Month: June 2018

Chronic IllnessLyme Disease

Weekend in the Woods

Posted on by Denise

& Lyme Prevention Tips

I just had an amazing weekend away at Campbell Bay Music Festival on Mayne Island, BC. It was an incredible weekend spent listening to great music with the most beautiful people on breathtaking farms and in magical forests. Seriously I walked into the field and couldn’t help but think, “these are my people.”. We walked around in bare feet and sat on blankets in both the light of the sun and the moon; we swam in ponds and walked through the woods and sat in the forest. It was everything I love and more (minus the makeshift outhouses!).

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BeautyGratitudeMy Journey to Enlightenment

Embracing Natural Beauty – 11 Years in the Beauty Industry

Posted on by Denise

So here’s the thing.

I love my natural curls (finally). I love the natural creases around my eyes that will one day be deep wrinkles. I love my natural grey-white hairs (though I do have way more of them than I think I should for 27!). A lot of my life in the beauty industry has been about covering up that natural beauty, changing it in some way because it’s not pretty enough. When that change is solely because you as an individual want to look a certain way for self-expression and to look the way you feel, then I love everything about that. Why shouldn’t you get to look exactly how you feel you want to look? And why would anyone other than you, have a right to an opinion on that? They don’t. They may think they do, but I’m telling you, they don’t. Don’t ever listen to anyone’s version of beauty but your own.

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Mental HealthMy Journey to Enlightenment

How to talk to your struggling youth about mental health.

Posted on by Denise

Through my positions as a youth with lived experience in the child and youth mental health world and advocating over the years, I have been asked by several parents how to talk to their children who are struggling. I can’t imagine what its like to be a parent of a child with mental health struggles, but I do know what it’s like to be on the other end of it. I’d like to think that I’ve grown and matured enough to have some kind of an idea of how to help them, but the truth is, its hard. And what works for one child and parent is not necessarily going to work for the next. There are however a few common parent-child situations that I hear most often, that I feel I can comment about.

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