http://www.selkiecounselling.ca/

Selkie Counselling, 1834A Oak Bay Avenue, Victoria, BC (2025)

12/10/2025

My favourite reads of the year!

If you've been wanting to read more, take this as your sign! Go renew your library card! Take out books and rent movies and participate in programs! Set up your libby account and get on those audiobook wait-lists (but not the ones narrated by AI)! Trade books with your friends! Sign up for an a-synchronous book club!

I'm not going to wax poetic about all of these, but I need to express how Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer has fundamentally changed my outlook on the world. Probably my biggest perspective shift since going through grad school. The beauty and wisdom of this book is not news - it's well known and rightfully beloved. I'm late to the game but I think I read it at the perfect time for me (it was published in 2013, I got my copy in 2016, and loaned it to 2 people before I read it myself this year 😂).
I'll never look at seeds the same way again, or trees and plants that have dropped their leaves for winter, or moss, or asters. I feel so much more desire to be in nature and connection to it when I am. I look for birds, I work on my plant identification, I feel nourished by and responsible to the land around me. This book has given me so many gifts.

For those of you feeling shame creep in about your TBR or desire to read more, I love the wine cellar metaphor of book shelves: it's a collection and the right book will be ready for you at the right time. Your TBR is not a to-do list. You're not failing by holding on to a book before reading it or suspending your library hold a dozen times. I've been trying to get through "Complex PTSD" by Pete Walker since May and I don't think I'll finish it before the end of the year 🤷🏻‍♀️

However much or little you've read this year, that's great! Books and long-form writing is important and any amount is wonderful! I'm really proud that I'll reach my goal of 52 books again this year 🥰

(Oh, and FYI that #6 is 🌶🌶)

09/24/2025

Truly honoured to be a part of this lineup of speakers!

The Waterloo-Wellington Eating Disorders Coalition Presents: Diversifying Perspectives in Eating Disorder Care
📅 Friday, October 24th, 2025
🕘 9AM-3:30PM EST
💻 Taking place on Zoom

🎫 Tickets available at the link in the bio

"What you'll learn (and why it matters):
Our 2025 Conference highlights diverse and often overlooked perspectives in eating disorders care. This year's sessions explore fat liberation and anti-fat bias, body image and disordered eating in boys and men, neurodivergence-informed approaches to recovery, and eating disorders in q***r communities. Join us as we move beyond narrow treatment models toward more inclusive, affirming, and justice-centered care."

09/10/2025

Subletting available in our gorgeous, quiet, cozy new offices!
Our space includes 2 offices, a large waiting room, and storage/break room.

Full days (8am-8pm) are $300/mo and half days (8am-2pm or 2pm-8pm) are $175/mo.
For example, a full day on Sundays would be a total of $300 for every Sunday in the month. Rates reduce if folks are renting more than 1 day/week ✨

Office 1 is available all day on Saturday/Sunday.
Office 2 is available all day on Sunday/Monday.

Rent includes:
🌊 Free parking for you and clients!
🌊 Snacks! For you and clients. We keep a good variety stocked at all times (tea, coffee, fruit cups, cookies, gummies, chips, cheeses, juice boxes, bubbly water, crackers, candy, etc.)
🌊 Use of therapy tools (fidget toys, card decks, notepads and flipcharts)
🌊 Shared office supplies (notebooks, colour printer, laminator, paper shredder)

We're on the second floor of a quiet, mixed home and office 4-floor rental building at Quadra/Hillside. There is an elevator and two single-stall bathrooms on our floor.

There are currently 3 other liberatory-minded counsellors sharing the space with me and we'd love to have other subletters share our anti-oppressive values.

Feel free to send me a DM or email me (alexandra(at)selkiecounselling.ca) for more info!

09/03/2025

Client's have started telling me to write these down 🤦🏻‍♀️

Overheard in Selkie sessions...
“Union strong. Your counsellor isn’t a scab.”
“You know, it’s like Gandalf says, “I will not say do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.””

