included many years of supporting children, adults and communities.
Over time, I began to recognize a common thread running through these different parts of my life. I am most alive when I am creating, caring, exploring meaning, building imaginative worlds and helping people experience deeper relationship with themselves and the world around them.
In the language of ikigai (reason for being), Earth in Sky sits at the meeting place of what I love, what I have learned to do, what I can offer others and what I believe is worth contributing to the world.
Earth in Sky is both a place and a concept.
As a concept, it represents the meeting place of my therapeutic, spiritual and creative work. It is Therapeutic Animism put into practice, alongside an ongoing exploration of how care, imagination, relationship, play and re-enchantment might be woven into everyday life.
As a physical place, Earth in Sky gives those ideas somewhere to live.
In many ways, Earth in Sky is the physical embodiment of my ikigai. It brings together parts of myself and my work that once seemed to belong in separate worlds and gives them a place to exist in relationship with one another.
I see myself as a participant in this ecology rather than its centre. I am the steward of the vision and the space. My role is to bring my professional training, therapeutic experience, creativity, energy work, movement practice and spiritual life into relationship with the people and places I serve, while continuing to listen, learn, experiment and be shaped through those relationships.
Earth in Sky is ultimately one expression of the work I hope to contribute during my lifetime: caring for human life while remembering that we have always been participants in a larger living world.
Glossary
Terms used around here
Earth in Sky draws from social work, animist spirituality, creativity and its own evolving frameworks. Some of the language may be familiar, while some has a particular meaning within this house.
Here is what we mean when we use it.
ANIMISM:
Animism is one of humanity’s oldest ways of understanding our place in the world. Across many cultures and throughout human history, people have understood humans as living in relationship with animals, plants, land, waters, ancestors, places, spirit and other beings or presences.
Many Indigenous peoples continue to hold distinct living traditions and relational worldviews today. These belong to particular peoples, lands, histories and cultures and should not be treated as one universal form of “animism” or as traditions belonging only to the past.
Contemporary animism is a broad term for other present-day approaches that explore humans as participants within a living, relational world. These may engage with spirituality, ecology, philosophy and contemporary understandings of relationship without claiming to reproduce Indigenous traditions.
At Earth in Sky, animism informs how we understand care. Human wellbeing is connected
At Earth in Sky, animism informs how we understand care. Human wellbeing is connected to our bodies, relationships, communities, environments, Earth and, for those who experience it, spirit.
You do not need to identify as an animist or hold particular spiritual beliefs to participate here.
For Earth in Sky, animism is ultimately about remembering that we belong to a living world and considering how we might live in better relationship with it.
ANIMIST MINISTER:
A person who provides spiritual care and ministry through an animist relational worldview.
An Animist Minister may support people in exploring spirituality, meaning, grief, transition, ritual, relationship with the living world and the larger questions that accompany being human.
My ministry at Earth in Sky creates room for experiences that do not necessarily need to be understood as problems to diagnose or solve. This might include marking a life transition, creating a ritual, exploring spiritual questions, reflecting on death or grief, or making space for an experience that feels meaningful or mysterious.
Animist ministry does not require someone to adopt my beliefs. The purpose is to support people in developing their own relationships with meaning, spirituality and the living world.
THERAPEUTIC ANIMISM:
A framework I developed for bringing therapeutic practice into conversation with animist ways of relating. Therapeutic Animism begins with the social work understanding that people exist within environments, relationships, communities and systems, then widens the relational field to include body, place, ecology, creativity, meaning and the living world.
Depending on the context, this may include therapeutic conversation, somatic awareness, creativity, movement, symbolism, ritual, mindfulness, nature connection, sound and meaning-making.
Rather than prescribing a spiritual interpretation, Therapeutic Animism encourages curiosity about relationship: What is happening within me? What is happening around me? What am I in relationship with? What might need attention?
HOUSE OF ELEMENTAL CARE:
House of Elemental Care is the name for the physical space and experience of Earth in Sky.
The house is designed as a place where different forms of care, connection and human experience can live together. Rather than being built around a single modality, Earth in Sky includes spaces for counselling, gathering, movement, creativity, ritual, conversation, rest, nourishment and spiritual exploration.
The rooms are loosely organized through the classical elements of Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Spirit and Void, with each element offering a different atmosphere and way of engaging with the space. The elements provide a symbolic language for experiences such as grounding, reflection, emotion, expression, transformation, embodiment, spirituality and rest.
The physical environment is intentionally part of the experience. The rooms, objects, lighting, sound, natural materials and atmosphere are arranged to support presence, curiosity and relationship with the space itself.
Together, the house creates a wider ecology of care, with many different doorways for connecting with ourselves, one another, Earth and spirit.
HUMAN PRESERVATION PROJECT:
Earth in Sky's ongoing inquiry into which human practices we want to deliberately carry forward.
The Human Preservation Project emerged from noticing how rapidly everyday human life is changing through screens, algorithms, automation and artificial intelligence.
It is not anti-technology. It asks what we may need to practise intentionally as technology becomes increasingly capable of doing things for us.
This includes gathering face-to-face, making things with our hands, moving our bodies, developing relationships with local places, playing, sharing stories, participating in ritual, experiencing boredom, spending time outside, giving another person sustained attention and occasionally doing something meaningful without documenting it.
The project asks the question: As we move forward, what parts of being human do we want to make sure come with us?
CARE BEFORE CRISIS:
Supporting the conditions of wellbeing before support becomes an emergency.
Earth in Sky is interested in care not only as a response to illness or distress, but as something woven into everyday life.
Relationships, belonging, creativity, movement, meaningful activity, community participation, environment and opportunities for reflection can all contribute to how people experience their lives.
Care Before Crisis describes Earth in Sky's interest in cultivating some of these conditions proactively while maintaining professional therapeutic support for times when more focused care is needed.
LIVING WORLD:
The larger web of relationships within which human life takes place.
When Earth in Sky refers to the living world, it includes humans while deliberately extending attention beyond humans.
Depending on context, this may include animals, plants, fungi, water, land, weather, ecosystems, places and the relationships through which life is sustained.
For some people, the living world also includes spiritual beings, ancestors or experiences of sacred presence. Others may understand the same language ecologically, philosophically or symbolically.
Earth in Sky leaves room for those differences.
RE-ENCHANTMENT:
Learning to encounter ordinary life with attention, relationship and meaning again.
Re-enchantment at Earth in Sky is not about escaping into fantasy or pretending everyday reality is something it isn't.It is almost the opposite.It is noticing seasons. Creating rituals. Learning the history of a place. Paying attention to another being. Making something by hand. Allowing an ordinary object to carry meaning. Becoming curious about mystery. Remembering that everyday life can still contain depth.
Re-enchantment is not leaving reality, it's about living life more fully.
COMING BACK TO LIFE, TOGETHER:
The guiding invitation of Earth in Sky.
Coming back to life does not mean that someone was not living correctly before arriving here.
It describes a movement toward greater participation in our own lives: becoming more present to our bodies, relationships, creativity, communities, places, values and the living world.
The word together matters just as much.
Earth in Sky is built around the idea that human wellbeing is not solely an individual project.
We become ourselves in relationship.