Guided by the Ancestors. Rooted in community.
Born and raised on the North Side of Minneapolis at the vibrant crossroads of African-American, Central-European American, and Colombian families,
I learned how everyday culture can replace loneliness, steady grief, and braid people back together. From back-porch conversations to holiday kitchens, these rituals became my first lessons in belonging and resilience.
In my twenties, life pressed pause. In 2006, a late-stage cancer diagnosis plunged me into a true dark night of the soul. What followed was a season of personal tower time, a period of deep introspection and uncertainty as my family navigated upheaval and loss.
When every familiar remedy failed, I turned to the ancestral practices I had only studied from a distance. Leaning into prayer, surrender, and the quiet counsel of my elders and ancestors , I found guidance and hope; I learned culture, spirit, and community are a form of medicine and can heal down to the marrow.
This lived experience became the foundation of Folkway LLC.
Hello,
I’m Donyelle Headington, founder and lead practitioner of Folkway LLC, a living sanctuary where ancestral traditions, community care, and healing justice converge.
My Approach
Sacred Listening & Truth-Telling
Before any ceremony or session, I hold space for your story, honoring your resilience and co-creating a path toward healing.
Ritual Cleansings & Grief Work
Drawing on African-Diasporic including Black-Belt Hoodoo, various European traditions including Norse-Germanic, and Curanderismo, I offer cleansings, individualized ceremonies, and somatic work to release what does not belong, held in body and spirit.
The H.A.R.T Method & Somatic Body-Work
Certified in the H.A.R.T Integrative Fire-Cupping Method levels one and two, I use multi-disciplinary cupping practices to move stagnation, invite ease, and restore flow.
Spiritual Herbalism & Ceremony
From tinctures to full-circle plant gatherings, I share the wisdom of the Plant Spirits to support spirit, body, mind, and community through hands-on herbal teachings and ritual.
Oorlog Readings & Ancestor Veneration
Through Völva seership, spirit guidance and other practices, I help to translate ancestral messages, so that folks may carry their wisdom forward into your life.
Path of Study & Practice
2004 to 2019 - Formal apprenticeship at the Cultural Wellness Center with Elder Atum Azzahir, working under the idea of "culture as a means to healing" and self-study practice. I served on the board (2009–2010) and helped with initiatives such as monthly Elders’ Luncheons, community celebrations, and Backyard Initiatives alongside Elders Akhmiri and Abebech Girma, who mentored me in village building and community care. I received my CA as a Truth Telling & Healing Circle and Facilitator(2014) and was one of the founding members of the TRP(Trauma Recovery Project)
2006- Began a mentorship with Seḥmu Semerit Strachan focused on herbal & nutritional healing, sacred listening, and body-centered for life, grounded in the “Body as Best Friend” philosophy
2013- started my mentorship under Iya Amoke Kubat , eventually receiving my crowning Orisha From a respected Lucumi House.
2015 - present Began working with Kari Tauring as a mentee, focusing on oorlog repair, deep boundary work, and reculturalization. In 2017, I joined the Völva Stav Guild and deepened my Norse-Germanic seership with the support of Volva and Herbalist Bethany Jacobson, along with ritual practice, and root-culture studies using the Völva Stav method.
2016 - present I have immersed myself in Curanderismo with Maestra Kim Hart and lineage teachers Rita Navarate, Laurencio Núñez, among others, earning my sash after a nine-month immersion, certifying in HART Fire-Cupping levels one and two, and assisting in community classes and ceremony.
Why Folkway?
I have been a student of culture since childhood, studying my peoples—how they live, what they eat, how they heal, how they transgress, and how they can make things right. That lifelong inquiry is the foundation upon which Folkway LLC is rooted.
I named my business Folkway because I practice the way of my folk, my people. Folkway honors the customs and wisdom passed down through generations in everyday life: the songs and stories shared at family gatherings, the kitchen rituals that steady grief, the medicines that sustain us. Here I serve as both guide and student, practicing with humility and reciprocity. My work invites you to reculturalize by reviving those customs, reclaiming suppressed histories, and weaving you back into supportive networks. When we align with the way of our folk, we don’t just feel better, we heal deeper.
Duafe House, named to honor mutual care and tenderness, was made real by our community’s support—and now anchors Folkway’s gatherings as a living testament to village building.
Baami' Place Micro Healing Studio
Baami means “my daddy” in Yoruba, and Baami’s Place Micro Healing Studio sits at the heart of Folkway’s intimate work. This cozy, light-filled space is dedicated to my father, Jerry Leon Fischer Evans—my first teacher—whose values shaped everything we do here. In 2023, as his health declined, our community came together to build a tiny house in my backyard so he could live with the care and reverence of who I've always thought to be so similar to an Obeah man.
When his spirit transitioned only months later, I chose to breathe new purpose into that space by offering one-on-one healing sessions infused with his teachings of anti-materialism, mutual care, wild harvesting, and deep respect for nature, the Creator, and all kingdoms of Earth. Because of the community’s generosity and the village-tending values my father modeled, everything at Baami’s Place is offered on a sliding scale, and no one is ever turned away. By dedicating this studio to him, I carry forward his legacy of communal care and spiritual integrity with every person who enters.
Join the Circle
When you work with Folkway LLC, you enter a circle of care designed to uplift your spirit, honor your lineage, and foster collective liberation. Whether you seek a one-on-one session, a weekend herbal workshop, or ongoing spiritual mentorship, I’m here to walk beside you, holding space, sharing plant and ritual knowledge, and helping you reclaim your power.
Ready to begin?
Visit Services to explore offerings and upcoming gatherings or schedule a free fifteen-minute consultation to see how we can work together. I look forward to meeting you, hearing your story, and tending to your spirit, one sacred step at a time.
Useful information and links
Völva is a Norse-Germanic seeress whose very title comes from the Old Norse word vǫlr, “staff, or stav” symbolizing her office as a bridge between worlds. According to Kari Tauring and the Völva Stav Guild, she practices seiðr through sacred body geometry, runic and staff rhythms, and vocal toning to journey across the Nine Worlds, perform boundary work, and heal öorlog—our inherited cultural experiences and fate—realigning individuals with ancestral wisdom. According to Norse-Germanic scholar Maria Kvilhaug, vǫlur were respected professionals who offered divination, initiation rites, and spirit invocations to guide communities, steward cycles of death and rebirth, and maintain the cosmic weave of human and divine relationships
Ørlög (Old Norse, often anglicized “oorlog”) is essentially the web of fate or personal destiny formed both by what we inherit and what we create in this life.
Kari Tauring’s Völva Stav tradition defines Ørlög as the accumulated core of our ancestral “karma” — DNA, inherited conditions, beliefs, and traditions — together with the sum of our own actions, words, and intentions. This living matrix of past and present potentials shapes the path we walk and what we pass on to those who come after us .
Maria Kvilhaug describes Ørlög as the soul’s “cosmic blueprint,” which the three Norns carve into the bark of Yggdrasil (the World Tree). In her framework, these runic inscriptions determine both the length and the character of a person’s life, weaving past, present, and future into an indivisible pattern of destiny.