Was food restricted in your house? Was a parent ashamed of you because of your weight? Did you grow up hearing a parent expressing contempt for their own body or weight? If you were labelled fat as a child, were
Fat Shaming
Connection With Reality
Dr Gabor Maté speaks about the effect of traumatic experiences as being disconnecting. Nurturing authentic connection with ourselves is thrilling, painful and raw. It is the aliveness we long for and it is a bold move. What does disconnection look
Pain of Not Loving Ourselves
As we heal, at some point we see and know in our guts and bones what we lost due to childhood trauma. Our primitive brain and nervous system do their best to protect us through fight/flight/freeze/fawn. What is the cost
Indigenous Intergenerational Trauma
How do we take in the enormity of pain in ourselves and each other? It’s like the stinky sludge in the bottom of a swamp, where we are almost used to the pervading aroma, then the wind shifts and we
A Long Memory and One Goal
It seems so clear, doesn’t it? If that person would just follow my advice, they would get better, stop obsessing about that lost relationship, get their projects in on time, or not wake up hungover every Sunday. If they would
Like your softest, most comfortable shirt …
We’ve had the rug pulled out from under our feet. Within one week in March, everything suddenly changed leaving us afraid and upset. Three weeks ago we reached a breaking point around police brutality against Black people. Millions of people
Courage and Resilience
What gets us through hard times? Reflect for a moment on other times in your life when you were struggling to stay afloat. What helped you then? For many people, a sense of community, knowing we are in this together,
Afraid Yes Powerless No
We all feel fear. We don’t all feel powerless. The way we experience this crisis is not the same, and we have power to change our response. We are in this together. I am not alone. I can do my
Mama Bear Energy
Don’t get between a mother bear and her cubs! Her protection is swift and merciless. If she sees you as a threat, she takes you out. Our fierce inner protector has more options than the mama bear standing on her
Are you okay being alone?
Something that is difficult for many people right now is to be alone. Some of this is fear about how terrible it would be to be in the hospital without people we love at our side. We feel for people
Love Flows in Both Directions
Hurt people hurt people. This is obvious to us when we see physical, sexual, emotional abuse or severe neglect. Children are also hurt when parents are too stressed, busy, distracted or depressed to get to know them. To really feel connected,
Radical Recovery Summit
This is one of my favorite times of year. Not because of the change in season. I prefer the warming days of spring. It is because I get to interview passionate people about their innovative, radical work healing trauma and
A List of Their Names
September 30th is Orange Shirt Day, commemorating children who were forced into Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. Today on Facebook I saw the list of 2,800 children who died in these schools. There are at least 1,600 more unnamed children who
I’m a Small-town Girl
I am a small-town girl from Saskatchewan, a prairie province in Canada that most people wouldn’t know how to pronounce let alone know where it is. I grew up in a home where I was well cared for physically. No
Friends With My Body? Really?
Do you feel good will towards your body? Do you love your body? Could you be friends with your body? For most of us the answer is complicated, embedded with lots of history and memories of past experiences. One of
Radical Recovery Summit 2019
32 fascinating interviews with innovative leaders in the field of addiction and recovery. I love talking with the people in the Summit because they are passionate about their work. Addiction is so prevalent in our society and the stats for
Hatred and Fear
“Some people find relief in drugs like heroin, some are finding relief and validation in harboring hate. Both hate and addiction are a manifestation of a society that is ill, disconnected, and traumatized. Just like addiction provides relief to people
Trauma Therapist Podcast
Listen on iTunes episode #304 or The Trauma Therapist Website I was interviewed by Guy MacPherson for the Trauma Therapist Podcast and it went live this week. Guy is experienced and asked good questions (I’m episode #304!). He asked about the
Time for a System Upgrade!
We have a nervous system and primitive brain ideally suited for human conditions over the last hundreds of thousands of years. We avoid pain and seek pleasure. We instinctively pull back from fire. We avoid life threats. We evolved this
Healthy Mind in Everyday Life
As we heal from trauma, we develop strength and resilience. Our mind and system settles and we become calmer. We now know that we can’t emotionally self-regulate on our own. We co-regulate, which means we need to be around people
I Wasn’t Calm I Was Frozen
I always thought of myself as quite calm. I was actually frozen. It is how I got through my traumatic teen years and I realize now that the protective freeze took many decades to completely thaw. This makes sense. Children
Red Alert
A few years ago journalist Johann Hari began speaking about the root cause of addiction being a lack of connection. Trauma expert Dr Gabor Maté speaks about unresolved intergenerational and personal trauma at the root of disconnection from ourselves and
Intention for Nurturing Supportive Self-Care
Near the end of our online daily practices, I often open a space for intention. Someone might set an intention to touch back in through the day to the deepest stillness experienced during the practice, or to follow the breath
Committing to my body
My drive for emotional safety overpowered care for my body. We have many words to describe the very common dissociation of ourselves from our bodies. “She’s stuck in her head.” “I live from the neck up.” We feel like we
Covering My Ears
When my grandson was younger and didn’t want to listen, he would put his hands over his ears and chant “covering my ears, not listening to you”. It’s a strategy with some merit. Learning to work skilfully with the mind
Radical Recovery Summit interviews
Watch all 24 interviews! What impacted you most? Who do you want to watch again? The two most-watched interviews were Scott Kiloby on Real Freedom and Dr Gabor Mate on Trauma, Connection and Addiction. In this Summit, we get to
Radical Recovery Radical Freedom
Radical Recovery is Radical Freedom We all use substances and processes to modify our experience in the moment. Sometimes it progresses from a temporary relief, fun, or a simple distraction into addiction. There is difference between an ice cream on a
Radical Recovery
What is radical recovery? For two months I have been interviewing an amazing group of thought leaders and innovators involved in the field of addiction and recovery. A common theme is that trauma underlies addiction. “The real calamity of trauma
Confidence to Stay Present With Energy
The thing we’ve been avoiding all this time through addictions is just our own system wanting to warn us or protect us. When we have the direct experience of that, everything becomes workable. Most of us don’t want to be
The “Really??!!” Diet
Our habits and minds have so much momentum. This shows up in the way we take the edge off what we’re feeling or escape the present moment through some kind of comforting or addictive behavior. I have been using the word