Indigenous Voices of Qualia Counselling Services

10/15/2026

From Charity Fleming,

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and for me, this month is deeply personal.

I have experienced multiple pregnancy losses, along with multiple successful pregnancies. Three losses occurred during this very week in October, across three different years.

I remember sitting in ultrasound waiting rooms surrounded by expectant parents celebrating their babies, while I sat sobbing after learning that another pregnancy had ended in loss.

I remember the well-intentioned words, “There will be another.” But I wasn’t grieving the possibility of never having another baby. I was grieving the baby I had just lost.

As a cognitive behavioural therapist, I recognize how pregnancy loss can involve three interconnected experiences:

Trauma reminders bring us back to frightening or despairing moments. For me, the ultrasound room, the silence, and the heartbreaking news remain deeply etched in my memory.

Loss reminders are those situations that remind us of those we are missing and grieving in sorrow.

Change reminders are trauma triggers that cause distress as we have memories activated by change.

Pregnancy loss can mean grieving milestones, family experiences, and the lives we had imagined.

Research suggests that CBT can help reduce post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, and persistent grief-related distress following pregnancy and other loss.

Healing does not mean forgetting. It means learning to carry grief with compassion while reducing trauma-related suffering.

These experiences have also reinforced my commitment to advancing specialized mental health education.

Through our partnership between Qualia Counselling Services and Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty of Social Work , we offer Level II: CBT for Women’s Reproductive Mental Health, a specialized professional training course addressing miscarriage, infertility, traumatic birth, perinatal mental health, and reproductive transitions across the lifespan.

The course equips mental health professionals with evidence-informed CBT approaches, including cognitive restructuring, exposure-based interventions, behavioural strategies, mindfulness, and self-compassion.

Because women deserve clinicians who understand both the psychological impacts of reproductive loss and the importance of compassionate, individualized care.

Every pregnancy matters. Every baby matters. Every loss deserves acknowledgment.

Learn more about our Qualia–Laurier CBT training:
https://lnkd.in/gNYpdsZz

10/14/2026

💚 OCD Awareness Week | October 11–17, 2026

Understanding begins with awareness. Healing begins with compassion.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is more than a preference for cleanliness, organization, or routine. It is a mental health condition that can involve unwanted, distressing thoughts and repetitive behaviours or mental rituals that interfere with daily life.

OCD can affect anyone, regardless of age, background, culture, or community.

Here at Qualia Counselling Services, our team recognizes that mental wellness is deeply personal and may be connected to family, community, culture, identity, and relationships.

For Indigenous individuals and communities, culturally safe mental health care means honouring each person's lived experiences, respecting diverse cultural perspectives, and recognizing the importance that connection to culture, community, land, and traditional healing practices may hold in their wellness journey.

We also recognize that experiences of colonialism, intergenerational trauma, and barriers to accessing care can shape how individuals experience and seek mental health support.

💚 This OCD Awareness Week, let's work together to:

-Challenge misconceptions and reduce stigma surrounding OCD.

-Create space for compassionate, judgment-free conversations.

-Respect diverse cultural understandings of mental wellness.

-Encourage access to supportive, culturally responsive mental health services.

-Remind those living with OCD that they deserve understanding, dignity, and support.

Mental health care is not one-size-fits-all. Every person deserves to feel heard, respected, and supported on their own path toward wellness.

💚 Awareness creates understanding. Understanding strengthens communities.

10/11/2026

10/11/2026

It is a privilege to hear about your life and we are honoured to hold space for your memories, experiences, pain, triumphs, grief, fears, successes, and all that shapes you. Your life is meaningful and your mental health matters. What would it be like to believe that and spend this day (and hopefully everyday) believing in yourself? We want to know because we believe in you.

10/09/2026

We are open! Check out the variety of CBT and Indigenous-Adapted Mental Health Training options we offer.
https://cbttraining.ginoozhe.com/

10/09/2026

Thanksgiving has always been a complicated occasion for many Indigenous peoples. There is an understandable conflict in celebrating a holiday associated with the arrival of settlers and the colonization and occupation of lands that Indigenous peoples have called home since time immemorial. For some, Thanksgiving is a reminder of histories of dispossession, broken relationships, and injustices that continue to shape our lives and communities today.

As a mental health practitioner and educator, I often reflect on how we can acknowledge painful truths while creating space for healing, gratitude, and greater understanding of traditional knowledge. One of the most meaningful ceremonies I have participated in is the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, Ohen Karihwatehkwen, the Words Before All Else. What I deeply admire is its commitment to gratitude, even amid hardship.

