Welcome! I’m Leigh - a Registered Clinical Counsellor (#21332) and grief therapist. My path to this work has been anything but linear, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My first career began through touch, movement, and presence - as a massage practitioner and yoga teacher. Those early years taught me about the body’s wisdom, the way emotion lives within us, and how grief shows up physically before we can put words to it.

Eventually, through life experience, I became drawn to social change and human resilience. I completed an undergraduate degree in humanities and social justice and went on to work in the field of mental health and substance use. This grounded my understanding of systemic influences on well-being and strengthened my belief in the power of compassion and client-centered care.

While I always knew that I wanted to become a counsellor, I did not initially anticipate that my work would focus on grief. Yet, this path feels both natural and deeply personal. I grew up with a terminally-ill parent (my dad) who lived with ALS far longer than his 3-5 year prognosis, and eventually passed away when I was in young adulthood. This early exposure and familiarity with grief, both of my own, and that of witnessing my dad deal with his illness and eventual death - has profoundly informed my values as a person, and my approach as a therapist.

As Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning (1959);

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”