ReThreading Madness

Writing Through It: Indigenous Voices, Trauma, and the Art of Telling Without BreakingThis episode brings together two writers whose work does something precise and difficult: it tells the truth about trauma without weaponizing it, reaches into the hardest parts of lived experience and finds a way to hand something back to the reader.Wanda John-Kehewin, Cree writer and poet from Kehewin Cree Nation, talks about what drove her from the edge of the world in northern Alberta to the coast of BC, a pregnant woman running toward the only future she could imagine for her child. She traces the arc of her writing through depression, through grief, through a master of fine arts at UBC, through the moment she learned what intergenerational trauma actually was and finally had words for what her family had been carrying. She talks about the matrilineal line with precision and depth: the biological reality that daughters carry their grandmothers' eggs, that trauma travels not only through behavior and coping but through the body itself. Her poetry, she explains, was never a direct confession. It was a way to tell the story sideways, to infer what she was not yet ready to say aloud, to let readers in only as far as they were willing to go. Her children's book Mia Wears Orange came out of a moment she was carrying privately, her daughter terrified she was about to be sent to residential school, and a chance conversation with an editor who recognized that the story needed to exist in the world. The residential schools did not end, Wanda and Bernadine agree. They became the Sixties Scoop. They became Child and Family Services. The fear that the system can take your children is not historical. It is present tense.Sandra Yuen, artist, advocate, and writer, is releasing her first prose poetry collection, I Want to be Buried Standing Up, written on a friend's old Remington typewriter during a period of profound transition. She reads from the collection live, a poem called Shaving Cream that starts with a man lathering his torso and ends somewhere near God and oysters. She talks about what it means to write into the neurodivergent mind, to follow the poem where it insists on going, and to find out who you are in the process of making something. This is her fourth book. Her first was a memoir about her experience with schizophrenia.Two writers. Two very different paths into language. One conversation about what it costs and what it gives back to tell the truth.Music by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Title: Pulling the Canoe to Shore: Healing, Mad Movements, and the Stories That Set Us FreeThis episode brings together two very different voices connected by a single thread: what it means to reclaim your own story when the world has tried to define you.Randy Tate, Indigenous artist and healer from the Nisga'a and Gitxsan territories, shares the storytelling he offered at a Connection Salon Mad Pride event. At the centre of it is a teaching he carries everywhere: the canoe metaphor. When the river fills with debris and your canoe fills with tears, the elder's instruction is not to fight harder but to pull to shore, make a fire, eat, drink water, talk about your pain, and rest for however long it takes. Randy traces that teaching through 22 years of sobriety, through the intergenerational trauma of residential school that shaped his father, through the scars he saw on his father's back as a child without yet having words for what they meant, and through the ceremonies, cold showers, morning prayers, and art practice that make up his daily healing life. He talks about the inner child, the safety pin he carries to remind him of his grandmother's hands, the daughter he lost, and the life he did not expect to have but is grateful for.Matthew Jackman, international mad activist and doctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, is mapping something larger: the global mad movements, plural, that have grown from lived experience of psychiatric harm and collective resistance to it. His research interviews 44 people across a wide range of cultural and structural contexts, centering the global majority and global south, where the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a primary tool for fighting institutionalization, forced treatment, and the dehumanization that follows the label of madness. He walks through what the movements share across their differences: Sanism, rights violations, and the permission that dehumanization grants to do harm in the name of treatment. He also names what divides them, the tension between reform and abolition, between consumer identity and survivor identity and mad identity, each carrying different relationships to the system and different visions of what change looks like.Bernadine connects both conversations to why Rethreading Madness exists at all: to break the gatekeeping that kept mental health consumers from talking to each other, from accessing information that wasn't filtered through the industry that was supposed to be serving them. Music by Sherry Ulrich, Tom O'Dell, and Fearless SoulBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Leaving the Faith, Finding Yourself: Life After Mormonism with Audra PhelpsWhat happens when leaving a religion means risking the loss of your community, your identity, and even your closest relationships?In this powerful conversation, Bernadine Fox speaks with Audra Phelps about her experience leaving the Mormon Church and the complex emotional landscape that follows. Together they explore the grief of losing a community that once shaped every aspect of life, the anger that can emerge when long-held beliefs are questioned, and the difficult realization that some relationships may have been built on conditions rather than authenticity. Audra shares how fear, guilt, and self-doubt can linger long after someone leaves a high-control religious environment, and why healing requires learning to trust yourself again.The conversation also examines the role of grief in recovery—not simply grieving a belief system, but grieving family connections, friendships, and a sense of belonging that may suddenly feel uncertain. Audra discusses the importance of allowing emotions such as anger, hurt, and frustration to be felt rather than suppressed, and how moving through those emotions can become a path toward healing, self-discovery, and personal freedom. This is a thoughtful exploration of religious trauma, identity, and what it means to build a life rooted in authenticity after walking away from a system that once defined who you were.Audra founded Mama Audra to help moms unravel the web of old beliefs after leaving the LDS church to discover their own identity as a woman and mom. With over 15 years of experience in international education and coaching, she discovered her passion in supporting moms grappling with grief, mom guilt, and identity loss after a faith crisis. Audra began her career as a high school biology teacher, was raised in the church, and then moved overseas with her family to work in international schools. When she finally made the life-altering decision to leave the church, she found herself sinking in uncertainty, lonelier than she'd ever been before, and constantly feeling like she was failing her children. Through years of self-discovery and coaching, she has walked the path to uncovering beliefs that resonate, building relationships with her children based on love and trust, and navigating the loneliness that comes from starting all over again. She is now focusing her work on the unique challenges that ex-Mormon moms are navigating. Audra is reaching back to help them feel confident in who they are and blaze their own path , on their own terms.Music by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

The Intersectionality of Mental Health, MAID, and Suicidality with Rebecca DeutschBernadine Fox sits down with Rebecca Deutsch, PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies at York University, for a conversation that refuses to stay on safe ground. The topic is Medical Assistance in Dying and the still-unresolved question of whether Canadians whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental disorder should have access to it.This episode was recorded before the June 17, 2026 release of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying report, which recommended indefinitely excluding people with mental illness from MAID eligibility. A dissenting opinion from three senators noted that more than two-thirds of witnesses called were publicly opposed to expansion and that people with lived experience were not prioritized. That critique lands directly in the middle of everything discussed here.Rebecca brings lived experience of suicidality and loss alongside months of close discourse analysis of the MAID MDSUMC policy documents. What she found in that language tells you a great deal about whose suffering counts. She traces how "suicidality" gets invoked as a threat in the policy, used to separate valid requests from illegitimate ones, and what that framing does to people navigating both realities at once.The conversation moves into the structural: Canada's history of eugenic practice running through asylum institutionalization into the present, where MAID expands while housing, community support, and meaningful care remain inaccessible. Rebecca describes a case where a woman cancelled her MAID request after community funding allowed her to leave a living situation that was making her disability unmanageable. The request was not for death. It was for conditions she could survive in.The through-line across all of it is who is in the room when these decisions get made. Psychiatrists, lawyers, and doctors shaped this policy. No one with lived experience was consulted. No Indigenous elders were brought in. Rebecca and Bernadine are clear: MAID without housing, community, and the genuine participation of affected people is not a compassionate policy. This is one of those episodes that stays with you.This is one of those episodes that stays with you.Music by Shari Ulrich, Tom Odell, Fearless Soul Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

