Talking is Good Medicine.

Heartfire Medicine starts with individual connection in a safe place of acceptance and non-judgement, and builds from there. We want to bring you, and everyone in our community, back to the warmth of the fire. We will make space for you in our cozy office, outside in nature, or through a virtual connection, and meet you where you’re at. Therapy with Heartfire might feel a lot like storytelling, or a laid-back conversation, or straight-up raging against injustice with someone you can trust to never judge you for a single moment, whatever you say or feel.

What makes Heartfire different from other therapy is how we approach difference.

We won’t tell you to “just breathe” or “have a better attitude” — the simple solutions often work best because of privilege that not everyone has.

We know there’s no magic wand we can wave to reduce your stress, or increase your happiness. Sometimes you have to focus on the problems underneath the feelings for a minute — like racism, or transphobia, or income inequality — and cut yourself some slack by coming to terms with how stacked the deck is, by how uphill this climb is, and how large our struggle is.

What we can do is support you to grow and build the resilience, motivation, and emotional intelligence you’ll need to navigate crises, injustices, and disappointments — so you can survive and thrive in your relationships, career, and life.

Our Long-Term Vision is providing solidarity-focused, culturally safe, wholly excellent mental health therapy from a trained professional with lived experience, deep humility, and appreciation for the wisdom of their clients — completely pro-bono for all those who need it — in strategically located community centres. This vision may take many years and a lot of fundraising to realize, but we can see it clearly and are working hard to get there.

Our Broader Mission is to grow and develop Heartfire Learning and Heartfire Story, so that through your influence and by informing us of your needs and goals, we can collaborate together to make real change at higher levels. We know that so many of the challenges for mental health in our community cannot be addressed in therapy: poverty and inequality, climate inaction, systemic racism and colonialism, transphobia, homophobia and misogyny, ableism, food injustice, housing issues, and other crises. When someone sits down with a Heartfire Therapist, they aren't just making changes for their mental health. They are making changes for all of us, by infusing their expertise and agency into this organization. Into the community. Into our leaders in City Hall, the Legislature, and Ottawa. We commit to this broader mission because we could not otherwise do this work.

Learning is Action.

Heartfire Learning (and unlearning) is how we grow and nurture good ideas in our communities. Education, media, and other institutions are how the values and principles we hold are shared, reproduced, and reinforced — it’s our goal to interrupt dominant assumptions, and help guide our institutions to work for everyone.

We educate through workshops, seminars/webinars, training programs, and other learning modes. Our clients utilize Heartfire Teachers for curriculum development and consultation at all levels, from grade school to university courses to professional development. We are available to give talks and guest lecture on a variety of subjects and deliver presentations from our stable of meticulously researched and curated topics, or even create custom-tailored ones for a specific audience or purpose. If a Heartfire Teacher lacks first-voice or lived experience to speak on a topic, we can help you find the perfect individual or group for your needs.

Our Long-Term Vision includes a widely accessible training system or ‘academy’ for a wide range of professionals including educators, journalists, law enforcement officers, social workers, health and mental health professional workers, and critically: politicians and policy-makers, through which we can foster cultural humility, appreciation of gender and sexual diversity, systemic racial consciousness, and other equity-oriented attitudes throughout institutions in our communities.

Tell Stories, Change Everything.

Heartfire Story is the transmission of lived-experience expertise into policy action and structural decision making. Humans are narrative animals, and telling stories is how we make change happen.

We cannot do that alone. No one makes change by telling their “Story of Me” — we have to tell Stories of Us, and Stories of Now. The real transformational stories of our lifetimes will come from collaboration between communities, educators, researchers, artists, storytellers, leaders, grassroots movements, and experts — the kind with expertise earned from schools and books, but more importantly, the kind with expertise earned from pain, loss, trauma, oppression, and personal transformation.

Our Long-Term Vision is to collaboratively carry the needs, goals, and struggle of everyone on this land still falling through the cracks, into the rooms and halls of power. Sometimes this will be incremental, like bringing folks together at conferences and meetings, or posting regular articles and videos from those living and working on the margins. Sometimes the actions we take will be a lot bigger, more rapid, and more radical. This movement of storytellers, educators, and health/mental health professionals might start small, but we also have incredible power if we choose to harness it.

We are a village.

Community is at the very core of the human experience, and we don’t know of anything more important for healing and maintaining mental health. Connection can be increasingly difficult and rare in these weird and difficult times, leaving us feeling socially isolated, culturally alienated, and biochemically short on oxytocin. It cannot be understated how much harm we endure in these circumstances.

When we say “We Are a Village”, it isn’t a hokey platitude. However much distance or difference between us, humanity exists on this planet as a fragile-but-powerful ecosystem, and cultivating the connections between us is how we nurture it and thrive together.

Our goal is to bring you, our kin, and our community, back to the warmth of the fire.