Qualia Counselling Services

10/15/2026

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

10/13/2026

The second week of October is recognized as OCD Awareness Week. We asked some of our experienced OCD clinicians for their thoughts, advice, and knowledge. Swipe to see what they said ——>

10/10/2026

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

10/09/2026

Our offices will be closed this upcoming Monday, but online booking remains open! All emails and voicemails will be responded to when we return on Tuesday. Have a lovely weekend! 💙💚

10/04/2026

Thoughts from one of our owners, 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.

09/29/2026

Reconciliation - Have we entered the “after”?

09/29/2026

As my thoughts turn toward Orange Shirt Day this year, I find myself thinking again about Joyce Echaquan. I remember Joyce not only as an Indigenous woman whose death exposed racism within our health-care system, but as a mother of seven children. As an Indigenous woman myself, and as a mother of Indigenous girls, her story reaches me and impacts me in a deeply personal way.

Six years ago today, Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, went to a Quebec hospital seeking help. In her final hours, she livestreamed the racist and degrading comments and treatment she experienced while receiving health “care”. The public inquiry into her death concluded that Joyce would “still be alive if she were white.”

I think about those words often, because when I think about Justice for Joyce, I also think about what Joyce’s story represents for Indigenous women and girls in all our First Nations and Indigenous communities. The statistics paint a still tragic story for our indigenous women and girls:

• Indigenous women are 6.5 times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Indigenous women (CIRNAC, 2025).
• 61% of Indigenous women have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetime (Women and Gender Equality Canada, 2026).
• Almost half of Indigenous women have experienced sexual assault in their lifetime (WAGE, 2026).

And our health systems are failing us.

• Nearly 4 in 10 First Nations women living off reserve report unmet health-care needs (Statistics Canada, 2024).
• Nearly 3 in 10 First Nations women living off reserve report racism, discrimination or unfair treatment from a health-care professional (Statistics Canada, 2024).
• Among First Nations people living off reserve who experienced racism or discrimination in health care, half reported experiencing it in a hospital emergency room (Statistics Canada, 2025).

As a mother, those numbers are difficult for me to separate from the faces of my own daughters.

This is also why Orange Shirt Day and Truth and Reconciliation cannot only be about remembering what happened in the past. Reconciliation asks something of us in the present.
As of September 2026, Indigenous