Mourning Breaks

10/14/2026

Getting ready to set up our collection hampers to support 519pursuit’s 2026 “519Pledge For Socks” Drive! 🧦🧦💛

This city-wide challenge runs until November 15th, giving you plenty of time to get those brand-new socks donated for community members facing homelessness and extreme poverty.

CALL TO ACTION: Friends, coworkers, colleagues, clients, office/building mates — hampers will be up starting tomorrow, Thursday, October 15th, so be sure to add SOCKS to your shopping lists! 📝✅

One pair becomes ten.
Ten becomes fifty.
Fifty becomes 519!

That’s how this campaign has grown to 662,043 pairs over their first eight years — people deciding to start somewhere and communities rallying around them.

And this year, every pair moves 519Pursuit another step closer to their BIG goal of ONE MILLION PAIRS by the end of their 10th campaign!

More information about 519Pursuit will be posted alongside the collection hampers so you can learn about the incredible work this team does daily to support the community. Follow them for more!

Stay tuned! 💛

10/13/2026

Quite sad to be missing this special event this year, but maybe you're free? Highly recommend it!! 💛

10/13/2026

10/12/2026

Mourning Reflection…

On this Canadian Thanksgiving, sharing (with permission) the labour of to remind us all of the continuing intergenerational costs of colonialism, the ongoing impacts of actions and policies that were—and are still—strategically crafted to uphold white supremacy and the ownership and extraction of lands that were never ours to take.

This can be a rich opportunity for continued learning in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, to encourage understanding of the origins and underbelly of this holiday, and to open conversation as you gather together to share good food and good company.

This day can be both a celebration of family, friends, and community, AND an honouring and commitment to opening your hearts and minds to truths that need attention, acknowledgement and reparation.

Let this be an opportunity for expansion, for finding ways to stand and act in allyship as a family in the year ahead.

Holding gratitude for you, for your time, for your willingness to pause here, to reflect, and to share what you learn.

May love surround you and your family today.🍁🍂💛

10/10/2026

Mourning Reflection…

I’m sitting outside this morning, enjoying a steamy cup of coffee, feeding the birds and squirrels, anticipating a slower-paced weekend and a number of things are swirling around in my head as we head into this Thanksgiving weekend. Today is also World Homeless Day, and World Mental Health Day. Opportunities to reflect on and connect to the pain and suffering of others, and the hope we all carry in community for a gentler, kinder world. 💛

I’m thinking of all of you, and the complex emotions that weekends such as this can bring. Weekends when all around us people are joyfully shopping for their special menus, planning their family traditions, baking and cooking, and travelling to gather with family and friends. And, how we’re often left fluctuating between this yearning for some sense of normalcy, and the overwhelming sorrow and painful reality that our lives are forever changed, that it will never be quite the same now that our person is gone.

I’m thinking also of those for whom this weekend brings a sorrowful ambiguity alongside powerful feelings of community and resistance. The arrival of early settlers and the colonization of turtle island is the truth of our shared history. It’s important to acknowledge the roots of this weekend, and to reflect upon the reality that it was the beginning of centuries of genocide, the theft of land, and that it fueled the present day pervasive experiences of racism, poverty, and the calculated oppression of First Nations, Métis and Inuit families across this country, In the U.S., Thanksgiving Day is also recognized as a Day of Mourning for Indigenous communities.

Weekends like this can be so difficult; weighted with layers of collective grief, and the intimate grief that resides within our hearts. The very act of expressing thankfulness, gratitude, might seem impossible.

I want you to know that it’s okay to feel all that you feel; to honour your heart, your grief.

I want you to know that you don’t have to force gratitude on your grieving heart right now.

You can reclaim gratitude when you’re ready.

It will come in small moments, often unexpected.

I promise you. It will.

Until then, simply focus on holding on, and giving yourself grace for all you've been through.

Holidays can be happy AND sorrowful, they can be joyful AND painful. There is longing AND gratitude. You are right in the middle of it all, oscillating from one emotion to the other. Allow yourself the freedom to feel it all. Because you DO feel it all.

Your love and your grief coexist. Always.

As you enter into this weekend, may it be all you need it to be, may you be held with understanding and compassion by friends and family.

May they provide you with warmth, with kindness, and welcome you exactly as you are. May they be gentle on your grieving heart as you miss, remember, and honour your person in whatever way is meaningful to you.

Thinking of you, and wishing you tenderness and understanding wherever you are today. 💛🍂🍁



Image: ©️CWituik Medway Valley Heritage Forest

10/08/2026

Today!💛

Happening today.
Come hear from lived experience speakers and share in memorializing the passing of individuals due to homelessness.

