A Womb With A View

01/15/2026

01/15/2026

Join us for our Kitchener screening of No Place To Grow Old
February 3, 2026
Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/no-place-to-grow-old-film-screening-tickets-1858252405969?aff=oddtdtcreator

01/15/2026

Have a burning question? Join us!

01/14/2026

01/14/2026

🧠 Understanding Your Nervous System
✨ The Polyvagal Ladder Theory ✨

Have you ever wondered why sometimes you feel calm and connected…
other times anxious or angry…
and sometimes completely numb or shut down?

This is not a personality flaw.
It’s your nervous system doing its job.

The Polyvagal Ladder Theory explains how our nervous system moves through different states of safety and survival:

🪜 Top of the ladder – Ventral Vagal (Feeling Safe)
Here, you feel calm, present, and connected.
You can talk, learn, think clearly, and regulate your emotions.
This is the state of safety and social connection.

⚡ Middle of the ladder – Sympathetic (Fight or Flight)
Your body is mobilized to protect you.
Heart rate increases, muscles tense, breathing becomes shallow.
You may feel anxious, restless, angry, or on edge.
This is survival energy — not “overreacting.”

🧊 Bottom of the ladder – Dorsal Vagal (Freeze / Shutdown)
When fighting or fleeing isn’t possible, the body shuts down.
Low energy, numbness, dissociation, collapse, or feeling disconnected.
This is the nervous system saying: “I need to survive by conserving energy.”

✨ Healing is not about staying at the top.
It’s about learning how to gently move up and down the ladder with safety, compassion, and support.

Your body isn’t broken.
It learned how to survive.
And it can learn safety again 💛

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01/13/2026

https://mealtrain.com/w4g2g7

Kindness Matters

January 12, 2026 by Lori Lafond

My deepest gratitude to Heather for signing up to provide a meal, arranging for dog food and dropping off food items.

Thank you to friends who sent a gift card or money after seeing this posted or who dropped off food items. And thank you to Rebecca of Red Osier Guild for coordinating this.

Food situation for dogs and I is taken care of. What is needed at this time is help with doing laundry (ie change for laundromat; lifting hampers to and from car); gas cards to get to medical appointments so i can retain remote work accomodation; set up of / contribution to a rent fund for a few months, as even though have been working full time with an accommodation, I no longer have Issac’s contribution and I am solely carrying the debt due to renoviction move in November and all expenses that went with that. I have been trying to put out garbage and recycling (as much as Region will pick up currently) but help in lifting would be appreciated as well. My limited mobility, health decline and winter weather have made all of this even more challenging.

Many blessings

01/11/2026

Most harm is produced and sustained by systems and structures, not by individual “bad actors.”

Individuals can cause acute harm, but systems create the conditions where harm becomes normalized, repeated, and invisible.

Policies, hierarchies, incentives, and bureaucratic rules shape behavior at scale. They reward certain actions, punish others, and make cruelty feel routine or justified.

Over time, people inside those systems often act in ways they would never choose in a relational, accountable context.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology view, chronic stress does not usually come from one person alone. It comes from environments that keep people under surveillance, uncertainty, and threat with no reliable repair.

That kind of pressure changes how people relate, make decisions, and treat one another. It erodes empathy and narrows attention, especially in institutions built around control rather than care.

Focusing only on individuals lets systems off the hook. It frames harm as a personality problem instead of a design problem. If we want less harm, the work is not just better people, but different structures, different values, and conditions that support regulation, dignity, and shared responsibility.