The title of this festival was bang on. After three days at the Transforming Trauma Together Festival, I did not just learn about ending child sexual violence. I felt the possibility of it.
I felt what can happen when survivors stop carrying shame that never belonged to them and start finding community, voice, art, truth and each other.
This festival was exhilarating. Healing. Honest. Powerful. I made connections that mattered. I built community with people who understand this fight deeply. I watched silence break apart in room after room.
Over those three days, I tapped Emotional Freedom Technique, practiced Qi Gong, attended presentations, watched films, shared food, danced, laughed and had conversations that will stay with me for a long time. This festival was not just about surviving trauma. It was about reconnecting to ourselves, to each other and to the possibility of joy again.
The Stories that Speak: Writing for Healing and Advocacy Workshop was one of the most powerful moments for me.
I was honoured to sit on the panel, not to talk about how I wrote a book, but why I wrote it.
That matters to me.
Writing saved my life in many ways. It gave pain somewhere to go. It gave truth somewhere to live outside my body. But writing is only one part of it for me. When words are not enough, I collage. Sometimes words can become facts on a page. My collages hold the emotions. They hold the grief, the rage, the confusion, the hope and the healing.
I was also honoured to have my collages displayed in the Art Gallery at the festival. I never thought of myself as an artist. Seeing my work hanging there did not just make me feel proud. I felt seen.
Throughout the entire three day festival, and especially during the writing workshop, I watched people stop hiding.
I watched stories pour onto pages. I watched people nod through tears because for the first time in a long time, they did not feel alone. I watched strangers become community in real time.
We were not just sitting in a room together. We were building something together.
We also celebrated the reveal of a new poetry collection titled Listen, a passion project close to the heart of The Gatehouse founder Arthur Lockhart. There was something powerful about watching poetry take up space at a festival centered around truth, healing and survival.
And the work continues.
The newest member of The Gatehouse Board of Directors, Heidi Philip, shared another collaborative book currently in the making titled Speak: Personal Courage Creating Social Courage. More than 47 contributors, including myself, have come together to create something that reaches beyond stories alone. This book brings education, justice, advocacy, art and a whole lot of love to government policy makers, academics, mental health practitioners, communities and most importantly, survivors of child sexual violence.
Every panel member brought honesty. Every audience member brought courage. You could feel walls coming down as people spoke openly about trauma, survival, healing and hope.
This is what happens when people speak from the heart instead of suffering in silence. Silence protects abuse. Truth challenges it.
And there was something else in those rooms that is hard to explain unless you were there. Energy. Real human energy. Love. Compassion. Understanding. You could feel it moving through the space. Alive and breathing.
People walked into this festival carrying the weight of child sexual violence.
People walked out feeling stronger. More connected. More understood. More ready to fight back through education, advocacy, expressive arts, writing, community and love.
The Gatehouse created space for that transformation to happen once again. Thousands of survivors have walked through those doors over the years carrying pain and walked out warriors.
The world needs more Gatehouses.
This was the first multiple day festival of its kind. I truly hope it is only the beginning.
Not just a yearly event. A movement. A Canadian movement.