Mindfully Nursed

06/05/2026

I wrote something personal yesterday.

All of it was written from a small hospital room with my son during an oral food challenge.

The last time we were in that room, he had an IgE reaction that needed epinephrine, followed by an acute FPIES reaction. I still remember watching him go from happy and chatty to quiet, withdrawn, vomiting, lethargic, and too unwell to care when they placed an IV.

That kind of thing comes home with you.

Then life asks you to keep going. You keep reading labels, packing safe food, carrying medication, asking questions, making plans, and trying to figure out where careful ends and fear begins.

This is the part of food allergy parenting I wish had more room. The mental load. The isolation. The grief of food becoming complicated. The way your world can slowly get smaller while you are working so hard to keep your child safe.

There is such a tricky balance in this work. Protecting them matters. Helping them live matters too.

This is one of the reasons I love ACT in this space. It helps families move with fear present, while staying connected to safety, values, and the life they are trying to build.

Families need solid medical plans. They also need support for what it feels like to carry them.

I wrote more about this here:

https://www.mindfullynursed.com/post/when-food-is-not-just-food

If you know a food allergy or FPIES family who might feel seen by this, you’re welcome to share it.

When your child has FPIES or IgE-mediated food allergies, food can carry fear, grief, hope, and history. This is a personal reflection on oral food challenges, parent trauma, and finding room to live alongside the medical plan.

05/23/2026

A lot of people who start therapy with me are the ones everyone else depends on.

They’re functioning. Working. Parenting. Showing up for everyone around them. And at the same time, they’re overwhelmed, exhausted, disconnected from themselves, carrying stress in their bodies, or quietly wondering how long they can keep operating like this.

Those are the people I kept thinking about while building the new website.

I wanted someone landing there to quickly get a sense of who’s on the other side of the screen and the kind of care they can expect. Thoughtful. Grounded. Human.

One of the lines on the website says:
“You’ve done the hardest part.”

Because honestly, reaching out can feel incredibly vulnerable.

I’m really proud of how this turned out and grateful for everyone who’s been following along with this launch. 🤍

05/20/2026

My new website is live. 🌿

This project has meant a lot to me because I wanted the website to actually reflect the experience of working with me and the heart behind Mindfully Nursed.

I wanted people looking for support to land there and quickly get a sense of who I am, how I work, and what matters to me in this work. Not only what I offer, but the feeling of it.

I kept thinking about the person searching for a therapist at 11pm after another hard day. Exhausted. Overthinking whether they’re “struggling enough.” Wondering if therapy will feel cold or awkward or impersonal. Trying to figure out if the person on the screen might actually understand what they’re carrying.

I wanted the website to speak to that person.

Every time someone reaches out to book with me, I genuinely feel grateful. I think I have the best clients. Truly. It’s never lost on me that people are trusting me with vulnerable parts of their lives and stories.

And when someone shares my name with a friend, family member, colleague, or partner, that means even more. Word of mouth in this kind of work feels incredibly personal and I never take it lightly.

Renee at Wellness Creative took everything I hoped this website could feel like and somehow turned it into something even better than I imagined.

I’m really proud of it and very excited to finally share it.

If you take a look, I’d genuinely love to know what stands out to you most. And if someone comes to mind while reading through it, you’re always welcome to share it with them. 🤍

🌿

Psychotherapy grounded in nursing, compassion, and a deep understanding of what it means to hold everything together until you can’t anymore.

05/19/2026

A few openings have become available over the next couple of weeks 🤍

Sharing here for current clients, returning clients, or anyone who’s been quietly thinking about reaching out lately.

Sometimes people wait until things feel “bad enough.”
Sometimes it’s simply realizing you’re carrying a lot and don’t want to keep carrying it alone.

In-person in Cornwall and virtual across Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.

Booking: mindfullynursed.janeapp.com
Or feel free to send me an email through my website if that feels like an easier place to start.

05/15/2026

“The Power of Nurses to Transform Health.”

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how proud I am to be a nurse, while also feeling really honest about how hard nursing has become for so many people.

There’s so much pressure on nurses right now. Short staffing, cutbacks, impossible expectations, increasing complexity, and systems that often seem to ask for more while giving less back in return. I think many nurses are carrying a level of exhaustion that the public can feel, even if they don’t fully understand where it comes from.

And still, nurses continue transforming health every single day.

Not only through medications, procedures, assessments, or charting, although all of that matters too. Often it happens in quieter ways that are harder to measure.

In the way a nurse notices something subtle before anyone else does.
In the way someone feels less alone because a nurse took an extra minute to really listen.
In the calm voice during a crisis.
In the advocacy.
In the humanity.
In the ability to care for the whole person instead of only the diagnosis.

Even now, in my psychotherapy office, I still feel like a nurse in every session I sit in. Nursing shaped the way I think, the way I assess, the way I notice patterns, and the way I understand how deeply connected the body and mind really are. It shaped the way I advocate and the way I sit with people in difficult moments without immediately trying to rush them out of them.

Nursing never really leaves you.

I honestly think that’s part of the real power of nurses to transform health. Not only through technical skill, although that skill is immense. It’s also through presence, attunement, instinct, critical thinking, compassion, and the ability to walk alongside people in some of the hardest moments of their lives.

Nurses do this work while carrying so much themselves.

So this Nurses Week, I’m holding a lot of gratitude for this profession and for the nurses inside it. The ones in hospitals, clinics, schools, mental health, long-term care, home care, community settings, leadership, education, and everywhere in between.

I really am proud to be one. 🤍

05/14/2026

The Foundation Behind Mindfully Nursed

For Nurses Week, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the nursing foundation behind Mindfully Nursed and the work I do today in nurse psychotherapy.

