Qualified since 2012 — but a certificate and a calling are not the same thing. The second did not arrive until 2020, and it came wrapped in fear, carrying a choice: stay behind a closed door like everyone else, or go to the people who could not. The choice was to walk in the gift and the calling, wholeheartedly.
When the world went still, the work moved to where people were. The table folded down and went in the back of the car — mask on, gloves on, one living room at a time.
Some of what needed attention was physical: injuries still mid-rehabilitation, pain that did not pause because everything else had. A great deal of it was not. There were funerals nobody was permitted to attend, and people who would never be seen again. Rent and work that had to somehow sort themselves out. Family stranded in other places with no date to come home to. Isolation does its own kind of damage, and there was more grief in those months than most people had anywhere to put.
Not everyone carried all of that, and some carried none of it. But many did, and each day arrived with its own list of surprises. No two sessions were alike — every person needed something different, and the work was finding out what before a hand was ever laid down.
Not in a treatment room, but in front rooms and on kitchen chairs — at a time when simply being present with someone was the whole of what could be offered, and turned out to be most of what was needed. A therapist's heart woke up in those rooms. That is when this stopped being a job.
Serving humanity with the Light we are blessed to share each day.
Where It Began
2011 marked the beginning — a season of study at the Florida College of Natural Health, learning the art of healing hands. By 2012, the training was complete. But before a license was ever held, before the work could even begin, a near-fatal car accident changed the course of everything.
A broken clavicle. A fractured sternum. Glass embedded in flesh, leaving a river of scar tissue that still tells the story today. And a head injury that would shape far more than the body — the beginning of a mental health battle that wouldn’t reveal itself for years. Seven years passed between calling and beginning, spent learning to live again long before there was any thought of healing someone else.
But pain, carried long enough, becomes a teacher. What it taught was compassion, and a depth of understanding no classroom could have given.
Every hand that would go on to heal was first a hand that had to be healed.
Then came 2019, and a turning point. A choice to step away from a life built on noise and into one built on stillness. A license, finally renewed — not because it was easy, but because peace had become worth more than anything comfort could offer. What followed was purpose taking root, and a frozen shoulder slowly returning to motion: proof carried in the body before it was ever offered to a client’s. Skincare training followed in 2020, right as the world went still.
And then came the collapse. The kind that reaches every corner of a life — motherhood, work, identity, the light that had been carried for so many others suddenly dimmed to nothing. A full retreat from the world became necessary. Not defeat — descent, the kind that always comes before rising.
It was there, in that stripping away, that Jesus Christ was found. Not as an idea, but as salvation itself — a new way of living, a new way of seeing, a light that did not flicker or fade. The salt of the earth, finally understood — not as metaphor, but as testimony. And ever since, the bloom of that promise has continued to unfold, one season at a time.
Salt & Bloom is the fruit of that journey — the salt that purified, and the bloom that followed.
A brand new life, built for His glory, offered now as restoration to everyone destined to walk through these doors.
A Special Thank You
With deepest gratitude — to God, to my devoted mother, to my pastors, and to My Long Life Acupuncture — for holding me through the most important season of my life.
There was a season when I had nothing left to hold onto — compromised health, no job, no active licenses, and my grip loosening on everything I had because of it. Nothing except faith, and walking in alignment with the narrow path. My body stopped being something I could rely on. I could barely walk, could hardly sleep, and the pain did not let up. After 14 years in this field, I thought I was done. I believed I could never do this again. My body couldn’t carry it anymore, and neither could my mind or my emotions.
I reached out to Dr. Adriano, and he opened his doors to me wholeheartedly. He gently told me, “Just come on in, and I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry about it.” So that’s what I did.
Thanks to that blessed opportunity, I came under the care of Dr. Chu — a gifted acupuncturist, and someone who paid attention to what I could not put into words. I will not try to explain what those months were, and I would not promise anyone else the same. I only know that I was cared for with real attention, week after week, at a time when I had stopped expecting it. Somewhere in there, I started to see the light again.
Still limping, my devoted mother pushed me and encouraged me to never give up on my purpose as a healer — to hold onto hope that I would be standing again before I knew it. She took me to get my fingerprints, helped me renew my licenses, and got me back on track. By the time everything was in place, I was working again — something I once believed would never happen.
And through the whole of it, my pastors brought me closer to God than I had ever been, and taught me. They kept me under covering and protection, and they held me in prayer through the stretch when I could not pray for myself — when I had very little left to say. I did not always know it was happening. I know now that it never stopped.
I remember crying on that treatment table, not only from physical pain, but from a deep emotional release of everything I’d been holding onto for so long. And in that release came the ignition of the purpose God put me on this earth for: to learn from pain, and offer that same love and support to others from a place of true understanding.
Tears of pain, joy, and deep appreciation followed — for holistic healthcare, and for the mastery that comes from truly loving what you do. Dr. Chu reignited my purpose as a healthcare provider and reminded me that life is never about us, but about the person in front of us.
So thank you — God, my devoted mother, my pastors, and My Long Life Acupuncture — for the fire, the healing, the prayers and the covering that carried me, and the attentive doctors who cared so deeply about my wellbeing when I needed help in every way. Hosting this long-fought dream is an honor. Within these walls, it isn’t just a clinic. It feels like home.
And an even deeper gratitude — for God’s hand in every moment, every person, and every season woven into my life as a whole. For healing me through the love and support of everyone around me. All glory goes to our Heavenly Father and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for bringing me back to life so many times.
Yeslie’s own account of her own experience. It is not medical advice, and it is not a claim about what any treatment can do for anyone else.