10/07/2026

Mourning Reflection…

Grief is political.💛

As October unfolds families continue to suffer and to mourn across the diaspora. We’ve reached 1095 days (+75yrs) of relentless terror and devastation perpetrated by the state of Israel in the name of Zionism. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and a land and culture is being explicitly targeted, decimated, erased. Since my post made at the one-year mark, we’ve seen the same colonial agenda further decimating Gaza, targeting The West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and Yemen, all the while, justifying the killing of citizens in all these lands.

As Miss Rachel said today, I’m thinking about Israeli and Palestinian children — and children in all these lands being attacked — children who have been failed by power-hungry tyrants whose first responsibility should have been to keep them safe from violence, trauma, and death.

It’s critical that we recognize that the suffering of men, women and children who are marginalized, dehumanized, and violated by colonial, imperialist powers around the globe is all connected.

As a social worker, it is impossible for me to practice in this corner of the world without understanding how the suffering and the grief that exists in the hearts of those who enter my office is deeply connected to the suffering and grief of those around the globe who are in pain, who are oppressed, who feel unseen, unheard, dismissed, unsupported and untended by the world around them.

I understand that speaking up publicly in these tumultuous times and within a colonized land isn’t easy or comfortable, is risky, and can be viewed as dissent. But, I’ve accepted that risk all along, and I very clearly do dissent. I do condemn the genocidal actions of a state that perceives its rights as superseding the human rights and peace of another, and I condemn using that perception as justification for the violent decimation of a land and its people. It does not align with my social work practice ethics and values to stand by silently.

And-although now THREE (+75) years in, this should not need saying-let me be very clear, this is NOT in any way, shape or form, a stand against Judaism, nor is this in any way a form of antisemitism and I will not engage with anyone attempting to use that misguided, ill-informed argument. I will instead guide you to resources that can explain and differentiate in terms far clearer than I can articulate within this space.

Our global humanity continues to be at risk. Our baseline for what constitutes acceptable levels of terror and violence against-and the desecration of-ancestral lands, culture and peoples is sliding into increasingly dangerous territory. It's abhorrent, devastating, and I simply can't be silent when I'm regularly holding space for others where this grief is present, weighty, palpable.

Thank you for taking the time to read, for recognizing and validating the need for sustained support and action.

and all oppressed lands and Peoples.

Image Credits
• Photo of me:
• Hand and Dove:
• It’s Not Controversial: .valeur
• Watermelon: Rachel S
• Turtle Island to Palestine: fetchart
• Cat:
• October 7: .valeur
• Self portrait of me, wearing hand-painted art by and .valeur

10/06/2026

Mourning Breaks will be taking part in this 519pursuit campaign this season — stay tuned to see how you can contribute! 🧦🧦💛🙂

Happy Monday Friends! 👋

🧦 THIS is what the 519Pledge For Socks looks like. 🧦

It starts with one person saying, “I’ll take the pledge.” Then a friend joins in. A coworker brings a package. A family starts collecting. A business puts out a box. A team rallies its community.

And before you know it… 519 pairs becomes possible.

From October 1st to November 15th, we’re asking individuals and teams across our community to Claim Your 519 and collect brand-new socks for friends facing homelessness and extreme poverty.

You don’t have to collect 519 pairs alone. In fact, that’s the whole point. Start the conversation. Ask your people. Build your team. Share your goal. Every package that comes through your door gets you a little closer.

Over our first eight campaigns, this community collected an incredible 662,043 pairs of socks. Now we’re continuing the climb toward ONE MILLION PAIRS. 🧦

Will your 519 be part of the count?

Register today: 519Pursuit.ca/take-the-pledge

Then start collecting, keep those socks with you throughout the campaign, and get ready to bring them together at our Official Sock Drop on November 15th!

Claim your 519. 🧦

Without YOU there is no 519Pursuit!
💙✨

10/05/2026

This is my favourite season to offer Walk & Talk 🍁🍂counselling sessions. Slowing down, meandering through natural spaces, listening to the sounds of birdsong, breezes rustling through painted leaves, and the crunch of leaves beneath my feet.

It’s visceral, grounding, and provides such soothing visual, tactile, sensory opportunities to practice being present-moment focused, mindful of all that exists alongside our sorrows.

There are many proven physical, neurobiological, and psychological benefits to spending time surrounded by nature.

If you think you’d like to try an outdoor session, let’s chat! If you’re a current client, a reminder that you can easily switch up your sessions as you like, to navigate this season in a warmly supported, intentional way.

Note: You might also prefer to meet at an accessible outdoor location, a bench by the river perhaps, or your favourite park. Let me know if you have a special spot!

Original Images: ©️CWituik - all local walking spots 🍂🍁