Leanne Sawchuk, Psychotherapy & Counselling Services, 276 Frederick Street, Kitchener, ON (2026)

01/06/2026

Embrace your grief, for there your soul will grow." — Carl Jung

01/05/2026

Grief does not always arrive in tears.
Sometimes it arrives as numbness.
As relief you don’t feel allowed to name.
As guilt that settles heavy in the chest.
As isolation, when the world keeps going and you’re still standing in the wreckage.
As grief for someone who is still breathing, but no longer reachable.

Some grief is loud.
Other grief is quiet, hidden, misunderstood....even by the person carrying it.

If your grief doesn’t fit into a neat box, if it doesn’t look the way you thought it should,it is still grief.

And it still deserves space.

A space for the grief that doesn’t have words yet.

💚 Grief Untethered is an 8-week online grief group for adults in Ontario, beginning February!

Registration is opening soon!
🔗 Link in bio to be added to waiting list.

01/03/2026

Grief does not always arrive in tears.
Sometimes it arrives as numbness.
As relief you don’t feel allowed to name.
As guilt that settles heavy in the chest.
As isolation, when the world keeps going and you’re still standing in the wreckage.
As grief for someone who is still breathing, but no longer reachable.

Some grief is loud.
Other grief is quiet, hidden, misunderstood....even by the person carrying it.

If your grief doesn’t fit into a neat box, if it doesn’t look the way you thought it should,it is still grief.

And it still deserves space.

A space for the grief that doesn’t have words yet.

💚 Grief Untethered is an 8-week online grief group for adults in Ontario, beginning February 2026!

Registration is opening soon!

01/02/2026

A new year doesn’t erase grief, or anything, for that matter.

It doesn’t soften it or tuck it neatly into last year’s calendar. The numbers change, the days keep moving, and still grief comes with you faithfully, quietly, sometimes unbearably. It settles into the body and the breath, into the here and now, into the space between thoughts. It becomes part of how you move through the world.

We carry so many kinds of grief, often without language for them, often alone. Not just the grief of death, but the grief of endings that were never acknowledged. The grief of relationships that required too much of us. The grief of losing parts of ourselves just to belong. The grief of carrying expectations we never agreed to, never chose, but somehow learned to hold anyway.

There is also the grief of being hurt. The kind that leaves you searching for words while the world grows quiet around you. The grief of what happened and the grief of the silence that followed. The grief of contorting yourself to fit into spaces never designed with you in mind. The grief of being judged, misunderstood, seen through someone else’s unhealed lens and having that version of you stick.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how grief reorganized my life into befores and afters.
Before I knew what it cost to keep the peace.
Before I understood how deeply disrespect erodes the soul.
Before I stopped abandoning myself in small, quiet ways.

And alongside that reflection, something else has emerged - clarity. While many things will never be what I imagined, I now sit with different questions. Not what did I lose, but what do I want the after to feel like?

There are answers I didn’t have then. Hard-earned ones. I know what matters. I will always carry grief, but I’m learning to carry it with intention, honesty, and dignity.

If this resonates, you’re not alone.

💚 Grief Untethered is an 8-week online group where grief in all its forms is welcomed and witnessed. You don’t need the “right” kind of loss, just a willingness to show up as you are.

🔗 in bio.

01/01/2026

A new year doesn’t erase grief, or anything, for that matter.

It doesn’t soften it. It doesn’t tidy it up or tuck it neatly into last year’s calendar. The numbers change, the days keep moving, and still, grief comes with you faithfully, quietly, sometimes unbearably. It settles into the body and the breath. Into the here and now. Into the space between thoughts. It becomes part of how you move through the world.

We carry so many kinds of grief, often without language for them, often alone. Not just the grief of death, but the grief of endings that were never acknowledged. The grief of relationships that required too much of us. The grief of losing parts of ourselves just to belong. The grief of carrying expectations that were placed on us...expectations we never agreed to, never chose, but somehow learned to hold anyway.

