Hi. I’m Janelle.
I support people in reclaiming their mythic selves through their bodies, life stories, and creative flow.
I support people who are interested in asking the big questions.
Like, how do we do it? How do we all survive this gorgeous, luscious, crushing experience of being alive? How do we feel so much and keep ourselves intact, fierce and loving?
I don’t have the answers. Not exactly. But here I am. And I know I’m on this earth for a few reasons, having to do with reclaiming myself fully by integrating my body with my psyche, with embodied sensation, with creative self-expression, with the mythic. With story.
My personal healing journey reflects a collective wave of longing for wholeness and meaning.
I work with those that are hungry to feel alive.
Those folks longing for vibrancy. The sublimely restless and divinely dissatisfied.
I work with those bridging states of transition, in the liminal stretch, stretching over the gap of who they were and towards who they’re becoming.
I serve the seekers.
The sensitive souls that quest and long for and can’t stop trying to figure out how to unleash the creative spirit that’s bubbling away inside.
I serve the ones with creative ambition and a hunger for self expression.
Those with a longing for love and fierceness and self-acceptance, starting with the stunning and unutterably sublime physical body.

I believe our bodies, stories and desires are the entry point of self-reclamation.
So let’s not waste any more time.
Lets come alive.

I’m an artist in how I find solace, discovery and truth through writing, dancing and painting.
Fiercely raw, open and sensitive, walking out into a world filled with people and their feelings, thoughts and experiences used to crack me in pieces.
Overwhelmed, shy, all I wanted to do was curl up and stay home. But I equally motivated to connect with people.
Shutting down and freezing up was how I coped. Navigating the push and pull of being excited but overwhelmed, relieved but disappointed, was exhausting.
Like having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brakes.
Shut-down was never the solution.
The gift of it was enough discomfort to shove me into a healing journey. I didn’t want to feel shy, overwhelmed, timid. I wanted to feel free. Alive. Like myself.
And it’s worked. Over the years I’ve shed layer after layer of discomfort, and discovered an abiding self that is joyful, connected and deeply alive.
I keep myself in this state through creative expression and embodied knowing.
I let life make it’s mark on me everyday.
People astonish me in their beauty, their pain, their resilience.
I can’t get over how incredible this world is, and how blessed I am to be in it.
In this world, in my body. The only true home I have in this lifetime.
So I live in the paradox. A severe case of curiosity and wanderlust drives me. My insatiable urge to create motivates me. Raising a child on my own grounds me.
How blessed I am to have a creative spirit and a sensitivity and a love of people in all their ways of moving, living, connecting, loving and fighting.
To live!
To be alive!
To let the world scar and crush and beautify every last closed-off space in my heart.
To invite life into my body – the truest tattoo, each experience tapping down over and over again.

For those who know someone best by how they speak of what they love:
I cannot speak of myself without speaking of my childhood home. I grew up in the wild northwest of Canada on the traditional territory of the Kwanlin Dün and Ta’an Kwäch’än Peoples in Whitehorse, Yukon. It is a land of small trees, rocky mountains and extraordinary beauty and I love it with a heart-wrenching and wildly internal yearning.
In the summers, under the endless midnight sun, I spent my time as naked as possible, playing in the dirt, climbing trees and claycliffs and walking river edges with my similarly barefoot barely-clad siblings.
In the winters we lived our lives in varying states of layers – bundled up for the severe cold and snow, then stripping off near the woodstove, in and out, up and down, encouraged, nourished, and tumbling about with an assortment of pets, cousins, friends and family.
And now, as an adult, I love my grown daughter. And flowers. The taste of rich blood-red wine evoking dirt and sex and scorching fire. Olives and dark chocolate. I love when people curse because they are so fired-up. Raunchy pop music and happy hip hop and Gaelic fiddling music, but most of all, anything I can dance to. And retreat and quiet time and trees and the blossoming of bruises and scars. I love it all.
For those who know someone best by the harrowing and challenges they have faced:
I know the wrenching pain of watching a parent die of cancer. The sharp shock and twisting gape of divorce and heartache. I know what it is to live with searing resentment and anger, and of raising a child by myself. I know the agony of friendlessness and the aching pain of being excluded – that singularly cruel vein of emotional schoolyard bullying. I know the crushing panic of having had chronic fatigue.
I know the courage it takes to pursue healing and the joys, fears and astonishment that arises on a healing path.
I still feel a longing for a big love in my life, even as I’ve settled into the discernment and pleasures of a single life. I’ve softened into acceptance of life as a solo parent, then the empty nest, and revel in the gloriousness of deep connection with my young adult daughter.
I live in the way that highly sensitive empaths do – raw and thin-skinned, often overwhelmed, but joyfully alive in the ways that learning to set limits, know my boundaries, and engage in excellent self-care provide for me.