People, Place and Purpose: Jim Gottstein on Dismantling a Mental Health System That Harms the People It Claims to HelpJim Gottstein is an Alaskan lawyer who, at 29, found himself jumping out of a second floor window in his underwear at 1am after days without sleep. He was hauled off to a psychiatric facility, told he would never practice law again, and that he would need to be on neuroleptics for the rest of his life. He went on to win multiple Supreme Court cases. Jim joins Bernadine today to talk about his Report on Improving Mental Health Outcomes, a heavily sourced paper co-authored with four other researchers and built for policymakers and funders that lands like a gut punch to nearly everything mainstream psychiatry asks us to accept as fact. The report's argument is not subtle: the mental health system's standard treatments are colossally counterproductive and harmful, they are routinely forced on unwilling patients, and the research backing them has been manipulated, ghost-written, and in some cases outright falsified by the pharmaceutical companies funding it. The numbers are hard to sit with. Since the introduction of Thorazine in the mid-1950s, the disability rate among people diagnosed with serious mental illness has increased more than six-fold. The current long-term recovery rate for people maintained on neuroleptics sits at 5%. Approaches that avoid neuroleptics from the start, like Open Dialogue in Finland and the original Soteria House study, achieved recovery rates near 80%. People who get off neuroleptics after being on them see that number climb back to 40%. None of this, Jim says, is being presented to the judges making commitment decisions. The conversation goes deep into the full architecture of what is wrong. They talk about the chemical imbalance myth that official psychiatry now quietly disavows while individual psychiatrists continue to use it to secure compliance. They talk about the way disagreeing with your own diagnosis gets recorded as a symptom of your illness. They talk about the legal fiction of informed consent, the use of psychiatric incarceration as social control, and the research showing that hospitalization is astronomically correlated with increased suicide rates rather than reduced ones. They talk about the legal system's near-total failure to represent people facing commitment, proceedings the report characterizes plainly as shams. And they talk about what psychiatry does to children, including infants, and what happens when a six year old in Massachusetts named Rebecca Riley is given neuroleptics and dies, and the psychiatrist who prescribed them is granted immunity to testify against her parents. But this episode is not only about what is broken. Jim and Bernadine spend real time on what actually works. Open Dialogue, which meets people in crisis within 24 hours, keeps them out of hospital, and reduced schizophrenia diagnoses in its region of Finland by 90%. Peer respites, small home-like settings staffed entirely by people with lived experience, built on trust and voluntary participation rather than authority and compliance. Soteria House. Housing First. Employment as a therapeutic intervention. The Hearing Voices Network. Warm lines that will not call the police on you. Non-police community response teams. Psychotherapy. A range of international programs, from Zimbabwe to Japan to Sweden to Belgium, built around the report's central organizing principle: that what people need to recover is not drugs and incarceration but people, place, and purpose.His book, The Zyprexa Papers, is available on Amazon in hardcover, paperback, Kindle and Audible. His Report on Improving Mental Health Outcomes and is the subject of his presentation at the PAIMI Symposium in October.Music by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

David Roche on Reclaiming Humanity Beyond Appearance What happens when the thing the world notices first about you becomes the very thing that teaches others how to see? In this deeply moving conversation, Bernadine Fox sits down with David Roche, a celebrated storyteller, disability arts pioneer, and recipient of the Order of Canada. This is a re-air of a 2022 interview done in Memory of David who recently passed away.  Born with a facial difference, David spent decades challenging the assumptions people make about beauty, worth, disability, and belonging. Together they explored the hidden ways our culture equates beauty with goodness and difference with danger—from Hollywood villains marked by scars to the everyday biases that shape how we see ourselves and others. David reflected on a life that has taken him from childhood innocence and devastating rejection to activism, performance, recovery, and international recognition. Along the way, he offered a powerful reminder that every one of us carries a hidden sense of being "not enough" and that healing begins when we stop hiding those parts of ourselves. Warm, funny, insightful, and profoundly human, this conversation asked us to look beyond the face we present to the world and consider what it means to truly belong. It is ultimately a story about resilience, community, and discovering that our greatest differences may also be our greatest gifts.Music by Shari Ulrich, Christina Acquilara, and Joni MItchellBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Trigger Warning:  This program talks about sibling violence and suicide ideology.This week on ReThreading Madness, Bernadine Fox speaks with three individuals - Sandra Yuen, Penny Marie, and Venge - about survival, identity, creativity, and what it means to keep living in a world that often punishes difference. Sandra Yuen who lives with schzophrenia discusses her new prose poetry collection I Want to Be Buried Standing Up, the tactile magic of writing on an old typewriter, neurodivergence, and creating art that refuses neat categories. Penny Marie shares the devastating realities of sibling abuse, growing up autistic and trans in a violent environment, and the lifelong impact of being scapegoated inside a family system that refused to protect her. Venge reflects on suicide, isolation, and the unexpected way a cat named Linus became the reason she stayed alive long enough to rediscover connection, nature, and herself. Together, these conversations explore what happens when people reclaim the stories that others tried to silence and how creativity, animals, language, and truth-telling can become acts of survival.Music by Shari Ulrich and Jann Arden Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

A Conversation with Jonathan Rogers at 89 on Getting Old and DyingHost Bernadine Fox is joined by Jonathan Rogers — animator, artist, former supervising producer at Disney and Marvel, stand-up comedian, and the man she was once engaged to — for a rare and honest conversation about aging, dying, and what remains. At 89, Jonathan reflects on a career that took him from Second City Toronto to NBC to Hollywood, on the childhood sexual abuse that shaped the first part of his life, on losing the ability to draw after more than eight decades as an artist, and on what it feels like when the tangible world begins to fade, the body begins to slow down, when one becomes invisible to the world, and what it feels like to be near the end of a life that was genuinely well-lived.Music: Shari Ulrich  Photo by: Jim NeissTranscripts available upon request to [email protected] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

The Marks We Miss: Forensics, Trafficking, and the Path to True Trauma-Informed Justice  Trigger Warning: This episode contains detailed discussions regarding human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual assault. It includes forensic descriptions of non-fatal strangulation, and the trafficking of children. We also discuss systemic failures affecting Indigenous and Black communities. Listener discretion is strongly advised.Trauma is the primary driver of mental health struggles; Rethreading Madness exists to expose how it happens and, more importantly, how we can survive itHost Bernadine Fox speaks with Canadian author and dental professional James Frizzel who is a forensic dental professional with specialized training from McGill University, the Sûreté du Québec, and the University of Tennessee’s "Body Farm." A graduate of Harvard Medical School’s "Train the Trainer" program for human trafficking, he also holds certifications in strangulation prevention and clandestine grave recovery.  Drawing on that background, Frizzel discusses the overlooked connections between domestic violence and sex trafficking, the physical and neurological effects of non-fatal strangulation, and why medical and law enforcement systems routinely misidentify or dismiss victims. They also cover the disproportionate impact on Indigenous and Black women and girls in Canada and the US, what a genuinely trauma-informed response could look like from disclosure through to court, the particular harm done to children trafficked within their own families, and the gap between legislation on the books and justice in practice. The conversation also takes in the Epstein files and what communities and professionals need to understand if survivors are going to be better protected.   Music by Shari Ulrich and Lauren DaigleTranscripts available upon request to [email protected] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

BiPolar Princess: Victoria MaxwellWhat happens when a spiritual awakening is mistaken for psychosis?  And what if the difference between harm and healing is simply being listened to?In this powerful and often funny conversation, Victoria Maxwell joins ReThreading Madness to talk about bipolar disorder, psychosis, stigma, and the fine line between spiritual experience and mental health crisis. A former actor turned internationally recognized theatrical keynote speaker, Victoria shares how a meditation retreat catapulted her into an altered state that was both profoundly meaningful and deeply destabilizing. For years, her experience was pathologized without curiosity—until one nurse asked a single question that changed everything.Together, Bernadine and Victoria unpack language reclamation (“crazy,” “mad,” “bipolar princess”), media portrayals of violence and mental illness, workplace stigma, and what happens when leaders model vulnerability from the top down. This episode is honest, nuanced, and unexpectedly humorous—a reminder that lived experience is not a stereotype, and that healing often begins with being seen.This episode includes snippets of comedic shows from Danny Docimo from ZaniesComedy and David Granrier from Stand Up For Mental Health.Victoria Maxwell is an internationally recognized keynote speaker, performing artist, and mental health advocate who blends three decades as an actor with lived experience of bipolar disorder, anxiety, and psychosis. Named a mental health leader by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, her theatrical keynote That’s Just Crazy Talk has been recognized by the Mental Health Commission of Canada as one of the country’s top anti-stigma interventions. Victoria is also a blogger for Psychology Today and serves as a Lived Experience Strategic Advisor for BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services. Learn more at www.victoriamaxwell.com.  Music:  I Found Myself/Clendening, It’s Alright/Shari Ulrich, YOY/SiibiiBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

