Not a New Year. A New Season. 🫶🏾 ♥️ We’re not rushing into “new.” We’re not declaring reinvention. We’re not leaving parts of ourselves behind. This moment—often called the New Year—arrives in the deep of winter. A season that asks for stillness, rooting, listening, and gentle integration. At TEAO Canada, we honour what the body already knows: ✨ Winter is not for performance. ✨ It is for reflection, repair, and remembering. 2025 asked us to slow down and deepen. Together, we held trauma-responsive spaces, trained care-holders, supported youth and families, strengthened governance, expanded community partnerships, and laid critical groundwork toward Canada’s first Trauma Health & Embodiment Centre. We grew—but not in a way that required us to abandon ourselves. As we cross this threshold, we’re not “starting over.” We’re bringing everything with us—the lessons, the pauses, the grief, the resilience, the wisdom earned in quiet moments. This season is about tending the roots. Listening to what wants to emerge. Moving forward without urgency. Letting our next steps be informed by nervous system safety, collective care, and embodied truth. We enter this season together—softened, grounded, and aligned. Not because the calendar changed, but because we’re ready to move with intention. With gratitude for this community, and trust in what’s unfolding. — TEAO Canada #CollectiveCare #EmbodiedHealing #SeasonalLiving #TraumaResponsive #RestIsResistance HealingInCommunity TEAOCanada

We Love This 🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾 (for those that need to hear this #collectivehealing #collective #support) Repost from @imterencelester • Words for those who need them 🙏🏾

We love this at TEAO Canada as a healing centred initiative throughout communities. ♥️♥️♥️ Repost from @our.moral.imperative • What our most vulnerable and most marginalized, oppressed, and disinvested students need. What our public school system will never want nor be able to provide. . . . Healing-centered spaces aren’t about staying positive - they’re about telling the truth. At Vocal Justice, healing means naming the harm young people face, validating their anger, and building community so they don’t carry it alone. A healing-centered classroom doesn’t avoid hard topics - it trusts youth to confront injustice, protect their rights, and turn pain into collective power. Thank you to Dr. Shawn Ginwright, who developed the healing-centered framework we implement throughout the Vocal Justice curriculum. 🙏🏽👉🏽 @vocal_justice #Leadership #MentalHealth #Community #Sociallmpact #TraumalnformedCare

We didn’t build an organization - we built a movement. Not from bureaucracy. Not from legacy wealth. Not from political comfort. But from lived experience, community trust, and a refusal to wait for permission. Two weeks ago, TEAO (Trauma & Embodiment Association of Ontario) held its first public Annual General Meeting, and it felt like a landmark moment in a story that began with Nicole Brown Faulknor a lone ranger, working against the grain, fighting to create something that didn’t exist in Canada: a trauma-responsive collective born from community, not compliance. Because trauma healing deserves more than documentation. It deserves embodiment, relationship, and humanity. #Leadership #MentalHealth #Community #Sociallmpact #TraumalnformedCare

Sponsorship Offering: As shared by our CEO & Founder of TEAO Canada, Nicole @wounds2wings she’s learned that healing is not an individual act — it’s a collective investment in our shared humanity And she shares this from lived experience: https://www.teaocanada.com/about-nicole-1 (read about Nicole’s story on website our teaocanada.com) She states today, that she will forever credit the community for giving her a normal childhood. “This region raised me and supported me. I don’t remember Christmas without an abundance of donations and food. A monthly cheque from the Region that supported my mother with groceries and rent. I don’t remember a summer without a camp program sponsored by the region.” “Community care saved my life — long before I had language for trauma, embodiment, or systemic barriers.” This holiday season, you can do more than give a gift. 🎁 You can sponsor a woman’s healing journey. Through TEAO Canada’s Costa Rica Healing Retreat (Jan 3–10, 2026), we are creating a restorative and trauma-responsive space for women navigating burnout, grief, systemic barriers, and the weight of carrying so much for so long. A space where nervous systems can soften. Where breath returns. Where women remember themselves again. Sponsorship options begin at $500 and go directly toward funding a woman’s participation in this life-restoring experience. When one woman receives support, the ripple is undeniable — families shift, workplaces shift, and entire communities feel the impact. If you or your organization would like to sponsor a woman, or learn more, connect with us at: 📩 info@teaocanada.com Healing is a gift we give together. #CollectiveHealing #CommunityCare #TEAOCanada #DoBetter

