When I was 18, halfway through massage therapy school, something terrifying happened. I was sitting in class taking notes when, out of nowhere, nausea slammed into me. My heart started racing, the room began spinning, and I barely made it to the bathroom before I collapsed on the floor of the stall, dry-heaving, convinced I always dying. Time warped – what felt like two minutes was actually thirty. I was dissociating, floating outside my own body, completely out of control. An LPN from my class found me. Instead of help, I got questions: “Are you pregnant? On drugs? Drinking?” When I whispered no to everything, she just said, “Maybe tell your doctor,” and left me there alone. A classmate later told me it sounded like a panic attack. I’d never heard the term before. I brushed it off as stress and kept going.

A few years later, now in nursing school (my absolute passion), it happened again – this time in the front row of class. Same nausea, same spinning, same terror. I ran to the bathroom twice in one lecture just trying to hold myself together. That day something clicked: this wasn’t normal, and it wasn’t “just stress. ”I saw the school counsellor. She called it an “anxiety attack” and suggested I mention it to my doctor. No urgency, no follow-up.

Finally, at a routine check-up, I told my new family doctor everything. His eyes widened. “You’ve been having full-blown panic attacks and generalized anxiety disorder. This is serious – why didn’t you come in sooner?” He started me on sertraline, and for the first time in years I felt… calm. Steady. Normal. I remember looking around one day and thinking, “Wait… this is how most people feel all the time? This quiet in my body and mind is what I’ve been missing? ”That moment changed everything.

I graduated, went straight into mental health nursing, and kept noticing the same gaps I had fallen through: people dismissed, minimized, left to figure it out alone until things became unbearable. Nurses saw the medical side. Doctors prescribed. Therapists talked. But almost nobody was bridging all of it – body, mind, emotions, and spirit – especially for people whose anxiety feels physical, terrifying, and very, very real.

I am Métis. I carry the blood of survivors—of people who walked thousands of miles, who hid who they were to stay alive, who carried grief and pride in the same heartbeat. We know what it is to live between worlds. We know what it is to have your pain minimized.

So I became that bridge I needed back then. I added psychotherapy training, clinical hypnotherapy (with the incredible Wally Muller), years of experience on inpatient units and in community mental health, and now my own integrative practice. Mindful Odyssey exists because 18-year-old me deserved someone who understood that a racing heart and a spinning room isn’t “just stress,” who wouldn’t leave her on a bathroom floor feeling ashamed and broken. I see you. I’ve been you. And I will never brush you off or let you feel alone with it. You don’t have to wait until it gets “bad enough” to get help.

This is a place where Western medicine shakes hands with Indigenous ways of knowing—where we can talk about neurotransmitters and also about how your spirit might be homesick for balance. Where beaded earrings and stethoscopes live on the same table. Where smudging before a session is as normal as grounding exercises. I will never ask you to “just push through.”
I will never leave you on the bathroom floor feeling broken. You deserve to feel at home in your own body. So if you’re here, breathing too fast, wondering if you’re too much or not enough—know this:
I see you. I honor you. And you are already on sacred ground.

You deserve care that sees all of you
You deserve to feel calm in your own body – right now. That’s why I’m here.

Welcome to Mindful Odyssey.
Let’s walk the rest of the way together. Miigwetch. Thank you for trusting me with your story.
Now let me help carry it.