Black History Month – Iyanla Vanzant
During Black History Month in Canada, I’m reflecting on the impact of Iyanla Vanzant and the leadership of Black women who have shaped conversations about trauma and healing. We come from different racial histories and realities, but we share the lived experience of surviving child sexual violence and choosing healing. I honour her work while […]
Beloved Warrior
Today was a pivotal day for me. The therapy work I’ve committed to over the past few years has shifted. The trauma work built the foundation. Now it’s time for identity work. And that feels big. Because when you’ve spent years surviving, healing, and rebuilding — you eventually have to ask: Who am I beyond […]
Canada vs World in Child Sexual Violence
I’m working on a piece about child sexual violence in Canada. Look at the difference. In Canada, 1 in 6 boys experience sexual violence. Globally, it is 1 in 13. Ask yourself why. Could it be that other nations define child sexual violence differently? That some children get to name the harm done to them […]
Jess Michaels – Epstein Survivor
Thank you, Jess Michaels, for your courage in standing up and speaking out about the sexual violence you experienced at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein. Your devotion to helping us understand sexual violence—and how it lives in bodies, systems, and silence—is deeply admirable. I wholeheartedly say yes to your call to create something together: a […]
Light We Make Together
The vote is in. The picture project has a name. Isn’t it beautiful? This is the picture project for those who would like to participate.
Sixty-Six Days of Loving Healing and One Brave Morning
This morning I did something I never imagined possible. I sent my picture project to the Minister at Eastminster United Church where I volunteer for the Out of the Cold programme. Walking into a Christian institution is brutal for me. When I was 16, a street kid, a Catholic priest befriended me and with the […]
Where Beauty Meets Healing
I’ve started a project with my nieces, nephews, and cousins across Canada. They’re photographing nature with no humans, no buildings, no roads. Just the pure, unclaimed love of the natural world. I’m framing their images on my walls, and it is already changing me. It feels like love in action. I no longer feel alone […]
A Gift for You
Last night was my final night of the Art Expression series at The Gatehouse. As usual, I did not like the workshops at first. Then I realised it was just me shaming myself. The same old soundtrack that has been looping since I was a kid. I believed I was a lousy artist. I held […]
My Crawl Back to Life and The 500 Who Said Yes
The PoisoningIn April 2024 I had surgery to amputate a couple of toes. The surgery was clean. The meds were not. Canada got rid of lead pharmaceutical oversight, so a database played doctor and crashed my medications together. Cymbalta, which I had only been on for six weeks, and hydromorphone. The mix poisoned my brain. […]
I Hope You Stay
December 1st is World AIDS Day. I go back to the day I first heard about this mystery sickness killing gay men. June 5, 1987. I was 22. Six years after the first known case in North America. Canada loves to pretend nothing ugly exists here. Especially anything that touches homosexuality. We hide our rot […]