About Us

There have always been healers here.

Most people just didn't know where to find them.

In the Rio Grande Valley, when people think about health, they think about doctors. That's the system they know. But there's a whole other layer of healing happening quietly in the background — practitioners doing real work in isolation, each one starting from scratch, building their audience alone, teaching the same introductory class to the same small room.

Our Mission

Rootlight Collective is a nonprofit public benefit organization dedicated to fostering community wellness and cultural healing through education, events, and holistic practices.

We create accessible spaces where individuals and families can:

Reconnect with ancestral traditions

Nurture resilience

Cultivate well-being in mind, body, and spirit

As part of this work, we also support the practitioners who make healing possible. Through resources, collaboration, and community, we help them sustain their practices and expand their positive impact.

At Rootlight Collective, community and practitioners grow together — each strengthening the other in a shared commitment to wellness, cultural healing, and collective thriving.

Two problems. One solution.

We saw two things happening at the same time.

People in our community were looking for support — for stress, for grief, for anxiety, for the kind of exhaustion that a doctor's visit doesn't touch. They were curious about alternative approaches. But they didn't know who to trust or where to start.

At the same time, practitioners with real skills and real results were working in silos. No referral network. No shared stage. No community to grow alongside. Each one rebuilding the audience from zero, alone.

Rootlight Collective exists because these two problems are actually one problem. The community needs practitioners. Practitioners need the community. We built the bridge.

This isn't new. It's a return.

These practices — energy healing, herbalism, sound healing, somatic work, ancestral healing — aren't foreign imports. They're connected to healing traditions that have always existed in communities like ours. They belong here.

Formal wellness organizations in our region have historically focused on allopathic medicine. Alternative and ancestral practices were left out of that conversation. Our practitioners have been doing this work anyway, quietly, without institutional support.

We're not introducing something new to the Rio Grande Valley. We're bringing back something that was always here — and making sure the community knows it exists.

Healing is not entertainment

We create depth, not performance. Real practice, not a booth at a Saturday market.

Community over competition

Practitioners grow stronger together. We build alongside each other, not against each other.

Education first

People can't choose what they don't know exists. We make alternative wellness accessible and understandable.

Rooted in culture

Ancestral and cultural healing traditions are not alternative — they are foundational. We honor them.

Looking for wellness support or events near you?

For the community

A practitioner ready to build with others?

Join as a member

Want to support wellness in the Valley?

Partner with us

THE BOARD

Janie Jaramillo

Co-Founder & CHAIR

Yoliteotl Wellness · Heart and Spirit Healing · Energy healing, Reiki, Akashic Records, Hypnosis

"I had to go outside my community to learn about these practices. I want to bring them back."

Lisbeth Deyta

Co-Chair

Administrative and budget management professional · Government-funded sector

"Wellness is about connecting with the self and healing the inner child."

Amy Ramirez

Secretary

Sun & Moon Massage Therapy · Bodywork and somatic wellness

"Wellness includes a deep connection with the body. Body pain signals deeper pain."

Blanca Delgado

Treasurer

Delgado Terapias Holisticas · Ancestral and cultural healing

"We need to reclaim our ancestral practices that kept our communities healthy for millennia."

Alexis Cardenas

Community Development

Herbin Wellness · Clinical herbalism and plant medicine

"Plants can help support our wellbeing and bring us back to health."

Practitioner-led governance.

Our board is made up of the people doing the healing work in this community — which means our decisions are grounded in real practitioner experience, not institutional assumptions. Lisbeth Deyta, our Co-Chair, brings professional accounting expertise to ensure financial integrity and organizational accountability.