Walking, talking, healing

Usually, I wouldn’t expect to find myself chatting about what it’s like to feel lost in your early adulthood with strangers on a 90-degree Saturday morning. 

Something more aligned with my Saturdays so far in my mid-20s is sleeping in until 11 a.m. or doing anything I can to avoid the heat. Maybe I’m recovering from a night out of drinking and dancing in Philly. Maybe I end up, yet again, scrolling on my phone and feeling further stuck in a rut. 

I was tempted to do all those things. But instead, at 8:45 a.m. on August 8, I walked over to a group of about 30 people huddled near the picnic tables beside Jack Curtis Stadium Track at Cooper River Park in Pennsauken. 

Despite the anxiety filling inside me already – Who am I going to talk to? Should I put my hair up? Did other people bring water? Can I even withstand a 4-mile walk? – I began talking with the strangers around me. 

I chat with Tina Davis and her brother Chris Davis, two of the three kind, welcoming founders of the ReWild Society. As they do with everyone else who shows up, they enthusiastically introduce themselves, ask how I’m doing and check me in for their free weekly river walk. 

Along with their brother Kevin Davis (Chris’ twin), the three siblings, originally from Haddonfield, established the ReWild Society earlier this spring. It’s a social wellness group focused on improving the mind, body and soul through natural modalities and human connection. 

Every Saturday morning, the siblings host a free walk that steps off at 9 a.m. and completes the entire loop around Cooper River Park, spanning about 3.8 miles. People of all ages and fitness levels are welcome to attend, though it is catered towards adults in the area who may be looking to connect with others or get out of the house in ways that do not involve spending money or drinking alcohol. 

“ReWild stems from an autoimmune disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, I was diagnosed with at 19. It kind of took me on a different type of path than what I had originally thought,” Tina said, the eldest sibling who now is about to turn 35. “I had to steer towards more holistic healing modalities, and navigating through that just felt very isolating. I couldn’t really participate in the way that (adults) traditionally socialize, especially with things like alcohol involved in it.”

After spending about 15 years on her own healing and wellness journey, and moving back to Camden County last year after living out west for a while, she wanted to find a way to connect with other people while still prioritizing her health. 

“I had become more confident that there’s probably a lot more people like me out there, and instead of going and trying to find them, I thought, maybe I should just create the space for them to find me,” she said. 

She presented her idea of a community wellness group to the twins, as she calls her brothers, and they all were on board. 

“We all just naturally work really well together and have fun together, so I thought it’d be fun to include them in this. They’ve been on their own healing journeys, as well,” Tina said. “They felt like this was a mission they could align with, and just bringing people together and just bring the joy and celebration back to healing. It (doesn’t) have to be so serious and feeling like you got to do it all by yourself. It’s much more moving to have community of like-minded individuals kind of walking the same path together.”

“We’re all kind of on our own individual healing journeys. We went through our twenties kind of just like how a normal 20-something-year-old would  feel. Kind of lost in their career, lost in their path, may or may not have had the right behaviors and lifestyle decisions. And we all kind of got to this point in our thirties where we all just kind of started going on our own healing journeys, whether it was through mental health, exercise, fitness, introducing healthier lifestlyes and behavioral changes to our life,” Chris said.

Chris is an orthopedic massage therapist and Kevin is a licensed mental health counselor. Chris said that Kevin and him each covered the mind and body portion of their healing mission, and Tina fulfilled the spiritual, community side of things.

Once they decided on hosting a walking group, which encourages no phone-use and chatting with others, they explored different parks in the area. They chose Cooper River Park, since it was easily accessible for people in the Burlington, Camden and Gloucester county areas (Tina and Chris live in Audubon, and Kevin lives in Mullica Hill).

They held their first walk in May on a Friday morning with a turnout of eight people. They decided to switch to Saturday mornings at 9 a.m. to make it more accessible for as many people as possible. Now, the walks bring out 30 to 40 people, and they always welcome more. Some people have been here since the spring, whereas plenty of people continue showing up for the first time.

Most people discovered the group through the ReWild Society’s Instagram page — @therewildsociety, which has over 2,100 followers at time of press.

Everyone I spoke with throughout the walk I attended had expressed similar reasons for coming out: Looking to meet new people, wanting to work on personal well-being, craving to socialize in a free, low-pressure environment. The siblings echo this. They said attendees consistently say they feel stuck in a rut, and showing up for the walks is a way to slowly get out of those ruts.

It was easy to feel connected to the others, even if most of us felt nervous to chat at first. It was wonderful to see how naturally everyone interacted with each other, too. I chatted with people younger than me and people who could be my parents or grandparents. I learned about people’s new jobs and businesses, I talked about tattoos, I listened to people decades older than me talk about how they are still trying to navigate life and feel like they are still just doing things for the first time, yet assured me there is still so much more time to figure myself out.

“It’s been really beautiful to see people come and just fall in to whoever they’re falling into. There’s no preset plan. It’s not like we’re grouping people together. (Everyone) kind of naturally fell in with certain folks, and they just allow the conversation to free flow,” Tina said.

Like Chris said of the ReWild Society’s origin story (and it gets its name by wanting to “get back to our roots of who we are as humans and what we need to do to thrive holistically together”), most of us feel uncertain in our 20s or at some point throughout our lives. We sometimes feel like there is so much that needs to be figured out or completed perfectly.

But sometimes the “perfect” way to work on yourself is with other people who welcome you with open arms. At the ReWild Society, they do not care if you are a lifelong athlete or just getting into movement. They do not care if you are not the greatest at small talk. They do not care where you come from.

They care that you try to take one step forward, and they are happy to provide a community space to do so.

For more information on the Rewild Society and to sign up for its weekly walks, go to www.therewildsociety.com. Keep an eye out for more wellness events and iniatives, too, which are expected to rollout later this fall.