In this powerful and grounded conversation, Bob Joseph, author of 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act, joins Bernadine Fox to unpack the law that has governed Indigenous lives in Canada since 1876.The Indian Act was not simply administrative policy. It was a system of control. It defined identity, stripped women of status, imposed elected governance systems, confined communities to reserves, criminalized ceremonies, and enforced assimilation through residential schools. It treated Indigenous peoples as wards of the state and positioned culture itself as something to erase. And while parts of the Act have been amended, it remains in force today.Together, Bernadine and Bob explore the deeper question: How does this law connect to mental health? Housing crises. Drinking water inequities. Substance use. Higher incarceration rates. Intergenerational trauma. When children were taken, languages banned, land reduced, and communities fractured, the damage was not incidental.  It was structural. The trauma did not begin in families. It began in policy.Bob challenges listeners to move beyond guilt toward responsibility. Reconciliation is not sentiment. It requires learning what we were not taught and understanding how law shaped lived experience. If we want to address mental health in Indigenous communities, we must first understand the system that created the conditions.Bob Joseph is the Co-Founder and CEO of Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. and has been providing Indigenous relations training since 1994. For over three decades, he has helped thousands of individuals and organizations understand the history, policy, and lived realities that shape Indigenous–non-Indigenous relations in Canada and beyond. His clients include all levels of government, Fortune 500 companies, financial institutions such as the World Bank, and organizations across North America and internationally. An award-winning author of 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act, Bob is widely recognized for translating complex legal and historical realities into accessible, practical learning. He has served as an associate professor at Royal Roads University, guest lectured at numerous academic institutions, and facilitated global Indigenous round tables, including a United Nations-connected gathering in Switzerland. His work bridges education, reconciliation, and informed responsibility, equipping Canadians to better understand the lasting impact of colonial policy on Indigenous communities today.music by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Historical Mad Voices from Inside the Asylum with Michael RembisWhat happens when we stop telling the history of psychiatry from the doctor’s perspective and start listening to the people who lived it? In this powerful and wide-ranging conversation, historian Michael Rembis, author of Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum, joins Bernadine Fox to explore what changes when Historical Mad Voices from Inside the Asylum with Michael Rembis we center the voices of those labeled “mad.” Drawing from firsthand accounts of institutionalization between 1830 and 1950, Rembis reveals a long and often hidden history of resistance, reform, abuse, survival, and self-advocacy. The asylum was never a neutral or purely benevolent space. It was contested from the very beginning. Together, they examine psychiatric power, forced treatment, gendered confinement, trauma pathologization, violence narratives in the media, and the enduring struggle to be heard within systems that claim to help. This episode moves beyond simplistic binaries of “care” versus “control” and instead asks deeper questions: Who gets to define madness? Who holds authority? And what happens when we reclaim our own stories? This is a conversation about history, yes—but also about the present moment, and the ongoing fight for dignity, agency, and community care.   Music by Shari Ulrich and Sia   Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Racial Battle Fatigue: Truth, Treaties, and Mental Health with Red ThunderwomanWrite Up:  In this powerful episode of ReThreading Madness, Bernadine Fox sits down with Michelle Robinson, also known as Red Thunderwoman — a Sahtu Dene activist, political organizer, and host of the Native Calgarian Podcast. Together they explore the deep and ongoing intersections between racism, media, mental health, colonial policy, and what Michelle calls “racial battle fatigue.” From land acknowledgments to treaties, from internalized racism to systemic healthcare discrimination, Michelle speaks candidly about the emotional toll of living in a country that still resists truth while claiming reconciliation. The conversation moves beyond surface-level allyship into harder territory: how Indigenous erasure was built into Canadian education, media, and law; how racism shapes mental health outcomes; and how colonial systems continue to police, dismiss, and pathologize Indigenous voices. Michelle reflects on growing up navigating internalized racism, raising a proud Dene daughter in a climate of rising hate, and why mental health conversations cannot be separated from oppression dynamics. This is not an abstract discussion — it is lived reality. But this episode is also about solutions. Michelle outlines concrete pathways forward through meaningful listening, engaging Indigenous voices in good faith, amplifying media accountability, and acting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the National Inquiry’s Calls to Justice. This conversation invites listeners to move past fear-based narratives and into relationship — to see Indigenous people not as caricatures or symbols, but as neighbors, leaders, and full human beings. Honest, challenging, and urgent, this is an episode about what it takes to heal in a system not designed for everyone.Music Shari Ulrich Photo Michelle Robinson Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

After My Mother Died: In Conversation with Christa Ovenell, Funeral Director and End-of-Life DoulaIn this episode of ReThreading Madness, Berni Fox is joined by Christa Ovenell, funeral director, end-of-life doula, and founder of Death’s Apprentice, for a deeply honest conversation about death, grief, and what it means to live alongside loss. Speaking shortly after the death of her own mother, Christa reflects on the strange dissonance of grieving personally while holding professional knowledge about dying, funerals, and end-of-life care. Together, they explore what death really looks like beyond movies and platitudes, and why avoiding conversations about mortality often leaves the living more vulnerable. Christa shares how her mother’s final weeks unfolded, how grief collided with the holiday season, and what helped her survive that first raw stretch after loss. The conversation gently challenges cultural habits that rush, sanitize, or silence grief, and instead invites curiosity, ritual, and community. From what not to say to someone who is grieving, to why funerals and gatherings still matter, Christa offers practical, compassionate insights rooted in both lived experience and decades of deathcare work. This episode is for anyone who has lost someone, fears losing someone, or knows they will someday. It’s about making space for complexity, letting grief be what it is, and learning how to show up for ourselves and others when death enters the room. Honest, humane, and quietly radical, this conversation reminds us that facing death more openly can deepen how we live.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Choosing to Breathe with Emma StevensIn this episode, Emma Stevens joins Bernadine on ReThreading Madness to talk about what it means to choose life, truth, and selfhood after years of silence, fragmentation, and survival. An adult adoptee raised to feel gratitude rather than grief, Emma reflects on how early relinquishment, adoption, and unspoken trauma shaped her sense of identity and belonging. She speaks candidly about the long internal work of listening to the parts of herself that were forced to stay quiet, and the moment when merely surviving was no longer enough.The conversation weaves through themes from Emma’s memoirs, including Choosing to Breathe and The Gathering Place, where she traces her search for truth about her origins and the slow, deliberate process of reuniting a fractured sense of self. Emma describes how identity can splinter when a child learns early that certain questions, emotions, or needs are unwelcome, and how reclaiming wholeness requires welcoming even the most wounded parts back into the story. Her reflections are raw, meditative, and grounded in lived experience rather than abstraction.Emma also speaks about her earlier experience of exploitation within a therapeutic relationship, explored in A Fire Is Coming, and how earlier attachment wounds created vulnerability to professional harm. Rather than centering pathology, this episode focuses on agency. On learning to trust one’s own perception, on speaking truth to power, and on choosing to breathe fully into a life that is no longer shaped by secrecy or coercion. This is a conversation for anyone who has felt they were performing themselves for others, and who is ready to begin living from a place that is truly their own.You can find Emma’s books on AmazonBernadine’s monologue 50 Years After I Fled can be downloaded at https://www.spreaker.com/episode/fifty-years-after-i-fled-rural-alberta-is-still-failing-to-protect-its-children--69044526Music by Shari Ulrich, Omar Rudberg  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

In this week’s episode of Rethreading Madness, Bernadine speaks with psychologist and long-time MindFreedom International board member Al Galves about the deep systemic issues in contemporary mental health care. Drawing from decades of clinical practice and activism, Al challenges the dominant bio psychiatric model, arguing that most people experiencing extreme states are not suffering from “broken brains,” but are responding to pain, trauma, and social conditions that have gone unrecognized. He explains how the profession’s unquestioned assumptions shape public attitudes, legal systems, and the treatment people receive — often to their detriment. Together, they explore the work of MindFreedom International, an organization founded by survivors of forced psychiatric treatment who refused to accept coercion as care. Al details the MindFreedom Shield, a global solidarity network that mobilizes members to advocate for individuals who have been involuntarily hospitalized or forcibly medicated. Through coordinated phone calls, emails, and public pressure, Shield members confront institutions directly, helping free people or improve their conditions while offering something even more vital: the knowledge that someone on the outside sees them, believes them, and is fighting for their human rights. The conversation widens to look at why coercive practices persist, how legal systems reinforce them, and what happens when professionals treat trauma as pathology instead of a human response to harm. Bernadine and Al discuss the dangers of a society that equates distress with incompetence, the long history of dismissing survivors’ realities, and the urgent need for alternatives such as Soteria houses, Open Dialogue, and peer-led supports. This is a powerful episode for anyone interested in human rights in mental health, systemic reform, or survivor-driven advocacy — and a reminder that solidarity can be lifesaving.Music: Shari Ulrich Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