There is also the grief of being hurt. The kind that leaves you searching for words while the world grows quiet around you. The grief of what happened and the grief of the silence that followed. The grief of contorting yourself to fit into spaces that were never designed with you in mind. The grief of being judged. Of being misunderstood. Of being seen through someone else’s unhealed lens and having that version of you stick.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how grief has reorganized my life into befores and afters.
Before I knew what it cost me to keep the peace.
Before I understood how deeply disrespect erodes the soul.
Before I stopped abandoning myself in small, quiet ways.

And alongside that reflection, something else has been emerging - clarity.

While there are so many things that will never be what I once imagined, I find myself sitting with a different set of questions now. Not what did I lose, but what do I want the after to feel like? What has been revealed? What do I see now that I couldn’t see before?

There are answers now that I didn’t have then. Hard-earned answers.
I know that doing my best is enough, even when it disappoints others.
I know what matters. I know who matters.

I feel like integrating grief and the clarity that has been revealed as made me a living archive of love, loss, endurance, and truth. Grief has sharpened my discernment and clarified my values.

I will always carry grief.
But I am learning how to carry it differently.
With intention. With honesty. With dignity.

If this resonates and if something in you tightened or softened while reading this, you are not alone, even if it has felt that way.

💚 Grief Untethered is an 8-week online group where grief in all its forms is welcomed and witnessed. This is a space for the grief that was never named, the harm that was followed by silence, and the parts of you learning how to live in the after.

You don’t need the “right” kind of loss to belong here.
You just need to be willing to show up as you are.

12/31/2025

Grief is not reserved for death alone.
That’s just the kind we’re most comfortable naming.

But grief lives in quieter places too.
In endings that didn’t come with casseroles.
In losses that no one gathered around us for.
In moments where life simply… changed....and never changed back.

We grieve relationships that ended without closure.
We grieve people who are still breathing, but no longer reachable.
We grieve the version of a parent, a partner, or a friend who slowly disappeared before our eyes.
We grieve the life we were building and the one we were sure was coming.

We grieve our health.
Our identities.
Our sense of safety.
The timeline we trusted.
The dreams we quietly released because holding onto them hurt too much.

Some grief is loud and undeniable.
Other grief is invisible, even to ourselves at times.
It shows up as heaviness, irritability, numbness, exhaustion.
As the sense that something is wrong, but you can’t quite point to where it broke.

If you’ve been carrying something heavy and telling yourself,
“I shouldn’t feel this way,”
or “Others have it worse,”
or “This doesn’t count as grief”....

Maybe this is the permission you didn’t know you were waiting for.

Grief is the reflection of connection.
Sometimes it reflects what was lost.
Sometimes it reflects what never got the chance to exist.
Both can ache just as deeply.

And none of it needs to be rushed, minimized, or carried alone.

If something in this stirred recognition, if your body softened or your chest tightened, you’re not imagining it. There is room for what you’re holding.

📣Grief Untethered is back - this time as an 8-week online group for adults in Ontario who are ready to tend to their grief with honesty, gentleness, and depth.

You don’t need the “right” kind of loss to belong here.

Registration opening soon. Limited spots available.
Get yourself added to the waiting list --> https://forms.gle/yHkboPMsNSL9wopa7

12/15/2025

Amongst other things, I am a Relational Psychotherapist and I am often asked what that means, exactly. Here's the coles notes version.

Being a relational psychotherapist means I don’t just listen to *what* you say. I pay attention to *how* you say it. I notice when you pull away, when you perform, when your voice softens right before you tell the truth. I’m listening for what lives underneath the words, because that’s often where the real story is.

I’m also paying close attention to the space between us. In relational work, that space matters. It often mirrors the ways you’ve learned to connect, protect yourself, brace for loss, or long for closeness in every other relationship you’ve had.

What unfolds between us isn’t incidental, it’s information.

