About Me
Hi! I'm Trish.
There are quite a few sides to me. I’m a psychotherapist who loves understanding why people do what they do, a lifelong business person who started her first business at 13, a writer and speaker, and someone who can happily spend hours studying a passage of Scripture. At first glance, those things may not seem to belong together. For me, they do. I have always been curious about what is happening beneath the surface, why something is not working and what might help make it better. Whether I am working with a person, thinking about a relationship, examining a business or studying the Bible, I want to understand it deeply and turn that understanding into something useful.
God First, Always
My faith is not simply one part of my life. It is how I live and breathe. My relationship with Jesus comes before my work, my businesses and everything else I do. If psychotherapy or any other work were taken away from me, I would still have what matters most. I would still have God.
In my twenties, I lived through a long illness that nearly took my life. For a time, I lost my sight, doctors could not find a cure and I sank into a deep depression. I was angry, without hope and convinced that God had abandoned me. Eventually, I rejected Him.
But God loved me through it all. He patiently wooed me back to Him, meeting me in my pain and gradually creating a story of love where I had experienced only despair. When doctors could offer no cure, God chose to heal me. Through that experience, I came to know Him not as a distant idea, but through a personal relationship with Jesus that became the foundation of my life.
That story is also one of the reasons I do the work I do. I know what it is like to lose hope and to believe there is no way out. I never want another person to feel that they must live there or face it alone. I cannot promise anyone the same story of healing, but I can enter difficult places with them, help them understand what they are experiencing and remain beside them as they search for a way forward.
I study the Bible because I want to know God more deeply. Scripture also helps me understand people, relationships and how to live a better life. The Bible study videos on this site grow from my relationship with Jesus, my love of Scripture and my desire to help others understand what the Bible means for the lives we are living now.
People Have Always Interested Me
Before becoming a psychotherapist, I worked in finance, recruitment and education. The jobs were quite different, but I eventually realized that I was doing something similar in all of them. People talked to me. They brought me more than the financial question, workplace problem or decision they were facing. They brought the worry, uncertainty and personal story underneath it.
Then someone said to me, “Do what you’re already doing.” When I looked back, I could see it clearly. In every role, I had naturally found myself listening, helping people understand what was happening and staying with them as they worked through difficult situations. In many ways, I had been offering informal support long before I had the education or title to call myself a psychotherapist.
I took that advice seriously and chose this path intentionally. Because I also wanted to understand and improve my own relationships, I pursued a degree in marriage and family therapy. I wanted to understand what happens between people, why we become caught in painful patterns and what helps relationships become safer and stronger.
Psychotherapy feels natural to me. When I am sitting with a client during one of the hardest moments of their life, fully present and living that moment alongside them, I feel most like myself. The work can be painful, complicated and deeply serious, but it is also a privilege. After approximately 15 years, I still know that this is where I am meant to be.
I Have Always Been an Idea Person
I had my first taste of business when I was seven years old, cleaning the home of a kind older woman for two dollars a visit. I am sure she probably had to clean again after I left, but she treated my effort as though it mattered. She gave me my first experience of earning money by doing something for someone else, and I loved it.
By 13, I was no longer looking for someone to hire me. I started a daycare in my family’s home for the summer. Even then, I was someone who saw a possibility and immediately began thinking about how to make it happen.
That part of me has never gone away. Before becoming a psychotherapist, I owned a successful retail business with affiliates. Since then, I have built different kinds of organizations, helped other people develop their businesses and dreamed up far more ideas than I could ever pursue. I genuinely enjoy taking something that exists only as an idea and working through what it would take to make it real.
I am naturally drawn to problems that need untangling. I want to know why something is not working, where the overlooked opportunity might be and what one change could make everything begin to fit together. Sometimes that curiosity is directed toward a person or relationship. Other times, it is a business, a system or a new idea that has captured my attention.
That is the side of me behind my involvement with Foundations for Practice, but it is also simply part of who I am. I create things. I question how things are being done. I see what something could become, and then I have a hard time resisting the urge to start building it.
Laughter Is Rarely Far Away
For someone who spends so much time thinking about serious things, I laugh an extraordinary amount. It is usually one of the first things people notice about me. Taking professional photographs can be a challenge because, no matter how composed I try to look, I nearly always end up smiling or laughing.
Humour is one of the ways I connect with people. I notice the funny parts of ordinary life, enjoy stories that become funnier every time they are told and believe laughter often helps people breathe again when life has become too heavy. It does not take away from pain or make difficult experiences less important. It simply gives us another way to live through them.
That warmth follows me into my work. I can sit with someone in genuine pain and take their experience seriously without making the room feel cold or clinical. Tears and laughter are not opposites to me. Both can be honest, and both can sometimes appear in the same conversation.
Much of that laughter is shared with my husband, John. He is my husband, my partner in life and is also connected to several parts of the work you will find across this website. We have built businesses, weathered difficult seasons and worked through more ideas together than either of us could count. Through all of it, humour has remained an important part of how we enjoy one another and face life together.
If You Are Looking for the Formal Details
I hold two degrees, including a graduate degree in marriage and family therapy, and I am a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario. I have approximately 15 years of experience working with individuals and couples, with Emotionally Focused Therapy significantly influencing how I understand people and relationships.
My experience outside the therapy room includes finance, business ownership, professional-practice development, nonprofit leadership, writing, education and public speaking. It is an unusual combination, but it allows me to understand people, relationships and organizations from several different perspectives.