A Word About Mental HealthIn this episode, we turn the spotlight on the power of creative expression and shared dialogue. Host Bernadine Fox speaks with three remarkable guests who have helped shape and sustain this ongoing community conversation: A Word About Mental Health Isabella Mori, MEd — writer, retired counsellor, and organizer of A Word About Mental Health — discusses how storytelling, poetry, and connection can support recovery and understanding. Léa Taranto, a disabled Chinese Jewish Canadian writer living with OCD and comorbid disorders, shares how writing becomes both anchor and release. Her debut novel, A Drop in the Ocean, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Forest of Reading’s White Pine Award. Lynn, a retired English professor, writer, and advocate for brain health, reflects on her experiences as a participant in the series and on the healing power of shared presence and curiosity. Together they explore what happens when we talk openly about mental health, how art and community intertwine, and why sometimes the most powerful act of healing begins with a single word. A Word About Mental Health: where stories, art, and conversation help rethread the world one voice at a time.Music by Shari Ulrich, Billie Ellish and Callum Scott  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

From Bunny Hugs to Transgression: Conversations on Healing and Identity with Todd RennebohmTodd Rennebohm is a Canadian mental health advocate, author, public speaker, and host of the podcast Bunny Hugs and Mental Health, where he creates a free, open space for honest conversations about mental illness, trauma, suicide attempts, addiction, and recovery. A suicide attempt survivor who is in long-term recovery from substance abuse, Todd brings lived experience and compassion to dialogues with professionals, survivors, and families affected by mental health and addiction. His podcast has featured hundreds of episodes of candid storytelling and is recognized among top mental health podcasts for its combination of depth, vulnerability, and warmth. Bunny Hugs Podcast+1 Todd is also the author of the children’s book Sometimes Daddy Cries, a story told through the eyes of a child whose father experiences depression, designed to help families talk about mental health with sensitivity and insight.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Homecoming: Ovid Thomas Reclaims History on the Poundmaker Cree NationThis week on ReThreading Madness, Bernadine speaks with Ovid Thomas, a Sixties Scoop survivor and social media creator known for his educational content on Cree history and the Poundmaker Cree Nation.  Taken from his family at just two weeks old, Ovid grew up in a non-Indigenous home in northern Manitoba, facing  abuse, neglect, and systemic discrimination.Ovid shares his journey of survival—from enduring racial bias in education and being falsely accused of cheating, to challenging policies that barred First Nations students from university-track courses. He opens up about how trauma, partial deafness, and years of misdiagnosis shaped his early life, and how returning to his community became a path toward healing. Together, Bernadine and Ovid explore his reconnection with the Poundmaker Cree Nation, where he discovered family, belonging, and cultural roots long denied to him. They discuss his efforts to correct mistranslations of speeches by Poundmaker and Big Bear, his research into colonial distortions of Cree history, and his ongoing fight against medical and institutional racism.This conversation moves from the personal to the political—linking Ovid’s lived experience with thebroader legacy of colonial systems that continue to harm Indigenous peoples. It’s a story of truthtelling, reclamation, and resilience.Music by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Theo Cuthand, TherapyToo, and Venge Dixon on Art, Neurodiversity, Therapy Harm and SurvivalThis episode brings together three voices working at the intersections of madness, creativity, survivorship, and resistance, each approaching mental health from lived experience rather than abstraction. Theo Jean Cuthand is a celebrated Indigenous filmmaker, visual artist, and game creator whose work explores Queer and trans identity, Indigeneity, love, and madness. With films and installations shown internationally, from MoMA and the Whitney Biennial to Berlinale and ImagineNATIVE, Theo speaks about using experimental media and game design to make inner experience visible. His video game A Bipolar Journey draws directly from his lived experience of bipolar disorder, challenging clinical narratives by centering self-knowledge, agency, and art as survival. Amy Nordhues joins the conversation as a survivor of therapist abuse and co-creator of the documentary series #TherapyToo. Groomed and assaulted by a psychiatrist as an adult, following earlier childhood abuse, Amy has become a leading advocate exposing harm within therapeutic and faith-based systems. She is the author of the award-winning memoir Prayed Upon: Breaking Free from Therapist Abuse and speaks candidly about what happens when systems meant to help instead exploit vulnerability, and why survivor-led storytelling is essential for accountability and change. Also joining is Venge Dixon, a writer, poet, visual artist, and contributor to Off the Map, an anthology of writings about mental health. Venge reflects on living with mental illness across a lifetime and using creative practice as a way to resist the rigid, punitive categories imposed on people labeled “crazy.” Her work explores creativity as both self-definition and responsibility, particularly for those living outside social norms and within marginalized identities. Together, these guests explore how art, storytelling, and truth-telling function not as therapy-lite or inspiration narratives, but as acts of survival, resistance, and reclamation. This episode asks what becomes possible when lived experience is treated as knowledge, and when people most impacted by mental health systems are centered in shaping the conversation.You can find more information about Theo Cuthand at https://www.tjcuthand.com/If you are interested in donating to the Docuseries TherapyToo information on how to do that can be found on their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/people/TherapyToo-Docuseries/61577028284959/Venge Dixon can be found on Instragram at https://www.instagram.com/vengetable/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Beyond “Don’t Kill Yourself… Yet”: Practical Tools for Survival with Michael McTeiqueContent note: This episode discusses suicidal ideation in a non-graphic, supportive, and prevention-focused context.What happens when depression stops being a passing feeling and becomes a constant internal state — a relentless stream of thoughts that slowly drains away your will to live? In this deeply personal and thought-provoking episode of ReThreading Madness, Bernadine Fox speaks with Michael McTagg about his own seven-year experience living with chronic suicidal depression and the unconventional system he developed to survive it. Michael discusses the difference between acute suicidal crisis and long-term suicidal thinking, the limitations and dangers of current crisis intervention systems, and why many people emerge from psychiatric intervention feeling more traumatized rather than helped. From his perspective as both someone who lived through chronic suicidality and someone who later volunteered on a suicide prevention hotline, he reflects candidly on what works, what doesn’t, and what often gets missed entirely in conversations about suicide. At the center of the conversation is Michael’s concept of “life force” — the idea that depression is not simply sadness, but the gradual erosion of vitality through constant internal attacks, self-criticism, fear, shame, and emotional exhaustion. He shares the “life hacks” he developed to interrupt those destructive thought patterns, reclaim agency over his inner world, and slowly rebuild a reason to stay alive. This is not a clinical conversation. It is a raw and exploratory discussion about consciousness, survival, emotional energy, and what it means to fight for yourself when your own mind feels unsafe.As reviewed in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/books/how-not-to-kill-yourself-clancy-martin.htmlMusic by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Fifty Years After I Fled: Rural Alberta is Still Failing to Protect Its ChildrenIn this extraordinary solo episode of ReThreading Madness, host Bernadine Fox steps out from behind the mic to share one of the most personal stories she has ever told on air. Fifty years ago, as a 16-yr old teenager in rural southern Alberta, Bernadine ran away to save her life. She was growing up in a small farming community shaped by isolation, silence, and deeply entrenched cultural norms that left children vulnerable and without protection. In this monologue, she reflects on what it meant to grow up in a landscape where for some danger was ever-present and help was miles away. Now, half a century later, a family estate process brought her back into the systems  she had escaped. What unfolded in that rural courtroom echoed patterns she remembered from childhood — disbelief, minimization, and narratives that made her feel unseen. She describes these events from her own lived perspective, exploring how trauma, geography, and culture intersect in ways that continue to leave rural women and children behind. Bernadine also speaks to the broader crisis: in many rural areas, sexual and domestic violence rates remain significantly higher than in cities, and lifesaving services remain out of reach. Silence, she argues, protects the status quo — not children. This is not a story about blame. It is a story about systems, intergenerational harm, and what happens when progress bypasses entire small pockets of the country. It is also a story of reclamation. Bernadine shares her decades of work as a mental-health advocate, writer, disability-rights activist, artist, and host of this very program, reminding listeners that none of us are not defined by what was done to us, but by the life we build in its aftermath. Raw, poetic, and fiercely courageous, this episode challenges us to reconsider what safety means, who receives it, and who is left behind. A necessary listen for anyone concerned with trauma-informed justice, rural equity, or the ways silence travels across generations — and what it takes to break it.The episode is rounded off with a re-air of an interview with Jamie Smallboy and Alli Geisbrecht (Gees Brecht) here to talk about a piece of art that was exhibited at Gachet’s Oppenheimer Annual show that addresses issue of MMIWG2S – which stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2 Spirit people.  Jame is Cree and single mother of five from Maskwachees, Alberta. She is a full-time student at Langara and te founder of the Red Ribbon Skirt Project for the families of our MMIWG2S.   Ally is a child of immigrants from Hong Kong who reside in Vancouver / Chinatown.  She is an activist, person of colour, mental health occupational therapist, and a resident of Vancouver’s DTES.  The piece of artwork these two collaborated on combines photographic images by Ally and with poetry by Jamie. Jamie shares this poem with us on this episode. music by Shari Ulrich and Good Vibes TribeIf this episode moves you, helps you think differently, or sparks a conversation, please take a moment to like, share, or follow wherever you listen.Your support helps us keep amplifying lived experience and changing how we talk about madness, trauma, and recovery—one voice at a time.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Kevin Jesuino Reveals the Magic of Theatre Terrific and Richard Lett Let’s Us in on what Makes Magic for Him.  Kevin Jesuino is a first-generation Portuguese settler, performance-maker, director, choreographer, artist educator, and community arts organizer. He is a passionate advocate for the arts and a firm believer that everyone should have access to both creating and experiencing art and culture. Kevin is continually working to make the arts more inclusive and accessible for all. On his website, he writes: “Since 2004, my artistic practice has been driven by a radical interdisciplinary integration of performance, socially engaged art, and digital media. I create work—including performance, video art, temporary public artworks, and participatory installations—that is fundamentally rooted in the belief that art serves as a catalyst for collective emancipation. My central focus is to establish co-creative spaces that facilitate an embodied exchange of care and dialogue among participants. Through experiential processes, I explore urgent themes such as accessibility, unseen histories, gender and sexuality, and urbanism across both public and private domains.”In this lively and insightful conversation with Bernadine Fox, Kevin delves into the meaning and purpose of art—its impact on individuals and communities alike—and shares his deep connection to Theatre Terrific, a vital arts organization in Vancouver, BC. Theatre Terrific pioneers inclusive opportunities for artists of all abilities to develop performance skills and collaborate on original theatrical productions. Its work challenges audiences to confront their assumptions and be moved by thought-provoking, boundary-pushing art. Every class, workshop, and production brings together a diverse mix of people—across physical, developmental, mental health, and neurodiverse spectrums, alongside practicing actors—who are collectively exploring inclusive approaches to theatre-making.Most recently, Theatre Terrific presented their newest work, Dance Floors Memoirs, at the Vancouver Fringe Festival—continuing their legacy of inclusive, community-rooted performance.Music by Shari Ulrich and Leela Gildrayphoto by Theatre TerrificBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

