What Got Me Started?

As we all know, we grow as we learn through our experiences, whether it be a positive situation or a negative one. When I was going through the growth of my own trauma and life lessons, I wished for one thing: to be understood. Stephen Covey shared, “In order to be understood, we must understand.” 

Growing up, I was often misunderstood as my shyness had a stereotypical view that I was not smart enough. Yet, part of my healing journey, I learned that my trauma carried a language that made others misconstrue who I was. In every trauma recovery, we learn that our reaction to similar experiences of our past carries a skewed view of ourselves.  

I have gone through without choice, birth trauma, medical trauma, sexual trauma, childhood trauma, narcissistic trauma, and psychological trauma. Each carried me through the four trauma responses (Flight, Fight, Freeze, Fawn) in each stage of my life. So how did it all play out in the end? 

I am a survivor. 

I am in trauma recovery stages that share that I am allowed and permitted to place boundaries and barriers for me to move forward in my daily life. I learned that the power of therapy is an essential tool toward healing and growth, and that we must remove the shame of daily mental health conversations.

I have two adult children who carry various forms of physical and mental health disorders, and I am married to a police officer who also carries the burden of mental and moral injuries. Being part of a 911 family for over 22 years has brought light into our daily struggles and shown that workplace stigma is not unique to just frontline workers, but it is shared within their family as well.

I believe that my purpose in life is to share the “what got us here” to “being okay or being beautifully broken” in our mental wellness journey.  As a psychotherapist, the journey isn’t to reduce the pain, it is to help guide and reduce the struggle while you walk through the pain.

Our journey together is to understand the struggles you have faced for you to be understood.  I see you, I hear you, I believe in you.

My Experience

I have worked for more than 12 years as a Social Worker at Children’s Aid Society / Child Protection Services across Ontario, and I have over 23 years of experience in the Mental Health Industry. I am aware of the great lengths that it takes to become an advocate for a family, for a child no matter what age, for a woman and anyone on the frontline. Working in this field, I have a vast amount of lived and scholarly experiences, knowledge and dealings with intimate partner violence, addictions, child abuse, abandonment, psychological issues, anxiety, bullying, trauma, CPTSD, post traumatic stress injuries (PTSI or known as PTSD) and the psychological impact post pandemic.