From Personal Health Struggles to a Purpose-Driven Wellness Business: How Heidi and Illiana Smith Built A Thyme to Heal
After navigating their own difficult health journeys, mother and daughter Heidi and Illiana Smith turned years of searching, learning and rebuilding into A Thyme to Heal, a Colorado Springs-based organisation focused on holistic wellness education, advocacy and compassionate support.
When the Search for Answers Becomes a Calling
For someone facing a difficult health journey, the hardest part is not always the symptoms themselves.
It can be the uncertainty—trying to understand what is happening, searching for information and knowing which questions to ask. For Heidi and Illiana Smith, that experience was deeply personal.
The mother-daughter team behind A Thyme to Heal, established in 2025 in Colorado Springs, built their organisation from their own experiences of navigating complex health challenges.
What emerged was not simply an interest in natural wellness.
It was a belief that people should feel less alone, better informed and more confident advocating for themselves.
Today, A Thyme to Heal describes its work as holistic health advocacy and natural wellness education, combining education, individual support and community-building around women's wellness journeys.
Two Generations, Two Journeys, One Mission
The company's identity is inseparable from the experiences of its founders.
Heidi's journey began after years of prioritising work and family while treating rest as something she could postpone. After the birth of her fourth child, she began experiencing health challenges. During her fifth pregnancy, she received news about abnormal cervical cells and was advised to undergo a hysterectomy after delivery.
A referral to a naturopathic doctor became a turning point in how she approached her own wellbeing. She subsequently spent years exploring different natural wellness approaches and studying what she describes as the physical, emotional and lifestyle factors affecting her health.
Illiana experienced a different but equally formative path.
She describes spending her first year with chronic illness largely confined to bed, searching for answers and experiencing the isolation that can accompany a prolonged health struggle. Her subsequent journey included emotional and wellness practices that she credits with helping her rebuild her life and relationship with wellbeing.
Those experiences eventually converged around a shared idea:
people navigating difficult health journeys need more than information—they need support while they make sense of it.
Building a Business Around Being Alongside the Client
That insight became the foundation of A Thyme to Heal.
Rather than positioning itself purely as an information source, the organisation describes its role as walking alongside clients through education, advocacy and compassionate guidance.
Its current offerings include health consultations, wellness sessions, emotional-focused support, educational resources and business consultations for women interested in building businesses connected to their own health and wellness experiences.
The organisation's website also presents a range of individual sessions and structured wellness programs, from introductory consultations to longer-term support packages.
Importantly, A Thyme to Heal explicitly states that its services are wellness education and holistic support rather than medical diagnosis or treatment, and encourages clients to maintain care with licensed healthcare providers.
That distinction is important in an industry where the boundaries between wellness education and healthcare can easily become blurred.
The Differentiator: Lived Experience
The company's strongest differentiator is perhaps the one that cannot easily be replicated through a business plan: lived experience.
Heidi and Illiana have personally experienced the uncertainty, emotional weight and isolation they are trying to address for others.
That gives their model a distinctly human dimension.
A Thyme to Heal combines that experience with education and advocacy rather than presenting itself as a one-size-fits-all solution. The founders say their family-centred approach is designed to create a space where women feel informed, heard and supported while exploring their own wellness goals.
For an emerging wellness business, that relationship can be as important as the service itself.
Trust is not built only through what a company sells.
It is built through how people feel when they are dealing with the company.
Turning Difficult Chapters Into a Business
The creation of A Thyme to Heal did not happen from a conventional entrepreneurial starting point.
The founders describe having to navigate their own health challenges while simultaneously rebuilding after leaving an unsafe environment, starting over with limited resources and without an established roadmap.
Those circumstances could have remained simply part of their personal histories.
Instead, they became part of the reason the business exists.
Through their experiences, Heidi and Illiana say they recognised a broader need among women dealing with illness, trauma and uncertainty: not just solutions, but compassionate guidance and a sense of community.
That is where the company's purpose and business model meet.
From Healing Stories to Women's Entrepreneurship
One of the more unusual elements of A Thyme to Heal is that its mission extends beyond individual wellness.
Illiana's work includes helping women in the health and wellness space build what the organisation describes as soul-led, sustainable businesses.
The idea is rooted in the belief that a personal health journey can become a source of knowledge, purpose and eventually economic opportunity—provided it is developed with integrity and without sacrificing wellbeing.
That creates a second layer to the company's model.
A Thyme to Heal is not only building a community around wellness; it is also exploring how women can transform their experiences into businesses that support other people.
In that sense, the organisation sits at the intersection of wellness, education, advocacy and women's entrepreneurship.
Building With Purpose Rather Than Perfection
The founders' approach to entrepreneurship mirrors their approach to their own journeys.
Their advice to women entrepreneurs is deliberately simple: start.
They argue that entrepreneurs often wait for the perfect credentials, business plan or moment of readiness. But in their experience, clarity comes through taking action, learning along the way and remaining connected to the reason the business exists.
That philosophy is particularly relevant to a business born from lived experience.
The story itself is not enough.
To turn experience into a sustainable organisation requires learning the commercial side, developing services, building systems, understanding customers and creating a model that can continue beyond the founders' personal stories.
A Thyme to Heal is now beginning that process.
The Next Chapter
The organisation is still young, having been established in 2025, but its ambitions extend beyond individual consultations.
Its current platform brings together wellness education, individual support, community-building and business guidance. The founders are also building a broader message around helping women feel empowered in both their healing and building journeys.
The opportunity ahead is to turn that philosophy into a trusted ecosystem—one where women can find education, supportive guidance, community and potentially pathways to build something of their own.
For Heidi and Illiana, the business began with experiences they never would have chosen.
But those experiences gave them something they now hope to share with others: the conviction that a difficult chapter does not have to be the final chapter.
Sometimes, a personal search for answers can become the beginning of a larger purpose.