In Memoriam of the incredible JD Derbyshire, writer, comedian, mad activist, performer, playwright, theatre maker, director, inclusive educator and innovator.Tonight on ReThreading Madness we re-air JD Derbyshire talking with Bernadine about being mad and the need for individuals who live with mental health challenges to have agency in their lives and to consider coming out. And laughing - we laughed a lot. But one always did in the company of JD. “I don’t think we know much about the human brain and mental illness. The more I talk to other people; it seems like we all have are individual experiences with our moods and our thinking. Medication may be a part of that but we need to empower people to become aware of their emotional lives and thinking styles. Like this idea; Maybe it is possible to learn how you think and feel and know your limits and what happens when you get triggered and to still live a life taking calculated risks.”“There are just so many negative representations of people with mental illness in theatre and film and television, often written and performed by people who haven’t experienced mental illness. And these characters are almost always twisted or broken… In my experience and with a lot of MAD people I know, it is not like that at all. “ from Auburn LaneBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Meditation and Mindfulness with Alan Murdock & Impact of child sexual abuse survivors with Charlene Hellson  Since 1992, Alan Murdock has immersed himself in Soto Zen practice, seeking the stillness and clarity meditation can bring. But as a survivor of child sexual abuse, Alan also knows that mindfulness isn’t always gentle—sometimes it can open the door to old wounds and deep discomfort.Today, Alan serves on the practice committee at the Cedar Rapids Zen Center in Iowa, while also working professionally as a creative consultant and founder of Murdock Media Production. In this conversation with Bernadine, he speaks candidly about the complicated relationship survivors may have with meditation. Together, they explore both the healing potential and the hidden risks of mindfulness when one’s sense of self has been fractured by trauma.Alan offers insight into how survivors can recognize when meditation is helping—and when it might be hurting—and shares practical guidance on what to do if negative responses arise.his is not just a conversation about meditation. It’s about navigating the fine line between healing and harm, and how survivors can approach mindfulness with both hope and caution.  And then, Charlene Hellson is a proud Blackfoot who comes from the Siksika nation. Her grandfather was from the Kainai nation both of which are from the Blackfoot Confederacy in Southern Alberta.  She currently lives on the west coast of Canada.  Charlene has a background in the arts and is an actor, and writer who produces poem and short plays.  Academically, she was trained in psychology and anthropology.  She is currently working the College of Physicians and Surgeons as an Indigenous Patient Navigator.  Charlene came to the program to chat about the impact on survivors of trauma when they are told that they are strong.  Charlene gives us a good insight into how trauma operates in her life and inside of her, especially that which we are not conscious about.  Dealing with the trauma helped her to understand not just herself but her mother as well.  She described her trauma as a shawl of pain that was heavy, poisoning her, and then how taking it off lightened the load immensely.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Mental Health and the Post – Secondary Student with Angela Sterritt A few weeks ago, Angela Sterrit, an award-winning investigative journalist, TV, radio, and podcast host, and national bestselling author from the Wilps ‘Wii K’aax of the Gitanmaax community (Gitxsan Nation on her dad’s side and from Bell Island, Newfoundland, on her maternal side) gave a keynote address on mental health and the post-secondary student.  What she has to say is shocking.  Not only is mental health a serious problem among post-secondary students a problem, it is such a known problem university install bars in windows of residences to stop students from jumping.  Who is Angela:  (from her website:  https://angelasterritt.com/)  She has “worked as a television, radio, and digital journalist at CBC for more than a decade. She also hosted the award-winning CBC original podcast Land Back.  Her book Unbroken is part memoir and part investigation into the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls. It became an instant national bestseller in May 2023. Unbroken was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, one of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious literary prizes. It was also nominated for the prestigious Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Award for Best Non-Fiction Book in Canada.”  Angela announced her new book, Breakable, “will investigate how racism and colonialism cultivate harmful behaviors in men and how Indigenous men and communities are breaking cycles of unhealthy notions of masculinity.”   Angela has won an Academy Awards (Canadian Screen Award) for Best Reporter of the Year in Canada, a national Radio Television Digital News Association award, an RTDNA award, along with being named in Vancouver Magazine’s Power 50 list of the city’s 50 most influential people.  She is a motivation speaker who addresses issues such as “overcoming adversity, breaking stereotypes, and creating change and relationships in Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities”.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Forrest Lang, Author of Angel Blue: A Song of Redemption, talks about his journey through traumaTrigger Warning:  We talk about childhood trauma in this program.  Please make sure you do what you need to to take care of yourself. Meet Forrest. With an artist’s hands and a life forged in resilience, Forrest Lang has lived a journey carved by trauma, tempered by addiction, and transformed through recovery. His path moves through child abuse, foster care, and homelessness to sobriety, service, and purpose. Today, he speaks not just for himself, but for every survivor searching for light in the dark—offering strength, truth, and the promise of healing.Forrest is a tattoo artist, father, and military veteran and resides in La Jolla, California. He is the author of Angel Blue: A Song of Redemption.Bernadine and Forrest virtually sat down and talked about trauma in the way only two trauma survivors can.  From his website we grabbed this information and found that it was true for this program as well.  "Forrest’s ability to connect with his audience stems from personal experiences. He understands the struggles and doubts that individuals face on their path to success, and he uses his own story as a source of inspiration. Through his engaging storytelling and relatable anecdotes, Forrest creates an atmosphere of trust and authenticity, allowing his audience to truly connect with his message. …Forrest covers a wide range of topics, including goal setting, overcoming adversity, vulnerability, and suicide prevention. … Forrest believes that true transformation occurs when individuals are equipped with the tools and mindset necessary to take control of their own destiny. Forrest is also the author of “Angel Blue, a Song of Redemption,” a memoir on overcoming trauma and success. His written works serve as a valuable resource for individuals seeking long-term guidance and inspiration."Join us. You can find his book on Amazon or on his website angelbluebook.comMusic by Shari Ulrich and SiibiiBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Heidi Little and Her Journey to Heart-based Learning and EducationFor 30 years Heidi Little hails out of Regina Saskatchewan before she moved to Mexico and then to Austin Texas.  She has been teaching and using music to give people the sacred space to explore and decide who and what they are here for. Heidi has created The Center for Heart Based Education and The Center for Advancement in Social Emotional Learning. She has written 14 books on heart based education. Including the foundation of the Center for Advancement with it's 8 stacking modules offer tools and techniques that connect to the heart and inner guidance system we all have.  According to Heidi, despite the ways in which we flounder trying to find ourselves, inside we know who and what we are AND when we are given safe, brave space to ‘come home to self’ we can find that for ourselves. Bernadine Heidi talk about single motherhood, dealing with terminal illness and finding your way out of that twice, find ourselves, participating in waterkeepers, Dr. Emoto’s work on how our intentions affect water and therefore ourselves.  And she mentions things like soul house, source energy, plant medicine and other things that mostly went over my head.  Come and listen as I try and keep up around navigating your own inner guidance systems to find what are your unique gifts, mission and purpose for being on the planet.Music by Shari Ulrich and Heidi LittleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Cass Freeman is an Improviser, Activist, Journalist and all-round funny person.  She joins us to talk about the benefits of Improv theatre for our mental health.  She teaches Improv and is setting up class starting in September specifically for folks with mental health challenges.  She chats with Bernadine about what Improv is, why its important, and how it can help all of us overcome fear, embrace positivity and learn to inspire others.  Classes are open to anyone who self-identifies as living with a mental health challenge and she does not require any disclosures.   Then Shanice Docksin joins Bernadine for a very serious conversation about her experience with therapy abuse and exploitation.  And while that is what we are going to talk about here, that is not the most important thing about Shanice.  She is a leading Black businessewoman who has experienced her fair share of failures, challenges, and success. She transformed herself from a broken-home mentality to one of Oklahoma City’s very own published authors whose published works include "Unplugged".  Shanice is also a public speaker, coach, and a mental health/domestic violence advocate.  Shanice is one of those examples that tells us those who have been victimized by therapy abuse and exploitation are not chosen because they poor fragile, broken people.   Music by Shari Ulrich, Kelly Clarkson, and Sons of LegionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Courage to Come Back Winner in Mental Health: Theresa Duggan’s Journey From childhood trauma to becoming a beacon of hope for others, Theresa Duggan’s story is one of resilience and transformation. After surviving years of sexual abuse and a suicide attempt 12 years ago, she struggled with undiagnosed bipolar disorder for much of her life — so paralyzed by her condition she couldn’t even brush her teeth or leave the house.  Everything began to shift when she was properly diagnosed. Theresa works in hospital psych wards, supporting others facing mental illness. As someone who has walked the same path, she builds trust quickly with clients, offering them something rare: true understanding. Theresa’s journey is a powerful example of how tragedy and healing can exist side by side — and how lived experience can become a lifeline for others.  Although winning the award happened 15 years ago, she credits it with changing how she takes on the world.    And Richard Lett/Comedian and Spoken Word Artist We are then joined by Richard Lett in an interview we did a couple months back – but really wanted to get his voice back out there.  He talks about alcoholism and change and growth.  He always brings his particular form of comedy and spoken word to whatever stage he is standing on.   Music by Shari Ulrich and Omar RudbergBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Off the Map 2In this episode of ReThreading Madness, Bernadine has the joy of talking to four more writers from Off the Map: Vancouver Writers with lived experience of mental health issues.   Seema Shah was the powerhouse behind Off the Map.  She along with Betsy Warland and Kate Bird compiled and edited 33 different authors to put together this anthology of stories and poems published by Bell Press.  Seema is also one of the writers and she joins us today along Quin Martins, Sandra Yuen, and Merle Ginsburg to talk about what inspires them to write these pieces.  Each one of them graces us with a reading of their work.    Music by Shari Ulrich & Jake BanfieldBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Exploring Transference with Amy AvalonTrigger Warning: discusses therapy abuse Have you ever felt an inexplicable pull toward your therapist? Or found yourself reacting to them with emotions that seemed too big, too personal, too charged to make sense? That's transference. It's one of the most powerful, and least talked about, dynamics in the therapeutic relationship. And in the wrong hands, it becomes the mechanism through which therapists cause some of the most devastating harm.Bernadine sits down with Amy Avalon, a retired psychotherapist and passionate advocate for survivors of sexual and emotional abuse by their therapists, to pull this largely hidden dynamic into the light. Together they unpack what transference actually is, how it shapes our behaviour inside and outside the therapy room, and how a client can begin to recognize and work with it rather than be silently controlled by it. They also go where most conversations don't: What should you do when you feel transference toward your therapist? How do you name it out loud? And critically, how should a therapist respond to that disclosure, and what should they absolutely never do? Music by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Art at Outsiders and Others with Redrum the Sticker Artist“Outsiders and Others is a non-profit art Society with a focus on bringing non-traditional artists to the forefront.  Their artists identify as outsider, folk, self-taught, visionary, intuitive, and artists with disabilities.”   Outsiders and Others defines outsider art as the work of those who have no formal training, create art for themselves to record their life experiences or document historical events (not necessarily for an audience), and use non-traditional materials (like found objects).  In May, Mental Health Awareness month, Outsiders and Others presented Brain Child featuring artworks from Caro Embling, REDRUM, and Gabriel Ostapchuk.  We had the opportunity to speak with Yuri Ajars. Artistic Director and Curator, about this exhibit and the gallery.  We also chatted with Redrum, the sticker artist (@redrum_ays_crew).  Redrum describes the different neurodiverse and disability issues he copes with daily but also how important art has been to his process specifically in inspiration around images and topic. You can find Outsiders and Others In Vancouver and at https://www.outsidersandothers.com/Music by Shari Ulrich  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Off the Map with writers Angela J. Gray, Venge Dixon, Mary O’Toole with music by Ren Trigger Warning: Song by Ren Gill includes foul languageMay 1st 2025 saw the release of Off the Map an anthology of prose and poetry that has to do with mental health.  ReThreading Madness had privilege of speaking to 3 of the writers included in this publication.  Venge Dixon is a nonbinary lesbian who writes, creates art (and comic books) and make music.  She wraps a heart-warming story about a very difficult time in her life around a cat named Linus who showed up and put a wrench in her plan’s to die.  Angela J. Gray is an emerging black writer who writes about the “impact of colonization on children of African/Caribbean Diaspora who were adopted into white homes” in what, in her case, looks just like 60s Scoop. Mary Phyllis O’Toole says “ she writes, not only for emotional catharsis, but to shine a light on schizophrenia.”  All of them share a portion of their writing with us during this hour.  In addition, we have included a song entitled “Hi Ren” by Ren Gill, a musician from the UK who used music to have a conversation with himself about his current state of mental health and in, so doing, gives us an incredible inside view of what his world is like while leaving us all inspired and hopeful. Music by Shari Ulrich & Ren GillBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Courage to Come Back: Rachel Fehr (2017) and David Chalk (2025)The most obvious thing about Rachel Fehr and David Chalk is that they are not defined by diagnoses and for both of them they have carried several labels.  All of which are important only in that  they defied them all.  Rachel is the 2017 Courage to Come Back award winner in mental health. In the years since then, she has gone from teaching marital arts to attending classes and using what she learned to parse out which of the psychiatric diagnoses she was given were accurate and which were misdiagnoses -and then realizing as is so usual her autism had been misdiagnosed as borderline.  From this she created new and positive life skills and taken her life that much farther.  Now she wants to use her skills to create a traditional medicine farm as 2nd stage housing for men coming out of prison.  David won the Courage to Come Back award this year (2025) has defied every assumption adults had about him as a child. He created his own businesses and was a millionaire at 28 years despite being told graduating from high school that the only life he could hope for was welfare, jail, or a psych ward.  Despite his success he held a burdensome reality.  His ADHD messed with his focus.  His Dyslexia messed with his ability to read.  And his pragnuh… meant he had a difficult time just recognizing faces – any faces.  But clearly David is not someone his accepts what others might consider fate.  At 62 years he participated in a program which led to him being able to read in 11 hours.  Now, he is developing an educational program that can be used around the world to help others to do the same.Music by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Therapy Harm Resistance Project with Natalie Russ  Natalie Russ is a psychologist and psychotherapist, with a background in dialogue and deliberation, training pedagogy, and community organizing. She was harmed in a twelve-year psychodynamic therapy beginning in adolescence, as well as in post-harm therapies with well-meaning therapists who, like most in the mental health industry are not trained to support therapy harm survivors. In addition to content creation, she writes and publishes poetry on her therapy harm and post-abuse therapy experiences. Her particular areas of interest include post-abuse therapies and therapist education on working with therapy harm survivors. (taken from https://www.natalierusspsyd.com/therapy-harm)Natalie Russ joins us to discuss her recent work establishing the Therapy Harm Resistance Project (THRP), an advocacy and support endeavor to address therapy harm as a disavowed reality in the mental health field. We are creating content and resources for survivors, clients, and therapists, hoping to support a broader and ever-growing therapy harm resistance movement. We seek to join others within the therapy harm resistance space to build conversation and capacity. This movement needs a thriving ecosystem of activism, advocacy, scholarship, training, and victim/survivor support infrastructure. Music by Shari Ulrich, Jann Arden, Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Wildflower Alliance and the Power of Peer Support with Caroline Mazel-CarltonWhat happens when people who have survived the mental health system begin building alternatives to it? In this powerful episode of ReThreading Madness, Bernadine Fox speaks with psychiatric survivor and peer support advocate Carolyn Mazel-Carlton of the Wildflower Alliance about forced treatment, psychiatric institutionalization, voice hearing, suicide, belonging, and the transformative power of peer-led support. Carolyn shares her own experiences of entering psychiatry at eight years old, surviving coercive treatment, and eventually finding healing not through deeper clinical intervention, but through community, connection, and reclaiming agency over her own life. Together they explore the limits of the Western clinical model, particularly its emphasis on diagnosis, hierarchy, and social control over genuine healing. Carolyn discusses how peer support, like what we do here on ReThreading Madness, challenges those power structures by centering lived experience rather than professional authority, and why environments rooted in mutuality, curiosity, and self-determination can be profoundly healing for people navigating distress, suicidality, voice hearing, trauma, and extreme states. The conversation also examines Wildflower Alliance’s groundbreaking Alternatives to Suicide groups, peer respite houses, spiritual exploration groups, and their commitment to dismantling systemic oppression within mental health support itself. This episode is ultimately about something larger than services or diagnoses. It asks what becomes possible when people are trusted to define their own experiences, when suffering is understood within social and political context, and when healing begins not with control, but with relationship, dignity, and belonging.Music by Shari Ulrich and We ThreeBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Mad Pride Art Café 2025 with Richard Lett, CR Avery, and Lea TarantoTrigger Warning:  some of the language used in creative material may be offensive to some people.These three artists performed live at the Mad Pride Art Café at the Gathering Place in downtown Vancouver, BC.  Richard brought his particular form of comedy and spoken word.  CR performed musical/spoken word pieces that can only be heard to fully appreciate.  And Lea gave us a reading from her new book A Drop in the Ocean.  Music: Shari Ulrich, Shawn Mendes, Jelly Roll, and ScottBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Building Self-Worth with Tavares GarrettTavares A. Garrett CNC, CPT, BCS is a “Health & Transformation Educator, Motivational Speaker, Mentor, Author, Servant Leader, Energy Giver/Healer, Podcast and TV Host. He's certified by NASM (National Academy Of Sports Medicine) and is the owner of The Body Synthesis.” As you listen you will recognize that Tavares is someone who uses his skill to connect and listen with people to create an environment to help that individual build self-worth.  He comes and chats with Bernadine to talk about what are the ingredients to transform pain and trauma into rediscovering self and building self-worth: necessary for taking action and making change happen.  “He loves to help others re-build & rediscover themselves through nutrient-rich, preventative medicine coaching, behavioral change, fit-nutrition, sobriety support and enlightenment.”  Tavares has published several books including, “Kissed by the Wind” “A book of Poems and Passions” Volumes 1, 2 & 3 and “I Like That” A Book of Inspirational quotes, The Body Synthesis - Guide To A Better Mind, Guide To A Better Body, The P.F.O. Method and is the Host of Living Your Truth w/ Tavares & The Black Love Xperience Podcast.”Music by Shari Ulrich, Ana Clendening, Omar RudbergBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Raising Drug Resistant Kids with Elisa Fortise  Christiansen  Elisa Fortise Christensen joins RTM to discuss her 30-year history of addiction with prescription drugs which she developed after a back injury.  She has been clean for many years but that addiction spurred her on to examine how to protect her kids from the same fate.  Elisa is an American author, poet and public speaker who has been through some real-life challenges but who lives her life with gratitude, love and passion.  She has written 8 books all of which focus on approaching life with what she calles “crazy courage and deep gratitude.”  We sat down to discuss the material she has outlined in her book “Teen Warrior: Raising Drug-Resistant Kids”You can find more information about Elisa at https://www.authorelisa.comMusic by Jelly Roll and Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Judy and I on Dissociative IdentitiesThis program comes out of seeing one more untrained therapist postulate that folks with dissociative identities (formerly known as multiple personalities) are rare and dysfunctional or simply do not exist.   Judy and I are here to push back against this assumption that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  If you are a woman in Canada and haven’t heard of Judy Rebick, you haven’t been paying attention.  Judy is a Canadian writer, journalist, political activist, and is considered one of Canada’s leading feminists.  She was the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and held the Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy.  She rubbed elbows and engaged with politicians in intense discussions.  She has been the TV host for CBC programs and was the founder and publisher for rabble.ca.  Judy is known as a vocal spokesperson to legalize abortion and taking on a protestor with a pair of garden shears pointed at Dr. Morgentaler.  She is the author of Heroes in My Head (2018) which outlines not just her political life but that of her personalities. And while my audience has come to know me over the years, for the purpose of this program it is important that I fill you in a bit more.  I am a graduate of Emily Carr University and an established visual artist, curator, and instructor.  I worked as a film production manager before becoming a peer support worker and consultant for those with childhood trauma and dissociative identities.  For 30 years, I have been an award-winning mental health advocate and am the host of this program which is Canada’s longest-running syndicated show on mental health where we disregard colonial-based ideas about mental health and the DSM.  I am a survivor of human trafficking and spent years speaking out against organized crime.  I currently provide peer support through TELL the Therapy Exploitation Link Line to survivors of therapy abuse and exploitation.  I am a public speaker providing workshops on TAE and facilitating peer support groups for fellow survivors.  And I have, like Judy, authored a memoir, Coming to Voice, which chronicles surviving an abuse therapist and the role my dissociative identities played in saving my life.So to dispel the myth that folks with DI are fragile and dysfunctional, Judy and I are here to answer the questions sent into ReThreading Madness listeners of what DI is from our lived experience.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

