At Return Home, we are here to assist you in developing a connection with the spirit of your being. This connection fosters mental and emotional integration—an approach that focuses on healing from the inside out. Spiritual health is often overlooked in the mental health space, and that’s where we step in. Our mission is to flip the script, making spirituality a central part of the healing process.
When we embrace spirituality, we no longer need to “figure out” or “solve” every problem. Instead, we learn how to surrender internal and external struggles, allowing spirit to guide us toward resolution. This process of surrender is where we come in to help. Through spiritual, mental, and emotional health education, we provide the support needed to integrate healing on every level.
Mission
To educate others on the mental and emotional health benefits of living a life integrated with spirituality.
Vision
We envision a world where humans come together through their shared connection to one another, each guided by their personal spiritual connection.
Values
We believe that a deep connection to both self and spirit creates the space for healing and growth. These values guide everything we do, both for ourselves and those we serve:
- Intuition: The spark of self-guidance that helps us understand beyond the limitations of our mind.
- Purpose: The inspiration that comes from within, reminding us of our inherent worth.
- Compassion: Maintaining the perspective of connection, and remembering our shared human nature while navigating challenges.
- Integrity: Trusting the wisdom that arises from the body-mind connection, grounding us in authenticity.
Return Home vs Therapy
What Makes Return Home Different?
Unlike therapeutic approaches, Return Home offers a path that goes beyond coping skills, symptom management, and treating trauma. You can see the complimentary qualities of Return Home with your existing therapeutic provider:
| Return Home | Therapy | |
|---|---|---|
| Spiritual Mental Health Education |  | |
| Finding your Path to Purpose: from Coping to Growth | | |
| Emotional Integration to Release Old Patterns | | |
| Personal System of Balance Utilizing Spirituality | | |
| Diagnosis and Treatment | | |
| Working through Trauma | |
We recommend both systems for a holistic approach:
Return Home, and your own Trauma-Informed Therapist
How Return Home Works
Experience Based Psychology
Experience-Based Psychology is the understanding that each of us has a first-hand experience of our own mind and body. This includes thoughts, emotions, feelings, and connection with others & spirit. Insight can be cultivated from this perspective by self-applied experimentation, which we can call practice!
At Return Home, we do not teach anything we haven’t already learned from our own experience. Our personal practice is how we implement and integrate Experience-Based Psychology, and it’s how we teach, too. Within a one-on-one setting, if a question arises around a certain scenario, the response from us will include an experience we have personally had that can provide perspective for you to find your own way to practice with the experience you’re immersed in.
About the Founder: Zachary Stirewalt
Zachary Stirewalt spent seven years within the criminal justice and mental health systems, gaining a unique understanding of how freedom extends beyond physical boundaries. His journey towards Return Home is deeply personal—rooted in healing relationships, including his own adoption story, navigating a mental health diagnosis, and growing up gay in the South. Zachary also integrates his experiences as someone identifying as neurodivergent, believing that working towards embodiment is key to truly returning home to oneself.
Zachary earned his Bachelor of Science in Public Health with a minor in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Throughout his academic journey, he noticed the significant gap in the spiritual health field—spiritual health was the least addressed dimension of wellness. Curiosity led him to discover the heart of his own spiritual practice, which has become the foundation of Return Home.
With a focus on Experience-Based Psychology, Zachary brings a holistic approach to healing. His practice centers on spiritual aspects of meditation & mindfulness, surrender, and emotional intelligence, teaching clients how to let go, listen, and trust their inner wisdom.
Because of his desire to help from personal experience, Zachary decided to avoid become a counselor, therapist, or coach. He became committed to sharing from his experience, and has done so by introducing two sections on each page, “Lessons Learned, Here to Share” and “Currently Working On”.
Current Commitments
Zachary is currently dedicating his time to the nonprofit sector. He sees the importance of nonprofit organizations working together collaboratively to offset costs of increasing community needs. The visual analogy he uses is a bowling lane, where the two bumpers are an organization’s mission and vision. By identifying needs that fall outside of the mission and vision, we miss hitting the pins and the ball falls into the gutter. Through re-imagining collaboration utilizing coordination, he envisions a world where each organization can remain 100% within integrity of their structure and offset the costs of burnout.
The larger project Zachary is working on is Coordinated Reentry for individuals who have previously been justice-involved. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming happenings, sign up for the Return Home Newsletter and you’ll receive additional information as it becomes available! And if you’re a in favor of a re-imagined justice system & de-stigmatized reentry, we hope you consider making a Donation to support Zachary’s work.