My formal and informal life experiences, apprenticeships and education have shaped me a great deal.
I love learning.
Formally, I have degrees – in Dance, Anthropology, Hellerwork Structural Integration and, soon, Somatic Experiencing®. At times I’ve also worked towards my RedSeal in Carpentry.
I’ve studied Somatic Narrative with Kathy Kain, Sensitive Dance with Claude Coldy, consent and touch with Dr. Betty Martin, psychology and the chakras with Dr. Anodea Judith, energy awareness with Dr. Glenn Hartelius and Jungian theory with Marlene Schiwy, as well as many other formal and informal learning experiences.
I’ve worked and presented work as a writer, visual artist, indie dancer, choreographer as well as in arts administration.
This combination makes so much sense to me. My degrees combine people watching, culture and structure as expressed through the body. Carpentry and artmaking combine my creative drive with a respect for process and balance.
These things all interloop: healing. Home. Making meaning. Shelter. The body. As the only true home we ever have.
Informally, deep wells of grief, loss and rage have schooled me well. Life has delivered many lessons and humbled me in the best ways possible.
I’m so human. I’ve resisted the lessons and humbling, struggled and fought against them before yielding.
It’s in this way that I understand getting stuck in resistance, and how healing it is to move through distress and overwhelm, traumas, and become, anew.
I currently live in Vancouver, BC, Canada, on the ancestral, occupied and unceded traditional homelands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations.
All of this I offer up in service.
Sign up for The Art of Personal Mythmaking, either as a self-directed process (anytime) or as a transformational 5 month course (once per year) in which you write the first draft of your memoir whilst growing and healing in an intimate online learning environment.
Download this free PDF with 10 impactful memoir-writing prompts, or, if you want to write but are scared of painful memories overwhelming you, download this prompt with gentle, effective body-based healing techniques.
Take my free Outline Your Memoir workshop.
I’ve written for/been featured in a number of Yukon, BC, Canadian and international publications.
I’ve also been a guest presenter at numerous festivals and conferences.
Expanding on the details…
- I have an MA in Dance. When I dance, I feel free and wild and truly at home in my body, heart and spirit. I feel out-of-my-mind in the best way possible. In fact, I’ve written and researched about dance, and danced, choreographed and presented my dances locally and nationally in Canada.
- I earned a BA in Anthropology. Culture, culture and more culture – I’m a total nerd about people watching, I find it endlessly fascinating.
- My writing and photography credentials include some excellent Canadian magazines.
- I have a Diploma in Hellerwork Structural Integration. Which means since 2007 I’ve helped people correct their posture and release restrictions through a combination of deep-tissue massage, movement lessons and soulful people watching. Getting people unstuck is definitely a theme for me.
- I earned a Certificate in Women Exploring Trades and Technology to satisfy my desire to try out different hands-on skills. As a child I wanted to be many things. One of those was a carpenter (I really loved the welding too, but not mechanics).
- Teaching adults is something I love. In addition to teaching online, I’ve worked as a writing tutor and taught at Yukon College, as well all sorts of arts workshops and a York University course called Arts and Ideas.
- My visual arts have been exhibited in all sorts of venues, including a solo show at the Yukon Arts Centre Public Art Gallery. A few people said it made them cry. But the children laughed.
- I’ve lived in 3 different countries, with 5 different families (not including my own family!).
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