ADHD, PTSD, and Autism with Randi-Lee Bowslaugh   Randi-Lee Bowslaugh is a fellow warrior out there around the issue of mental health awareness fighting the inappropriate stigma we face as folks who live with mental health challenges.  Randi-Lee is an author and outspoken advocate for mental health.  She has lived with depression from the age of 14 years and was eventually diagnosed with autism and PTSD as an adult.  She is the host of the Write or Die Show a podcast that you can find on You tube.  And of course, like so many of us, as a well-rounded person she has other sides to her.  One of them is kickboxing in 2015 she was a Canadian National Champion and in 2016 she won silver in Pan-Am games.  Randi-Lee is also a mother and grandmother.Music by Shari Ulrich and Brandi CarlisleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Connection Salon & Gathering Place, Crisis Centre of BC & Kagan Goh  In today’s program we speak with Pierre Leichner from the Connection Salon here in Vancouver BC and Carrie Campbell from the Gathering Place about their collaboration to ensure that art comes to those who live with mental health challenges. We also speak with Mark Sheehan, Program Director, and Paul Vincent, Volunteer, about the Youth Education projects bringing mental health information to youth through the Crisis Centre of BC. And then Kagan Goh joins us to talk about his upcoming documentary on mental health entitled Common Law.  Music by Shari UlrichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

