We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Valeria Hinojosa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Valeria below.
Valeria, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
Today I am able to earn a full-time living from my creative work, but it did not start that way. Not even close.
Twelve years ago, I was working in private banking— wearing structured suits, living inside a version of success that looked stable from the outside but felt misaligned on the inside. Creativity was something I did quietly, almost privately. Writing, connecting with nature, studying herbalism and creating rituals in my quiet hours at home.
Making the decision of leaving that career behind to pursue a creative path didn’t happen overnight. It was slow. It was uncomfortable. And it required a lot of internal recalibration.
One morning, when I got promoted at work, I felt the calling to resign after years of hesitating. It was my intuition whispering that the moment had come. From there, everything spiraled. There were seasons of doubt, seasons of very little income, seasons where I questioned whether I was romanticizing freedom. And then… came my bankruptcy when I couldn’t find a stable income to cover the bills I had piled up from my banker lifestyle. It humbled me many ways. It stripped me of ego, taught me to see “success” differently, and guided me rebuild my relationship with abundance from the ground up. This time, through my creative work.
From there, my major milestones were less about success and more about soul-alignment. Publishing my book with Harper Collins was one. Working with mindful and eco-responsable sponsors was another one. Launching an online platform and conscious community of healers and energy workers was another. Now, abundance reached my life but, this time, through the creation of projects I feel passionate about and aligned with.
Looking back, I don’t think I would have accelerated my process. I think I needed the time to become the woman who could hold the life I have now, who could be proud of this transformation and not scared by the daily action, mind-body-soul mindset and constant change needed to create this reality. An aligned growth takes devotion.
Valeria, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Valeria Hinojosa is an author, environmental activist, and holistic wellness guide devoted to creating a life in deeper relationship with nature. Twelve years ago, she left a career in private banking to follow a path more aligned with her values and connection to Mother Earth, giving rise to her platform WaterThruSkin.
After living in Miami for fifteen years, Valeria experienced another profound shift. Recognizing how the pace of city life was slowly depleting her spirit, she chose to decelerate and reimagine sustainability through softness. This transition has deepened her devotion to herbal medicine, eco-conscious living, plant-based nourishment, organic gardening, yoga, and holistic therapies — practices that continue to shape her understanding that moving at our own rhythm is essential medicine for both personal and collective healing.
Beyond content creation, Valeria has become a recognized voice in environmental activism and conscious living. In 2019, she helped raise over $200,000 USD to support her country Bolivia during the wildfires, and she has spoken on global stages — in both English and Spanish — about the importance of cultivating lives rooted in respect for nature, and studied Herbalism directly from Curanderas during the years she lived in Mexico.
Most recently, she wrote Finding Softness (En Busca de La Suavidad) with HarperCollins. In these pages, Valeria opens her heart and guides the reader through the most challenging and enriching moments of her life, addressing topics such as generational trauma, migration, love, mental and physical health, the struggle between light and shadow, and the challenges of content creation in the digital age. With honesty, compassion, and a touch of humor, she shares the lessons that helped her redefine her identity and adopt softness as a life philosophy, giving the reader tools to reconnect with their true essence guided by Mother Nature. (Sold at: Harper Collins, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, BuscaLibre, Indiebound, Target, Walmart & more.)
In 2026, she co-launched Cura Energy —an online space and community of the healers, guides, and energy workers offering wisdom, tools and therapies to explore healing and personal growth not as something to fix, but as a relationship we learn to cultivate with ourselves and with life.
Her work has been featured in Forbes, Vogue, WWD, People, ELLE, Telemundo, El País, and other international media outlets.
Valeria holds certifications in Herbalism and Ancestral Medicine, Yoga (RYT 200), and International Business, and continues to bridge ancient wisdom with modern life through her work, teachings, and platforms.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Resilience, for me, has never looked loud. It has looked quiet. Decisive. Sometimes invisible. One of the clearest examples was last year that I finalized my divorce, decided to keep the house and buy my ex husband’s share. This was the same home my ex-husband and I had purchased thinking it would be our dream property — over an acre of land, hundreds of medicinal herbs planted by hand, fruit trees growing, walls I had renovated myself. During the divorce, there was a moment when selling it seemed like the logical option. It would have been easier, but something in me knew that walking away would feel like abandoning myself again. So I chose to stay. I chose to carry the mortgage on my own. I chose to trust that my creative work — the writing, the conscious companies, the teachings, the quiet devotion to my craft — would be enough to support me.
It wasn’t a fearless decision. It was a trembling one. I knew what financial collapse felt like. I knew what it meant to rebuild from nothing. Resilience, in that moment, wasn’t about pretending everything would be fine. It was about trusting the woman I had become. The woman who had learned about abundance. Who had regulated her nervous system enough to not make decisions from panic. There were nights I cried and mornings were I questioned everything, but I kept planting, I kept writing, I kept creating. And little by little, the fruit trees began to give fruit, the house began to feel like mine, my work began to feel stable.
Resilience isn’t glamorous. It’s choosing yourself repeatedly — especially when it would be easier not to. The difficult years don’t break us. They give us clarity.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn was the belief that a career is only valid if it is stable, conventional, and socially celebrated. I grew up in a culture where success had a very specific shape. It meant titles, degrees, structured careers, financial predictability. Professions that people understood and could explain at family gatherings without raising an eyebrow.
Creativity, spirituality, herbalism, writing — those were passions. They were beautiful hobbies, but they were not considered foundations for a “real” life.
So I did what many of us do. I chose the safe path first. I worked in banking, I wore the suits, I learned how to speak the language of corporate structure, and I became very good at it. But internally, something always felt misaligned. When I began transitioning into creative and holistic work, it wasn’t just a professional shift. It was neurological. I had to reprogram the part of my brain that equated safety with approval. I had to unlearn the idea that if my career wasn’t understood by everyone, it wasn’t valid. It also required forgiveness — forgiving my upbringing for prioritizing survival. Forgiving myself for needing time to trust my own path. Today, I see that my culture wasn’t wrong. It was protective, but I had to expand my definition of success and happiness.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.waterthruskin.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waterthruskin
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/waterthruskin
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/waterthruskin
- Other: Substack: https://substack.com/@valeriahinojosa
instagram.com/cura.energy
instagram.com/houseofethea
Image Credits
Last photo with colorful tile floors is by: Tato Gomez
Second photo holding herbs in a beige dress is by: Frida Yáñez