Candace is a Certified Canadian Counsellor since 2018. She found counselling later in life after having first followed her passion for the external environment, working for several environmental non-profits and running her own small organic farm, to the internal environment in her mid-30s. Sometimes in life we only understand it looking backward, and this resonates well for Candace. Candace’s quest for understanding her own pain and the pain she saw reflected in the world has taken her on a journey weaved with churches, prayer, long-meditation retreats, contemplative practices, counsellors, life coaches, farming, cultural travels, Indigenous practices, and periods of solitude.
Despite Candace’s early desire to find some understanding to make sense of the suffering in the world has been her primary goal in life, she herself succumbed to her own maladaptive means of coping as addictive tendencies. It was only as she began to explore her own legacy of pain, in the presence of a safe other, that healing in a deep sustainable way began to take root in her.
How Candace shows up as a therapist is informed by her own healing journey. She predominately integrates mindfulness practices, mixed with inner child work, Internal Family Systems Therapy, and most of all the power of healing in relationship. Candace believes that relational wounds need to be healed in relationship with a safe other to undo one’s sense of aloneness in our pain. This is the role that Candace values most in terms of how she shows up as a therapist – nurturing a safe container of authentic expression which facilitates healing organically. Candace has worked in palliative care and moved into the addictions field in 2020. She is currently pursuing her certification in Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP). She feels grateful and incredibly inspired to live her best life through observing the strength, courage, and resiliency she sees in all those she supports.