The Pear Tree Wellness Collective: A Home for Healing in Greensboro

A Community Hub for Health and Healing

 

You could call The Pear Tree Wellness Collective  at the corner of West Market and Tate Street in Greensboro “the mothership.”

The purchase of this building—a stately house more than a century old on historic College Hill—in the summer of 2023 was the genesis of not only The Pear Tree as a multi-faceted place of wellness, but also the Greensboro Holistic Collective.

Owner/manager and lymphatic enhancement therapist Emily Ward explains:

As a former program planner for nonprofits turned stay-at-home mom of three, I was ready to shift my focus externally. There was a piece of land that was calling to me to create a community-based wellness center, but I kept running into obstacles. So I decided I’d do the work as long as it was supported: building a plan, coming up with a logo, and training to become a lymphatic enhancement therapist.

Then a dear friend and Realtor found the Kennedy Chase House at 1101 West Market Street, owned by a builder, and said I should look at it.

Q: How did you know that was “the one”?

Oddly enough, it was what The Pear Tree looked like in my mind all along! After that, everything rolled really quickly over the next year. It has been on-the-job training for me, but it was important to do everything with integrity. (Even so, there are a lot of things in hindsight I would have done differently.) Also, we were really intentional with everything we put into the “old gal,” from energy clearing to selenite in the paint and materials as we remodeled it into a warm and nurturing space. I felt that she wanted to be brought to back to life. We had our grand opening in May 2023.

Q: Three years in, where do you stand with your mission now?

With its wide, wrap-around farmer’s porch, it feels as if the home is a partner in the healing that goes on. But the welcoming porch is indicative of The Pear Tree’s larger purpose: to create and reach out to the community.

My mission was to create a hub for wellness, to help bring people into a state of health and well-being: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. With 20 practitioners in everything from lymphatic enhancement and craniosacral therapy, energetic and intuitive modalities, Rolfing, clinical herbalism, Raindrop Harmonics, massage and bodywork, and esthetics such as facials and brow and lash treatments, this is happening.

Along the way, the Greensboro Holistic Collective was formed, working with three other women who had a similar vision to serve the community in a collaborative way: Leslie Rice, Dr. Alex Vujnovic, and Veda Spidle. We started having networking meetings, and it snowballed from there.

Q: What challenges have you faced along the way?

As with any old house, there are things you can’t anticipate day to day, but I just roll with it. Growth is part of the process. Right now there are 3 dozen pounds of salt for a salt cave in the basement, and a hyperbaric chamber. Things take time. Creating a sanctuary for holistic healing, community engagement, and personal growth is an ongoing project.