The Heart and Vision Behind Rising Rooted

Rising Rooted didn’t start as a business idea or a clear plan. It started much more quietly than that, as I tried to understand myself and the world around me—and slowly realized that the kinds of spaces I was looking for didn’t quite exist in the ways I needed them to.

I’ve always been someone who feels deeply and thinks a lot. I was drawn early on to meaning, nature, and complexity. I also found myself inside systems that wanted healing to be fast, efficient, and easily measurable. Becoming a therapist wasn’t a straight path forward; it was a gradual turning toward work that could hold both depth and practicality, both humanity and responsibility.

I’m Rachel, and Rising Rooted grew out of that turning. It reflects not just what I’ve studied, but how I live, how I listen, and how I understand healing to actually happen over time.

What Therapy Means to Me

When I think about therapy, I don’t think about fixing people.

I think about helping someone feel more at home in themselves.

For me, therapy is about understanding emotional responses and protective patterns, noticing how the nervous system has adapted to survive, and gently widening the space for choice. It’s also about remembering joy, curiosity, and the parts of you that know how to rest, play, and move toward what feels meaningful.

I believe each person carries their own inner wisdom—but that wisdom is easily buried under chronic stress, relational wounds, and the quiet cultural messages that suggest we should be coping better than we are. My role isn’t to tell you who you are or what you should do. It’s to help create the conditions where your own knowing can come back online.

Who I Am in the Therapy Room

In sessions, I show up as myself.

I value curiosity over certainty, honesty over polish, and relationship over rigid technique. I’m someone who will think alongside you, wonder with you, and slow things down when life has been asking too much, too fast.

Nature plays an important role in how I understand healing—not always explicitly, but as a steady reference point. I’m interested in pacing, cycles, boundaries, and what it looks like to live in ways that are actually sustainable for a human nervous system. Sometimes that shows up through metaphor, sometimes through reflection, sometimes simply through permission to move more gently than you’ve been allowing yourself to.

I’m also deeply committed to learning. What began as a personal search—trying to understand why certain patterns kept repeating in my own life—became a professional devotion. I continue to study, question, and integrate different approaches, always with the aim of supporting people in ways that feel humane, grounded, and responsive to the realities of their lives.

How Rising Rooted Came to Be

My way into this work wasn’t linear. It unfolded through curiosity, restlessness, and a growing sense that the ways we’re taught to understand ourselves are often too narrow to hold real life.

I studied Anthropology first, drawn to questions about culture, meaning, and how humans make sense of the world they’re born into. That curiosity carried me far from home for several years, teaching English in Spain, Vietnam, and Laos. Living elsewhere loosened my assumptions—about myself, about success, about what a good life is supposed to look like—and quietly reshaped my sense of belonging.

When I returned to Canada, I moved toward community-based work, training in Social Service Work and supporting newcomer and refugee youth. Much of that work happened through art, movement, and time outdoors. Long before I had formal language for it, I was already learning that healing doesn’t happen only through talking—it happens through relationship, environment, and being met where you actually are.

At the same time, I was burning out. City life, constant stimulation, and productivity-driven pace were draining something essential from me. Eventually, I listened. I moved to the Ottawa Valley and began working at an alternative school rooted in mental health and outdoor education. That environment felt like permission—to work differently, and to trust that depth and creativity belonged in healing spaces.

From there, pursuing a Master’s in Counselling Psychology felt less like a career move and more like a commitment: to build something that could hold human complexity, honour nervous systems, and make room for spirit and meaning. Rising Rooted grew from that commitment.

The Human Behind the Therapist

I wear many skins in this life.

I’m a stepmother to teens, a dog-mom, and a mother to a wildly curious toddler. I grew up on a farm, spent my twenties chasing intensity and ideas in cities, and eventually returned to rural life—where my body finally remembered how to settle.

I come from a high-conflict blended family, which sparked a lifelong fascination with attachment, relational patterns, and the ways love can both wound and heal us. Those early experiences didn’t just shape my interest in therapy; they shaped how I listen, how I notice power dynamics, and how seriously I take the need for safety and trust in the therapeutic relationship.

I’ve lived with chronic dysregulation, anxiety, depression, and periods of deep burnout. I identify as neurodivergent and know what it’s like to feel both relief and constraint in mental health diagnoses. I’m someone who feels deeply—sometimes more than feels manageable—and who has had to learn, slowly, how to balance an active, analytical mind with the quieter language of emotion and sensation.

I’ve experienced firsthand how transformative it can be to sit with fear, grief, and uncertainty in the presence of a caring other. That experience lives underneath my work. It’s why I care so much about pacing, consent, and building relationships that can actually hold what comes up.

Why Rising Rooted Exists

Rising Rooted exists because I believe healing is relational, not performative. Because distress often makes sense in context. Because the body is not the enemy. Because meaning matters. And because nature—both within us and around us—is not optional for human well-being.

I work with people who feel deeply, think critically, and are tired of being told to simply cope better inside systems that are fundamentally misaligned with human needs. People who suspect that their sensitivity isn’t a flaw, but a form of intelligence.

If that’s you, I don’t believe you’re broken. I believe you’re responding intelligently to the world you’re in.

Ways We Might Work Together

My areas of focus include (but are not limited to):

A Gentle Note

This blog is offered for reflection, education, and inspiration. It shares my personal and professional perspectives as a psychotherapist, but it is not a substitute for individualized therapy or mental health care. If something here resonates and you’d like personalized support, I encourage you to connect with a qualified professional.

If you’re curious about working together, I offer individual psychotherapy for those seeking deeper, relational therapeutic work.

If you’re looking for self-led exploration, you’ll find free creative and reflective resources through The Wolfskin Project.

And if you’re drawn to group process, seasonal, and collective spaces for growth, the Foxfire School offers online programs rooted in rhythm, relationship, and embodiment.

Wherever you are in your process — you’re welcome here.

<3 Rachel

Rising Rooted