Oct 22, 1979. My 18th birthday.
I was standing in the hallway of our home in Germany, pulling on my parka to cycle to school. My mother approached me to wish me happy birthday. Her wish for me: that I would never have children as horrible as the one I was.
You can tell from those words that things had not been going well in my family. On the surface, we were quite privileged: nice home, education, music, travel. Emotionally, however, our family was a war zone that had been raging for generations.
I escaped to university, initially to study biology. By the early 90s, after several changes of direction, I found myself in Scotland, working with people on the margins of society: homeless individuals with severe mental illness, sex trade workers, people affected by HIV/AIDS, at-risk youth. People whose lives had been visibly devastated by trauma. I loved the work but became frustrated when I realized that all we were doing was putting band-aids on problems with much deeper roots.
That realization caused me to pivot and return to university a second time to train as a person-centered counsellor. I felt that I had finally found what I was meant to do in life and was really making a difference.
Then, life took another turn. I decided to return to Canada - where I was born - only to discover that my European qualifications were worthless there. I was not in a position to finance yet another university degree and had to earn a living. For years I took whatever work I could find while trying to find my way back to the intensive healing work I really wanted to do.
In about 2014, a friend of the family mentioned EFT to me. Being the left-brained science nerd that I am, I immediately went and looked at the research. It was promising but limited. I filed it away under "interesting, keep watching" - and promptly forgot all about it.
A few years later "tapping" came up in another conversation. I looked at the research again - and discovered that it had exploded. Over 100 solid studies proving efficacy. I was sold. Within a couple of days I had signed up for training - and I am not someone who normally makes big decisions in a hurry! The evidence was simply so convincing.
Today I combine EFT with my person-centered counseling background and lived experience with complex trauma to guide people like you through your healing journey.
Why I Focus on People Who Want to Change the World: My Theory of Change
For decades, I worked with people whose lives had been completely derailed by trauma. Their suffering is visible, acknowledged by society, and it gets services (however inadequate). But in recent years, I've realized that there is a group of trauma survivors that is just as underserved: high-functioning people who have learned to hide their pain so well that nobody realizes just how bad things really are under the surface. Often, they themselves don't realize that they need help, even though the trauma they carry rivals anything I saw in my crisis work. And when they finally do find the courage to do something about it, they discover that there are not enough professionals trained or willing to work with really deep trauma. I have lost track of the number of people who have told me that they had been turned away by therapists who tell them their trauma is "too severe" or "too complex."
This is what makes me furious: talented, skilled, visionary people with solutions the world desperately needs are stuck - not because their trauma is untreatable, but because they've been told it is. Meanwhile, we face climate crisis, social injustice, health inequities, and a thousand other urgent problems. The waste of human potential is staggering and completely unnecessary. We have tools that work. As of 2025 EFT has over 300 research studies proving its efficacy, including for severe, complex PTSD. That's why I made a deliberate choice about my practice.
As a solo practitioner, I can only work with a limited number of people. So, I focus my time and attention where it can have the greatest ripple effect: on people whose healing will create change far beyond our sessions together. That is my "scaling." Not hosting events for 20,000 people or running surface-level courses. It's working at depth with individuals who then go out and bring their gifts to hundreds or thousands of people in their lifetime, who in turn bring their gifts to the world.
When you heal the trauma that's getting in your way, you don't just feel better—you gain capacity to bring your vision to life. And when you can finally show up fully for your mission, your impact reaches far beyond what we do together in these sessions.
It's the leverage I'm looking for. Your healing multiplies outward.
Want to read more about why I believe healing is the key to creating lasting change? Read my thoughts on turning pain into purpose.
Beyond the Therapy Work
I live on a small farm on Vancouver Island, off the west coast of Canada, with my husband. We are Level 3 foster carers for children and youth with complex trauma - we experience daily how trauma shows up in everyday life and understand what actual healing requires beyond theory. On our farm, we breed endangered livestock breeds, a different kind of mission to preserve what's valuable and at risk of being lost.