From the smallest blade of grass to the waters, medicines, animals, Grandmother Moon, and every star in the Star Nations, we give thanks for the abundance of Creation. After each expression of gratitude come words I find profoundly moving:

“Now our minds are one.”

These words remind us that gratitude is relational, bringing our minds and hearts together. Within Haudenosaunee teachings, the principles of peace, power, and righteousness offer a beautiful way of thinking about what it means to bring our minds together. We do not need to have identical experiences, histories, or perspectives to recognize our shared responsibilities to care for one another and the world that sustains us.

As a cognitive therapist, I appreciate that gratitude does not require us to deny suffering or injustice. Painful truths and gratitude can coexist. We can honour what has been lost while appreciating what remains, and pursue justice while recognizing the gifts that sustain us.

This Thanksgiving, I invite us to make room for both truth and gratitude.

I am sharing a resource at Qualia Counselling Services we co-created with Haudenosaunee Elders and community, featuring teachings shared by Elder Tom Porter and with beautiful illustrations by Indigenous artists Tsista Kennedy of Oneida Nation of the Thames and Josh Morley of Wabauskang First Nation. I encourage you to learn, apply these teachings and share them.

This thanksgiving and always, may our minds come together in gratitude, peace, and care for one another.

To hear the Thanksgiving Address in one of the original languages, watch this three-minute video: https://lnkd.in/gX9X4STk

10/04/2026

From our owner, Charity Fleming:

Today, on Sisters in Spirit Day, I am thinking about the Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people who have gone missing, who have been murdered, who have survived violence, and the families and communities who continue to carry their memory, their stories, and their pain.

This day is very close to my heart for reasons I do not often speak about publicly. For many Indigenous families, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls is not an issue we learned about in a report or encountered through advocacy. These are the women, girls and two spirited family members whose stories, faces, and names live on in our hearts. It is grief and sorrow we carry with us, always.

Nearly 2 in 3 Indigenous women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. Almost half have experienced sexual assault. Indigenous women and girls continue to be disproportionately represented among victims of homicide.

Those numbers should stop us. They also stand in painful contrast to many of our traditional teachings.

In my teachings, women have been understood as sacred. Women are life carriers. Women have held important responsibilities within families, communities and Nations. Reclaiming our teachings must mean more than speaking about them. It must also mean asking how we live them now.

There are many important conversations happening within Indigenous communities about rights, recognition, governments, settlements, resources and what justice should look like. Those conversations matter. Yet I find myself wondering what our measures of progress are if our women and girls are still not safe.

What does justice mean if a young Indigenous woman can still disappear? What does reconciliation mean if Indigenous women continue to experience extraordinary levels of sexual and gender-based violence? What does it mean to say that women are sacred if women are not safe?

Today I remember the women who should still be here. May honouring them also call us back to our responsibilities to one another: to protect life, to care for one another, and to ensure that the women and girls coming after us inherit something different, something more, something safe and that honours the sacred beings they are.

10/03/2026

🎃 Trick, Treat… or Try a Coping Skill! 👻

Qualia Counselling Services with our owner Charity Fleming is at Scare in the Square today, and we’re adding a little mental wellness to the Halloween fun!

Stop by our table for a treat — and pick a coping skill to try. 🧡

Our Halloween coping cards use familiar superheroes, games, and characters to introduce kids to simple strategies they can use when they’re feeling worried, overwhelmed, frustrated, or just need a moment to reset.

🦸 Try a Superhero Pose to feel strong and grounded.
🍄 Remember Super Mario: pace, don’t race.
🌬️ Practice a breathing or grounding skill.
🎃 And, of course, grab some Halloween treats!

10/01/2026

Reconciliation
Have we entered the “after”?
Charity Fleming, MSW, Doctor Counselling & Psychotherapy (student).
President of Qualia Counselling Services

This year, I have reflected a lot on the word reconciliation and what it truly means. I continue to find myself struggling with it.
As I have read about pathways toward reconciliation around the world, I keep returning to Patterson and Roth's (2004) After-Words: Post-Holocaust Struggles with Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Justice and their contemplation of the idea of an “after.”
Reconciliation seems to presume an “after”: a place from which we can look backward at a harm that has ended and begin the difficult work of repairing what was broken. The question I find myself asking is: what happens when we are not yet fully in the “after” of cultural genocide?

09/30/2026

So grateful to be gathered together here at Woodland Cultural Centre today, dancing and gathering for generations past and future.