Becoming a mother rearranged how I understood care.

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It stopped feeling like something one person gives and another receives. It became something built in relationship, imperfectly, repeatedly, and almost always together.

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I was married for ten years. I've now been divorced for nearly as long. For most of my children's lives, I've parented largely on my own.

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That experience taught me just how much we ask of mothers, and how little we ask of the families, communities, and wider networks meant to surround them.

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It made me question the stories we tell about independence, self-sufficiency, and doing it all ourselves. More than anything, it showed me that care was never meant to be an individual achievement. It was always meant to be something shared.

I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was forty.

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Before that, I spent years trying to become someone else. More productive. More organized. More consistent. More "normal." I learned to mask well enough that much of the struggle remained invisible, until eventually it didn't.

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Discovering ADHD didn't feel like finding what was wrong with me.

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It felt like discovering I'd been asking the wrong question.

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Instead of asking, "Why was I struggling so much?" I began asking,

"Why are so many of us trying to force ourselves into ways of living that don't honour the rhythms and diversity of being human?"

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I began to wonder whether many of the environments we'd built, and the narrow definitions of success they reward, were creating disability in ways we'd mistaken for personal failure.

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That shift changed far more than how I understood ADHD. It reshaped how I think about people, suffering, and the systems we ask them to fit themselves into.

I moved constantly as a child because of circumstances beyond my control.

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As an adult, I found myself doing the same for different reasons, but with a familiar feeling of starting over.

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By now, I've moved more than forty times.

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I've packed up entire lives.

Lost almost everything.

Started again more times than I can count.

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There was grief in that.

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There was instability.

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There were years when home felt less like a place and more like something I was searching for.

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But there was freedom too.

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Repeatedly beginning again slowly loosened my attachment to things.

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When you have very little left to lose, taking risks becomes easier.

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That willingness carried me, often with my children beside me, to places I might never have imagined living otherwise. Florida. Guatemala. Mexico.

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Living this way gave me an intimate understanding of displacement, uncertainty, and what it means to live at the edges of systems that promise stability but don't always provide it. It also changed how I think about home. Not simply as a place to own or settle, but as something shaped by relationship, responsibility, and belonging.

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It also left me with another question.

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As a third-generation settler of predominantly European ancestry, where is the "right" place for me to put down roots? What does it mean to build a home while taking seriously the histories of the lands I live on, and my responsibilities to them?

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I don't have an answer.

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It's a question I'm still living into.

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Moving so many times taught me that beginning again is a skill.

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One I never asked to learn.

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But one that has shaped almost every part of who I am.

I moved to Lake Atitlán for many of the reasons people do.

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It was affordable.

The climate suited me.

It was known for its strong sense of community.

And it was home to one of the largest Indigenous populations in Central America.

At the time, I imagined I might be able to contribute something meaningful there.

Instead, I was the one who needed to learn.

Spending more than two years in Guatemala while studying Indigenous social work fundamentally changed how I understand solidarity, responsibility, and my role as a settler.

The more I learned, the more I realized there was no single community voice to listen to, no simple understanding of what people needed, and no place for me to assume I knew the answers. The histories were far more complex than I had imagined, and the realities far more layered.

I began to question many of my assumptions about what it means to "help." The more I learned, the more I realized that good intentions are not enough, and that responsibility often begins with questioning our own role, our own assumptions, and our own relationship to the communities we hope to support.

I also learned how deeply our desire to belong can shape our choices.

There were times I compromised my own values in order to fit in. Those experiences taught me how easily community can become conformity, and how important it is to remain accountable to ourselves, even when we long to be accepted.

Guatemala gave me many answers.

More importantly, it changed the questions I was asking.

Those questions continue to shape both my life and the work of Lokah.

One of the most formative experiences of my life was completing the Onajigawin Indigenous Services program at Confederation College.

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Onajigawin is an Anishinaabemowin word meaning "being prepared for the work of helping."

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The program was grounded in Indigenous Knowledge, pedagogy, cultural safety, relational accountability, prevention, and community wellbeing. We studied the histories and ongoing impacts of colonization, Indigenous resurgence, intergenerational trauma, governance, language, culture, and what it means to walk alongside children, families, and communities with humility and integrity.

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It reshaped my understanding of relationship, responsibility, and what it means to be prepared for the work of helping.

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It also changed the questions I was asking.

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As a third-generation settler of predominantly European ancestry, what does it actually mean for me to become prepared for the work of helping?

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Who am I preparing to help?

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And what if I've misunderstood my role entirely?

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The more I learned, the more I realized my responsibility is not to "help" Indigenous communities, but to take responsibility for the colonial systems, identities, and ways of relating within my own.

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That realization became the beginning of a much deeper inquiry.

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I found myself studying anthropology, the history of colonization, the emergence of patriarchy, and the long histories through which Europeans, too, became separated from many of our own ancestral ways of living, relating, and belonging.

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That understanding didn't diminish my responsibility as a settler.

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It deepened it.

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Today, I understand my work as two inseparable practices.

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Taking responsibility for dismantling the colonial identities, assumptions, and systems I have inherited.

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And remembering the ways of being my own ancestors once knew before colonization asked them to forget.

I think less about becoming a better helper, and more about becoming someone capable of being in right relationship.

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That understanding eventually grew into Before Whiteness, and continues to shape much of what I create through Lokah.

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For me, supporting Indigenous resurgence does not begin with leading Indigenous communities.

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It begins with settlers doing the work that belongs to us.