What does Mental Health, Psychiatry, and the Ouija Board have in Common? Dan Nelson, is the author of Ouija Board and the Skeptic (Mad In America) and holds a BA in Philosophy, MA in Human Resources and Industrial Relations. Through twenty years of working in management systems, he knows that systems are designed to output a particular product or service and that the system was the cause of any and all undesirable results the system outputs. In this article, he states that the mental health systems are responsible for their lack of ability to assist some who live with mental health challenges. Dan writes, “Psychiatry's practices are so entrenched, its methods so accepted, that skeptics and outsiders are often dismissed as uninformed or unqualified simply because they haven’t undergone the same training that instills confidence in its frameworks. But skepticism, especially from those with lived experience, isn’t just valid—it’s necessary. It forces us to question whether our tools and methods truly serve those they claim to help.” We respond to our lives, our challenges, our struggles. Too often mental health issues are a normal and nature response to trauma. As Dan points out if the psych industry isn’t looking at the systems around their clients and changing those systems, and instead they medicate and work with the client to be able to tolerate the difficulties they are dealing with – they aren’t solving the morning. They are applying a band aid. A good example of this is how our systems are designed to pathologize the victim is schoolyard bullying. Too often the victim is expected to learn to develop new skills to deal with the bully. Often they must be extricated from the school to be protected. The bully, too often, is not confronted or restricted in ways that would prevent the bullying. Dan demonstrates how we can take that same example and apply it to the mental health system where victims come forward with mental health challenges caused by environmental factors and yet the industry will medicate the victim instead of looking at how to change the environment. The DSM and psychiatry is accepted to often without including the possibility (like with a Ouija Board) that perhaps it is not truth.    Music by Shari Ulrich and Jelly RollBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Spotting a Coaching Scam with youtube creator Danielle RyanDanielle Ryan describes herself as a youtube channel creator and “just a troll on the internet covering topics related to the business & life coaching industry.”  As she says, part of the problem is lack of regulation and then what happens when coaches coaches to become coaches.  She spends a lot of time sharing “my silly little opinions as I deep dive into *allegedly* problematic people, organizations, and techniques used to manipulate people in the space while also sprinkling in the occasional small business video.” Her channel is a mix of educational & commentary content. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@itsdanielleryanWebsite: https://danielleryan.me Music by Shari Ulrich, David Laronde, and Elizabeth WallaceBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Past Lives, Spiritual Experience, and Mental Health with Kerie LoganWhat happens when experiences that feel profoundly real to someone are dismissed outright by the mental health system?In this episode of ReThreading Madness, Bernadine Fox speaks with hypnotherapist Keri Logan about past lives, spiritual experiences, intuition, generational trauma, and the growing intersection between spirituality and mental health.Together they explore why some people find healing, meaning, or emotional resolution through past life regression and spiritual frameworks even in the absence of scientific consensus around reincarnation itself. The conversation moves beyond sensational ideas about “who someone was in a past life” and instead focuses on how unresolved emotional experiences, recurring fears, relationship patterns, nightmares, physical symptoms, and generational trauma may be interpreted and worked through within spiritual or regression-based approaches. The discussion also touches on inner child work, epigenetics, intuition, ancestors, and the role of forgiveness, self-awareness, and emotional healing.At the same time, the episode asks difficult questions about how Western mental health systems respond to experiences involving spirits, visions, ancestors, or reincarnation. In many communities and cultures, including numerous Indigenous cultures, ancestors, spiritual connection, and reincarnation are integrated parts of life and identity. Yet within mainstream psychiatry, similar experiences are often pathologized, medicalized, or dismissed entirely. This episode does not ask listeners to accept any particular belief system as fact. Rather, it examines the tension between lived experience, spirituality, culture, and institutional understandings of mental health and asks what happens when people are denied language or space to explore experiences that feel deeply meaningful to them. Because whether one believes in past lives or not, the emotional and psychological impact of these experiences on people’s lives is undeniably real.Music by Shari Ulrich and BornMore information about Kerie Logan at:Website: https://mastertheupperrooms.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mastertheupperroomsPodcast: On all platformsInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/mastertheupperrooms/https://www.empoweredwithin.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