I'm also a genealogist and family historian with a deep interest in intergenerational trauma - how patterns pass through family lines and how healing yourself can break cycles that have persisted for generations. Sometimes, understanding your family's story really helps with understanding the patterns you are living.
The farm, my animals, the natural world around me keep me grounded - this work is intense, and I couldn't do it without balance and connection to the earth.
If my story resonates with you, I'd be honored to explore how we might work together. You can learn more about how EFT sessions work here or book a free first session here to experience it for yourself.
The French-Canadian Origin of New Hampshire Grandma Aimée
This week’s case study: The client was keen to find out more about the French-Canadian origins of her beloved grandmother, Aimée.
The challenge: All she knew was that Aimée’s parents were Ernest and Violet Boisvert and that they lived in New Hampshire.
The first step was to try to locate the family in New Hampshire. The 1940 census shows Ernest G Boisvert living in Manchester, Hillsborough, New Hampshire with his wife Violet and his children Constance G. (11), Aimée I.?(5) and Claire E. (1). Ernest himself is 35, so, born around 1905, and he is an optometrist in a jewelry store. Violet is 33.
At this point I had to choose which family line to pursue. I decided to trace back the Boisvert line.
Ernest and Violet were also living in Manchester at the time of the 1930 census, with their eldest daughter Constance. The two younger ones were not yet born. Interestingly, he was then a carpenter, so he must have made a career change at some point during the next 10 years.
The 1920 census showed Ernest, single, with his parents – Aimé and Abeline - in Manchester. He is one of 8 siblings still living in the home. All the children were born in New Hampshire, but both of their parents had given their place of birth as Canada. Aimé, at 56, was a lawyer. According to the record he had emigrated from Canada in 1877 and was naturalized in 1886.
The 1910 census gives us a bit more information about Aimé Boisvert. 47 years old at the time, putting his year of birth around 1863, he was born in English Canada, i.e. most likely Ontario. This time his wife’s name was recorded as Alexina, so we’ll have to see which was correct.
I knew from the census records that Aimé had become naturalized in the US in 1886. That made it possible to look for naturalization records. Sure enough, he filed a Declaration of Intention in 1886 which states that he was born “on or about” 8 Jul 1863 in Canada and had come to the US in 1865 as a minor. Interestingly, young Aimé was a “trader” at the time of his declaration, so he must have studied law afterwards.
I am always amused by the wording “on or about” for date of birth in official government documents. Today, the expectation is that everybody knows exactly when they were born, but clearly the government at the time realized that that was not the case then!
Next, I searched for and found Aimé’s marriage certificate. He and Alexina (yes, her name was Alexina rather than Abeline) were married in Manchester, New Hampshire, on 5 May 1893. The document gave me three other vital pieces of information: the name of Aimé’s father, Onésime, his mother, Zoë Faucher or Fancher, and his place of birth, St. Thomas.
These last pieces of information made it possible for me to find the record of Aimé’s baptism on 9 Jul 1863 in St Thomas de Pierreville. Hercule Aimé Boisvert was born the previous day, 8 Jul, and his parents were Onésime Boisvert and Zoë Faucher, both “of the parish”. His godparents were Adolphe Boisvert and Marie Louise Parent.
Saint-Thomas-de-Pierreville was a parish in what is now the municipality of Pierreville in the Nicolet-Yamaska Regional County, Quebec. It is located at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Saint-François rivers, at the edge of Lac Saint-Pierre. Note that the 1910 census taker had incorrectly assumed that Aimé had been born in “English Canada”, probably because Aimé’s English was fluent and accent free, having lived in New Hampshire since the age of 2!
We have now conclusively traced grandmother Aimée’s ancestry back to “French Canada”. And this is just the start – there are many more avenues that could be explored for her family, e.g. tracing the Boisvert line further back in time or following one of the maternal lines.
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@ Copyright 2026 All Our Pasts Are History
All rights reserved
