What’s your “why?”
I’m Toni Stanford, the owner and founder of The Well. My reason for starting The Well is so multi-faceted, but the simplest way I think I can put it is that I have realized that there is amazing joy and freedom that comes with true wellness and we are ALL meant to live well. Thus, I have a deep passion for helping others realize that for themselves.
My story is not a story of pulling myself out of a devastating illness by discovering alternative methods to western medicine, or one of a lifetime of formal education making me a renown expert in the medical field. Mine simply starts as just a girl that grew up on a farm in eastern Washington, never feeling unhealthy, but never feeling fabulous either and just feeling like that wasn’t the way life was intended to be lived. Mine is one of constantly asking why, when life threw me and the ones I loved some hard curve balls, knowing there had to be better answers than what I was being given. Yes, I have always been the one that needed to know why and how. I’ve never just accepted anything. Most of my life I spent focused on my family’s wellness, learning interesting and helpful slivers of goodness along the way. But over the last 10 years I have watched many of my loved ones experience extremely hard health battles, some that even ended lives. Needless to say, these are the heartbreaks and journeys that began to tug on me more and more and became part of my journey. These experiences fanned into flames the fire that had already sparked in me years ago. The realization that I could do more, learn more, share more and ultimately help more. These are the stories that made me realize I HAD to do more!
So this is where the story of The Well begins.... This is where I get very passionate about everything I’ve learned and continue to learn; about all the wonderful things that promote true wellness and full life. Not just treating symptoms or accepting conditions as “this is just how it is,” but realizing that there is so much more available to us that can help us conquer those mountains that seem so hard to get to the top of. The truth is that we’ve already been given everything we need. We just often don’t realize it and our lifestyles make it difficult to take advantage of it. So just like the Samaritan woman, who went to the well thinking all she needed to draw from it was simply water, unaware that what she really needed and would receive was living water; it is my vision that what people receive at the well will be far greater than anything they anticipate when they walk through the door. To see others experience the joy of true wellness, that is my why. That is The Well!