A Healing Path for Youth and Families
Our hearts break every time we hear these stories. We’ve cried with these parents. And if you’re there, we’ll cry with you too. However, we’ve been on the mountaintop and seen transformation in families like these with our own eyes. While we grieve with those who are grieving, we rejoice with those who are rejoicing. We want to shout from the mountains, “We know the way out!”
What We Do
Teenagers today face pressures we can’t really imagine, and the result is a mental health epidemic, with suicide, anxiety, and depression at devastating levels. Broken relationships, struggles with identity, lack of purpose, and an overall feeling of emptiness are all contributing factors. Sadly, suicide is now the second leading cause of death among young people, both boys and girls; boys have a higher success rate, but more girls have considered it (1 in 3).
Seeds Wilderness Way was founded to bring hope and restoration to hurting families and teens facing these kinds of issues. Seeds is a licensed, Christian outdoor behavioral treatment program located in Colorado. Our team includes counselors, pastors, trained wilderness guides, and administrative and logistics specialists who love Jesus and are passionate about helping hurting people. We use the wilderness as a powerful place for heart transformation and encounter with God—helping teens build their identity and self-worth on what God says about them, and strengthening their self-awareness and relationships. We have seen God bring radical transformation to students and families through 40-day expeditions where teens encounter His love, healing, and purpose for their lives. We’ve expanded our programming, offering shorter, preventative options for parents and youth leaders in hopes that more students will never reach the point of crisis.
Where We’ve Been
We served our first students and families in 2020, near the start of the pandemic. We were a small but visionary team in love with Jesus and passionate about helping hurting kids. In the years since, we have witnessed many teens encounter Jesus in the mountains and find hope for their futures. And we have seen the joyful reunions of parents with teens they thought they had lost. The emotional hugs of connection and restoration are memories we’ll never forget.
Our former students will tell you they learned tools at Seeds that they will use for the rest of their lives. They learned how to have the hard conversations that really matter. They learned how to forgive, learned God loved them, and learned they were worthy to fight for. “I truly would not have made it this far without Seeds! Thank you for giving me my life back,” one student wrote. A parent shared, “I have never, in the 14 years we have been ministering to our daughter…met someone who so clearly relies on the miraculous work of God in kids’ lives as you.”
These stories were written, in part, because where other counseling approaches fail, experiential wilderness transformation succeeds! God often took people into wilderness settings to teach them and show them their hearts (Deut. 8:2). The wilderness is a place of challenge and testing, but it’s also a place where the soul encounters quiet, beauty, and awe. And it’s a place of encounter with God.
Seeds Wilderness Way emerged from the secular field of wilderness therapy, an industry that has been helping teens in crisis for more than four decades. Even in secular environments, wilderness therapy’s unique blend of experiential learning, counseling, peer groups, personal processing, and daily practice—not to mention the peace and power of time in nature—have made wilderness therapy the most effective residential treatment modality for youth at risk. Dr. Michael Gass, one of the leading researchers in the field of wilderness therapy, discovered that clients improved just as much in wilderness as in residential treatment centers in about ¼ of the time (it’s also 60% more cost-effective).
Where We’re Going
We learned much from the wilderness therapy industry, but set out to do things differently. “If we want to help teens find peace, hope, sobriety, and purpose,” Seeds’ founder Dean Reynolds said, “we have to talk about the One who creates peace, hope, sobriety, and purpose, being Jesus Christ.” Seeds is the first and only wilderness program to include Jesus in its approach to deep heart healing—and leaning on Jesus, the great Lover and Healer of our souls, changes everything! Seeds Wilderness Way combines the best Christian counseling approaches with experiential learning, peer groups, personal processing, and the beauty and ruggedness of the wilderness to reach the heart of each student.
We changed our name from Seeds Wilderness Therapy to Seeds Wilderness Way to reflect this difference in approach. While we continue to focus on heart restoration and healing, using counseling and therapeutic practices to pursue these goals, we have moved away from the clinical/medical emphasis around diagnosis and treatment typical of traditional wilderness therapy. Our new name reflects how we’ve expanded our healing approach to include spiritual formation, prayer, discipleship, and relational tools. We’ve expanded our wilderness program for teens to include three full years of intentional aftercare and discipleship in their home environment. And we’ve expanded our offerings beyond just “wilderness therapy for teens” to include preventative tracks for parents, families, and youth leaders.
God is doing something new at Seeds Wilderness Way. It’s about leading teens and families in the way of Jesus. It’s the way of healing, the way of renewed identities, the way of purpose, and the way of love. It’s not a short path, but a new way of life. Families flourish when they learn how to walk this path with Jesus as their guide. Seeds exists to help them find the way.