With Matt Sandoval from FreeArts AZ and Kagan Goh producer/director of Common LawMatt Sandoval, is the new Executive Director for FreeArts in Arizona. FreeArts AZ provides traumatized children and their families with a means of creative expression and as means of establishing resilience and offering mentorship.  And Kagan Goh talks with ReThreading Madness about his new film, Common Law, a biographical account of his experience of learning he had BiPolar and how this impacted on his relationships with his long-time girlfriend and family.  Through this we learn how individuals who receive Persons With Disability in BC, are unable to keep this benefit if they enter into a common-law relationship and how that changes the relationship and their own sense of self.  Kagan also talks about his preference for the term manic/depressive instead of BiPolar.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

Trigger Warnng:  This episode includes information about therapy abuse and may be triggering for some folks.I Married my Therapist:  Ken Schultz is an advocate for mental health reform and a survivor of therapy abuse and exploitation.  He is using his personal experience of harm to raise awareness about unethical therapeutic relationships and their lasting impact. Through his story, Ken aims to inspire change in laws and practices to protect others from similar experiences. If we want to examine the power and authority mental health professionals have over their clients – Ken’s story is a prime example.  He saw this therapist for 3 months and in that time frame, he went from someone who had zero attraction to being sexually exploited by her all the while believing how she defined it as ok.  If we want to examine how the institutions should be assisting us after we have experienced therapy abuse and exploitation, Ken is another prime example.  The therapist he was seeing reported her, then left him to deal with the fallout on his own.  The Texan state licensing board narrowed his complaint down to violating one aspect of the statutes:  the timeline.  His “therapist” dragged out leaving the ‘marriage’ to prevent a complaint based on the allotted time.  But the licensing board ignored another statute that their social workers are not allowed to have sexual contact with a current or former client – of which she clearly had violated and of which had done so within the statute of limitations.   And his church and police believed her statements without any corroboration and victimized him again.   Things must change.  We all need to wake up to harm perpetrated against those who have experienced therapy abuse and exploitation so that we are not inadvertently exacerbating that harm that is already catastrophic in too many cases.  Music by Shari Ulrich and Shawn MendesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca

It’s a New Year   Today’s program is a slightly different structure.  As we walk into the next year, several people came to share their hopes for themselves, their family and friends - with all of you.  It is an uplifting show that demonstrates the amount of care and generosity that exists all around us.  The program is our personal thank you to all who have been a part of the ReThreading Madness family whether as a guest or behind the scenes making sure the show goes out each week.  This has been a hell of a year – monumental even.  A big part of that was being able to chat with some of the most incredible people from around the world.   As the host of ReThreading Madness, I consider myself blessed because of it.  But also because of you, our listeners, who join us each week.   Today we are joined by Jodi Grey, Charlene Hellson, Kayle Ackerman, Jackie Crowchild, Michelle Oucharek Deo, Peter Morin, Kagan Goh, Alex Sangha and Amy Avalon. Our inspirational music today was by the Animals, Sara Barielles, Anna Glendening, Rachel Platten, Josh Groban, Kelly Clarkson, Zach Williams, Scott Callum, Peter Morin, and as always Shari Ulrich sings us into and out of each program each week. Bernadine’s personal message to our listeners:  So here is wishing you a year full of caring, compassionate and supportive people, safe and gentle havens, along with personal growth, brave new insights, spontaneous, joyful fun and a trust in yourself that grows every day.  But most of all she wishes for you a peace which settles into your heart as though it has always belonged there. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.www.rethreadingmadness.ca