While all psychotherapists are trained to support insight, healing, and symptom relief, relational psychotherapy places the relationship itself at the center of the work. I don’t believe pain lives in isolation. It lives in patterns and attachment wounds shaped in relationships that were inconsistent, conditional, or unsafe. Those patterns don’t just get talked about; they show up in real time, in the room.

I have no interest in sitting outside your experience pretending to be neutral or untouched. I will show up with you. Not to rescue. Not to fix. But to notice, together, how closeness feels, how conflict lands, how abandonment echoes, how love gets negotiated when it’s uncertain or hard. The therapeutic relationship becomes a living space where these dynamics can be seen, named, and slowly transformed.

Sometimes that means gently naming what’s happening right here. Sometimes it means noticing when you expect me to leave, or when you brace for rupture. Sometimes it means being upset with me and naming that, and holding steady when old patterns are asking for a familiar ending. And yes, occasionally it means pointing out that the way you’re relating with me is the same way you relate everywhere else, always with care, timing, and compassion.

Relational therapy isn’t about becoming “better.” It’s about becoming aware. about It’s deep work. Messy work. Human work.

It’s not quick. It’s not tidy. But it’s real.

12/10/2025

A couple of days ago, I was in conversation with someone who said, through tears, that she has unfairly been made the villain. She’s aching for the people who she thought cared about her, to see her instead of labeling, judging, or abandoning her.

I felt the heaviness of that in my own bones, partially because of how much resonance I felt while listening to her, and also because because so many of us know what it’s like to be rewritten into a story that doesn’t belong to us and to watch people choose the version of you that fits their wounds better than the truth.

One of the hardest and most liberating truths you will ever let land in your body is that you can survive being disliked.

Not because it doesn’t hurt, because it does.
Not because you’ve stopped caring, because you’re human.
But because your sense of self no longer rises and falls on someone else’s approval.

So many of us spend years contorting ourselves into shapes that keep everyone else comfortable.

We dim. We shrink. We over-explain. We conform.
We walk on emotional eggshells, hoping it will buy us safety.
We think if we are soft enough, controlled enough, agreeable enough… maybe we will finally be spared.

And still… someone will misunderstand you.
Still… someone will cling to a story about you that has nothing to do with who you are.
Still… someone will judge you even when you are bending over backwards to be harmless.

Because people will often choose the narrative that protects their version of reality.

You can play small and they’ll critique you. You can appease and they’ll still find fault. You can stay silent and tolerate disrespect and still end up being the one they blame.

There is no amount of self-erasure that guarantees safety in someone else’s mind.
At some point, the question shifts from, “What do I need to do so they like/accept/love me?” to “Can I live with myself if I keep abandoning who I am?” Because self-loyalty isn’t loud. It arrives quietly. You realize you cannot keep betraying yourself to be chosen, loved, or accepted by them.

There is a quiet, steady peace that arrives when you stop outsourcing your worth to other people’s moods, projections, and wounds.

Something I remind myself of is this:
Being disliked is uncomfortable.
But abandoning yourself is a wound that never heals.

12/10/2025

“Healing is not becoming the best version of yourself; it’s letting the worst parts of you be loved.”
— Unknown

11/28/2025

There will be people in your life who will be uncomfortable with your feelings and maybe you are uncomfortable with them too. But here's the thing: feelings are not separate from “what else is going on.” They ARE what’s going on. And yet, so many of us have learned to shrink our emotions, hide them, or over-intellectualize them.

I have encountered many people who are deeply uncomfortable with their own feelings. Some have been taught that their emotions are “too much,” or they’ve been punished, dismissed, or shamed for feeling. Or sometimes, they simply don’t know how to sit with them safely. And then there are those who are uncomfortable when others show emotion, like it makes the air heavier, or demands something from them they’re not ready (or able) to give.