We LOVE this Educational Awareness: For those working in community with both systemic and collective trauma this may support your unlearning so we can learn how to hold space, treat and understand without stigmas & unconscious bias when working with racialized families, youth, & individuals. Let’s get the real education from the lived experiences of the community themselves. #dobetter 1.
When we treat trauma as an individual failing, we erase the systems that created the conditions for harm. 
Systemic and collective trauma are not personal flaws — they are inherited survival responses rooted in colonization, displacement, racism, and structural violence. 
If we do not understand this, we unconsciously pathologize racialized communities instead of supporting them. 2.
Trauma shows up as patterns: silence, secrecy, shame, hoarding, hyper-independence, distrust, emotional withdrawal, and “just push through.” 
These are not character defects — they are adaptive strategies passed down from people who were forced to survive with no safety, no rest, and no resources.
When we work with families or youth, we are not just meeting the person in front of us, we are meeting their history. 3.
Unlearning stigma means shifting from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you, your family, and your community?” 
This reframe protects dignity and allows care workers, educators, and service providers to hold space without bias, judgment, or saviorism. 4.
Communities living with the emotional legacy of slavery, migration, and systemic neglect develop their own ways of coping — some healthy, some harmful — but all rooted in survival. 
When we dismiss those responses as “bad behaviour” or “poor choices,” we miss the deeper story of unresolved grief, inherited fear, and generations of unmet needs. 5.
Educational awareness must begin with lived experience. 
Policy makers, clinicians, teachers, and community workers cannot meaningfully support racialized people without listening to the people themselves.
Textbooks do not explain what it feels like to be raised in a home shaped by unspoken trauma — elders and survivors do. #TraumaResponsiveCare #EmbodiedSystemicAwareness

This Week’s Trauma-Informed Offerings: Circles, AGM, Orientation We’re holding space across three key events this week — each offering a unique way to explore trauma-informed practice, connect with others, and deepen our collective capacity for care. 📍 November 26 — Trauma-Informed Care Circles (In-Person) 🕖 6:45 PM – 8:00 PM 📌 Cambridge Public Library (Hespeler) Grounded in gentle somatic practices, this free in-person series offers space for reflection, regulation, and reconnection. All are welcome. 🔗 Register: https://lnkd.in/eZJAJRM2 or link in bio 📍 November 27 — TEAO Canada 2025 Annual General Meeting (Online) 🕔 5:15 PM – 6:15 PM | Zoom A virtual gathering to reflect on our 2024–25 impact, share strategic updates, and build momentum toward launching Canada’s first Trauma Health & Embodiment Centre (THEC). 🔗 Register: https://Inkd.in/e7cNQPgf or link in bio 📍 November 28 — Foundations of Care: Volunteer Orientation & Community Workshop 🕛 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM | Zoom This month’s theme: Mutual Aid & Systemic Impact Awareness. Open to new and prospective volunteers, practitioners, and community members. 🔗 Register: https://Inkd.in/eFVXJCNY or link in bio Whether you’re exploring trauma-informed care for the first time or are a long-time practitioner, these offerings are a welcoming entry point to connect, grow, and deepen your practice in community. We look forward to seeing you there. #TEAOCanada #TraumaResponsiveCare #SomaticHealing #CommunityCare #EmbodiedLeadership

We love this 🫶🏾♥️♥️: Repost from @refugeingrief • Are you wondering how you’re going to get through the holiday season? Here are some of my holiday survival rules from my own early days. Do you have questions about getting through the holidays (or any other day of the year)? Come get answers in my monthly support group, exclusively on Patreon. Comment GRIEF CLINIC and we’ll send you the link. Remember, whatever you choose to do (or not do), staying true to yourself is important. Friends & family get to feel disappointed in your “no.” But they don’t get to force you to say yes to things you don’t want to do. ⁣May your holiday season (or non-holiday, depending) be as safe, and full of love & connection as it can be.❤️‍🩹 #MeganDevine #GriefEducation #HolidayGrief #HolidaySeason2025 #GoodAdvice