Category: Systems, Culture & Collective Healing
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Decolonizing the Settler Mind: Therapy for Reckoning, Responsibility, and Belonging in Canada
There comes a point for many white settler Canadians when the story we were taught about this country begins to fracture. The narrative of peacekeeping, multiculturalism, politeness — it no longer holds in the same way once you learn about residential schools, land theft, cultural genocide, and the ongoing realities…
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Tending the Ache of World Chaos
Before you read, a pause. Before you take in another set of words about the state of the world, I want to invite you to stop for just a moment. Feel where your body is making contact right now—your feet on the floor, your seat on the chair, your back…
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Learning to Carry What Cannot Be Fixed: My Thoughts About Grief
Grief isn’t something to overcome. It isn’t a process to master or a task to complete. It’s a landscape we learn to live within — one that changes shape every time we touch it. I’ve walked beside people in their mourning, sat quietly with the raw, wordless ache of loss.…
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The Myth of Normal — Why Your Difference Is the Medicine
So much suffering begins with a quiet, corrosive question: What’s wrong with me? Not because something is inherently broken, but because most of us were raised inside systems that treat difference as a problem to solve. If you were too sensitive, too intense, too restless, too emotional, too slow, too…
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The Spellbook of the DSM — When Diagnosis Becomes a Binding Spell
The DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is treated like the sacred text of psychology. Its categories are spoken like spells: depression, ADHD, borderline, bipolar. And for many people, hearing one of these names brings deep relief. A diagnosis can lift shame, offer community, and make suffering…
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Collective Care vs “Normal”: Rethinking Mental Health Beyond Individualism
Modern psychology often frames healing as a private burden: you alone must regulate, reframe, fix. The system tells us that if we just try hard enough, we can become “normal.” But “normal” is not real. It’s a statistical illusion born of biased data, a colonial fiction that pathologizes difference and…
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When the Ladder Breaks: Why Healing Moves in Spirals, Not Straight Lines
There’s a quiet panic happening right now. Not always loud, not always conscious—but it’s there. The systems we were taught to trust—the ones that promised stability, progress, success—are starting to crack. And beneath that cracking is a deeper realization: What if the whole model was wrong to begin with? Because…
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Beyond the White Gaze — What Endures When Research Erases
Western psychology likes to imagine itself as neutral. Objective. Evidence-based. Universal. But if you look closely at the foundations, a pattern emerges: white, male, Western, neurotypical. A narrow slice of humanity quietly positioned as the template for all minds. And from that template, entire systems of understanding were built. Not…
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Not a Tool, Not a Cure: Remembering Our Place in the Living World
When life frays at the edges, many of us reach for nature — a walk, a tree, a river — like a hand on the shoulder. It’s beautiful. It’s ancient. And sometimes, without meaning to, we begin to treat nature not as kin, but as a tool. This isn’t something…
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Rebel with a Cause: Healing the Inner Teenager in an Age of Political Unrest
We hear a lot about healing the inner child—that small, tender part of us that needed protection, safety, and unconditional love. But what about the inner teenager? The part of us that raged at authority. The part that questioned everything. The part that saw injustice and wanted to do something…
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Love is Not a Luxury: Reclaiming Connection in a World That Profits from Loneliness
Every February, we’re bombarded with one version of love: romantic, monogamous, usually heterosexual, sealed with a diamond ring or a $6 Hallmark card. But love was never meant to be this small. Love is the way we hold each other in grief, the way we pass down recipes, the way…
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Silent Nights: Making Peace with Loneliness During the Holidays
Loneliness might not come with a bow, but for many of us, it still arrives this time of year, uninvited and heavy. You’re not alone in feeling this way. Across Canada, 1 in 8 adults reports feeling lonely “always” or “often.” Women, caregivers, and those living alone carry this weight…