Here’s something I often share with my clients: feelings are our inner experiences. They are the raw, subjective awareness of what is happening in our body and mind. Emotions, on the other hand, are the external expression of those feelings. They are what comes out through our voice, face, actions, and energy. Emotions are feelings made visible. Understanding this distinction can help us give ourselves permission to *have* feelings, even when we’re afraid of what might come out.

Feelings are not optional, really. They are your internal compass, your truth, your body’s language when your mind can’t fully articulate what’s happening inside. They show you where you are hurt, where you are longing, where you are alive, where you are numb.

Your feelings are not a problem. They are part of the human condition. They are the root of understanding, the doorway to connection with yourself, and with others who can hold you fully (and safely).

11/14/2025

Sometimes, avoiding accountability isn’t about being difficult, defiant, or stubborn, it’s about survival.

For some people, being wrong, being seen, or being held responsible felt too dangerous at some point in their life so now they do everything they can to avoid it. Avoiding it became a way to stay safe and a way to protect themselves. Accountability can’t grow where safety doesn’t exist. I know how much we often want people in our lives to take accountability, but trying to froce this to happen may feel more like an attack, not an invitation.

But this doesn't mean you just accept this, especially if it means you end up on a perpetual loop of self-abandonment.

Being on the receiving end of that is brutal. You feel unseen. Your feelings don’t land. Your needs get pushed aside. You start questioning if your voice even matters, if your heart is safe, if trust is possible. It can leave you frustrated, lonely, and sad because the pattern keeps repeating.

It's wildy disorenting.

Here’s the hard truth: sometimes, we can’t wait around for someone to become accountable. We can’t make them do it. And as much as we want them to, as much as we need them to, growth in someone else isn’t something we can control.

But waking away is not the only option, nor should it be. You can hold space for them while protecting yourself. You can be consistent in expressing your feelings, calmly naming what hurts and what you need. You can encourage reflection by asking open, compassionate questions rather than trying to force a change. And you can acknowledge the small steps they are capable of taking, because this will go a long way.

10/19/2025

Not everything is meant to take root,and we can't always rush what is.

I’ve been thinking about how much of life and healing resembles the slow process of planting. You tuck something small and fragile beneath the soil. You water it, you nurture it, you do everything “right,” and still… there’s this long, uncertain stretch of waiting before anything appears.

It’s such a strange kind of faith to keep showing up when you can’t yet see any proof that your effort matters. To trust that something is quietly taking shape in the dark.

There have been so many moments in my own life where I wanted to rush that process. I wanted the answers, the healing, the clarity now. I wanted to know that what I was pouring my energy into would eventually bloom. But life rarely moves on the schedule we wish it would. Real, lasting, embodied growth happens underground first. In silence. In slowness. In murky and uncertain conditions. In unexpected ways.

Sometimes, what we’re tending to needs time to anchor. We need to work out the kinks. Sometimes, it needs stillness more than strategy. And sometimes, despite all our care and hope, not everything we plant will take root. Not every dream will bloom, not every relationship will grow, not every version of ourselves will make it through the seasons.

And that’s hard. It can feel like loss or failure. But it’s also part of how we learn about timing, readiness, and alignment. Some things are meant to root elsewhere, and some not at all.

Lately, I have been asking myself what kind of conditions am I creating for the things I hope will grow? As well as the things that have died.

I have been giving myself permission to wonder about the things that aren't growing. That have died a long time ago.

The truth is, we can’t rush what’s meant to root, or always save what's meant to die.The work happens quietly, often invisibly, while we’re learning how to hold space for what we can’t yet see.

So if you’re in that in-between space right now and tending to something that hasn’t bloomed yet, I hope you can remember this: unseen growth is still growth.

Leanne Sawchuk, Psychotherapy & Counselling Services

01/06/2026

01/05/2026

01/03/2026

01/02/2026

01/01/2026

12/31/2025

12/15/2025

12/10/2025

12/10/2025

11/28/2025

11/14/2025

10/19/2025

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