Before this practice existed, there was nursing. Years of learning how to care for people not only clinically, but humanly. Years of sitting with people in fear, grief, stress, trauma, illness, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Years of learning that health is never only physical and that people are never simply diagnoses or symptoms.

That foundation continues to shape every part of my work today.

Nursing shaped the way I assess, the way I listen, the way I advocate, and the way I understand the connection between the mind, body, nervous system, relationships, and lived experience. It shaped the depth I bring into the therapy room and the importance I place on seeing the whole person sitting in front of me.

Over the years, I’ve continued expanding my work through additional training in trauma-informed care, ACT, compassion-focused approaches, and Brainspotting, while staying deeply rooted in the humanity, advocacy, and connection that nursing taught me from the beginning.

Despite how difficult healthcare has become in many ways, I am still incredibly proud to be a nurse.

Happy Nurses Week to the nurses continuing to carry so much while making a difference in people’s lives every single day. 🤍

Tara
RN Psychotherapist

05/08/2026

Training today with the amazing Danik Bernier focusing on treating parenting triggers in trauma clients

05/07/2026

77% of caregivers of children with food allergies reported psychological distress.

Only 14% had ever been screened for it in an allergy appointment.

Honestly, I think many FPIES families read those numbers and immediately feel them in their body.

Because FPIES can take things from families that nobody prepares you to grieve.

Not only foods.

Experiences.

The ease of feeding your child without fear.
Birthday parties that feel carefree.
Trusting a babysitter.
Going to restaurants spontaneously.
Travel.
Sleep.
Relationships.
The version of parenting you thought you were walking into.

And because FPIES is still so misunderstood, many parents spend part of this journey not only terrified… but dismissed.

Told it’s reflux.
A stomach bug.
Anxiety.
Overreacting.
First-time parent worry.

Meanwhile your body already knows something is wrong.

That changes people.

Some families become isolated.
Some relationships fracture under the pressure.
Some parents stop feeling safe leaving their child with anyone else.
Many carry a level of hypervigilance that becomes so normal they barely recognize it anymore.

You become the one constantly scanning ingredients.
Watching symptoms.
Calculating risk.
Researching foods at 2am.
Listening for vomiting in the night.
Trying to hold everything together while your own nervous system quietly runs on exhaustion and fear.

And somehow, much of this still goes unseen in medical spaces.

Not because providers don’t care.
But because the emotional impact of allergy parenting is still not talked about nearly enough.

As a nurse, psychotherapist, and FPIES parent myself, I wish more families heard this earlier:

The emotional impact is real.

The grief is real.
The fear is real.
The isolation is real.

And you do not have to minimize how hard this has been in order to prove you love your child.

You were never meant to carry all of this alone. 💚

(Knibb et al., Allergy, 2024)

05/04/2026

Today is National FPIES Day.

We’ve lived this for almost 10 years.

If you know, you know.

This isn’t the kind of allergy most people picture. No hives. No swelling. Sometimes nothing obvious at all… until there is. And when it hits, it can be fast and frightening.

A child who was fine not long ago suddenly isn’t. Pale. Lethargic. Repeated, forceful vomiting that doesn’t stop. You’re watching it unfold and something in you knows this isn’t a stomach bug. You end up in the ER trying to explain something that doesn’t fit the usual boxes. Sometimes you’re met with understanding. Sometimes you’re met with “huh?” when you say FPIES.

And if it’s not recognized for what it is, families get sent back out to try again.

So they do. Because they’re told to. And sometimes they learn the hard way.

But not every story looks like that.

Sometimes it starts earlier, quieter.

A baby not gaining enough. Feeding doesn’t feel right but you’re told dairy and soy are usually the issue in breastmilk, so just cut those. Or switch to formula like it’s that simple, when many of these babies can’t tolerate even hypoallergenic formulas… or refuse them outright. You’re left trying to feed a baby who isn’t thriving, while being told you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

You start to feel like you’re missing something. Or worse, that you are the problem.

Then come the acute reactions. The ER visits. Trying to advocate while your child is unwell. Hearing things like “you don’t want to put an IV in that little babe,” when everything in you is saying yes, we need to act now. Having to argue over medication ingredients because excipients matter for these kids, even when it sounds like you’re being difficult. Being met with “so you just want to refuse treatment?” when all you’re trying to do is make sure the treatment itself won’t cause harm.

It wears on you.

And then there’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough.

The ongoing piece.
The food trials.

This doesn’t just go away.

Every time you introduce something new, or retry a food you’ve been avoiding, you are watching and waiting. You try to act normal. You try not to let it take over. But you’re counting time in the back of your mind, scanning for signs, bracing for what might come.

Every single time.

And then the day comes when you are told to retrial a known trigger. You sit there, fully aware that this could make your child very sick, and you do it anyway because you need to know.

There’s something about that moment that’s hard to explain unless you’ve been there.

It’s a lot to carry.

I come to this as a nurse and as a parent who has lived it. Those two things don’t cancel each other out. If anything, they make the gaps more visible. The clinical pieces matter, but so does what happens in the spaces where families aren’t believed right away. Where they have to push. Where they hold the line for their child even when it’s uncomfortable.

If you’re in that place right now, trying to make sense of what you’re seeing, I see you. If you’ve felt dismissed along the way, that matters. And if this is new information for you today, FPIES is one of those conditions where earlier recognition really does change things.

This isn’t just about awareness for the sake of a post.

It’s about fewer families sitting in that limbo. Fewer kids going through repeat reactions before someone connects the dots. And more support that actually meets people where they are.

If this resonates, you’re welcome to share it. You never know who is still trying to put a name to what they’re seeing.

I also offer nurse consultations for families navigating feeding challenges and FPIES. You don’t have to figure it out alone.

04/20/2026

POV: you booked branding photos and spent at least part of the time existing as a well-dressed stress response.