“I’ll be honest, sometimes I do know I’m about to say something really profound.”
“I have scent-free lotion for your tattoo if you want?”
“How annoying would a book recommendation be right now?”
“YOU HAVEN’T SEEN FLEABAG?”
“Ah, that ol’ ableist chestnut.”
“Yeah, complain! Listen, I love to complain! I’m a hater at heart about a lot of things!”
*starts singing “I’m Afraid to Talk to Men” by Chris Fleming*

08/27/2025

The internet has been pi***ng me off lately.
I had to take a TikTok break 🤡

Reminders in the age of Ozempic:
1. Yes, anti-fatness is “that deep.”
2. Fat people asking to be included in your progressive/liberatory lens is not tone policing or leftist purity culture.
3. Having bodily autonomy does not make you free from perpetuating anti-fatness.
You can make a choice for your own body, and it can still be anti-fat. (I’m begging the internet to understand this 😭)
4. Fat bodies are a normal part of human biodiversity.
5. Eugenic beliefs are all around us with the acute rise of fascism since the onset of the pandemic. Anti-fatness and ableism are canaries in this particular coal mine.
6. Be wary of choice feminism/white feminism in rhetoric around food and bodies (see point 3). Having a marginalized identity does not absolve you from accountability/responsibility. (there’s so much more nuance here, I know. Don’t @ me.)
7. FAT BODIES ARE A NORMAL PART OF HUMAN BIODIVERSITY.
8. We do not know enough about GLP1-agonist medications as treatment for eating disorders.
(These drugs being used for ED treatments scares the s**t out of me.)
9. Thin, cis-women’s eating disorders are viewed as more important than the ability for fat people to a. live, and b. live with dignity.
10. FAT BODIES ARE A NORMAL PART OF HUMAN BIODIVERSITY.

08/13/2025

I can't stop thinking about reciprocity after reading "Braiding Sweetgrass" earlier this year.

If we've lived a childhood where our needs weren't met, we'll develop a belief that we're a burden - our needs, feelings, responses are all "wrong" or "too much".

Our hyper-individualistic culture tells us we should care for ourselves, love ourselves, strictly from a place of self-worth. It's isolating, and often leaves us negotiating with capitalism, colonialism, and racism to determine our worth.

Our worth is inherent. Everyone's is.

Not asking for help because we believe we're a burden is a shame response that's trying to control the narrative of our experience. Shame tells us that we know how our loved-ones (friends, trusted colleagues, chosen family) will respond. We make the decision for them, shame thinks it knows what's best.

Resist wh*te suprem@cy culture. Resist isolation.
Ask for support. Communicate, negotiate with your people within all your capacities. Feel s**tty together without trying to fix anything. Rest together, grieve together, get angry together, make art and protest together. Connect, connect, connect.

(ID: Both slides have a background of a sealion swimming underwater with a text box that says "Reminder". Slide 1 says "Not asking for help denies our loved-ones the opportunity to show up for us." & Slide 2 says, "You are not a burden.")

06/04/2025

Can't wait to see you all there!

Plus Size Clothing Swap
📅 Saturday, July 12th
🕚 11am - 1pm
📍 Oaklands Community Centre, 2827 Belmont Ave #1, Victoria, BC

Donations of gently used 1X - 6X+ clothing can be dropped off throughout the event or on Friday, July 11th from 6-7:30pm at Oaklands.

We will have snacks and door prizes from amazing local makers!

Clothing requirements:
Size 1X and larger in good condition, Clean, no pet hair, low odor, No underwear but good condition bras and binders welcome, No shoes, No accessories, except plus-size belts, Limit 1 large garbage bag per person (donating and taking).

Transportation and venue info:
There is street parking on nearby streets
The community centre is on the number 4 bus route. It is a three block walk from the bus stop on Hillside at Belmont, with a slight incline
The venue is accessible by wheelchair and other mobility aids. The room is on the main floor
There is an automatic door button on the main door, and it is a flat surface from outside to inside the room, no ramps or inclines
There are 2 all-gender, wheelchair accessible, single-stall washrooms available in the room

Sensory & other accessibility info:
Please do not come if you are sick!
We will have masks and hand sanitizer available
This is a scent-free event
This is a low-auditory event
There will be some snacks provided and we’ll do our best to accommodate general food allergies

05/21/2025

"Abolition is not an arrival. It is an ongoing practice of rethinking through a logic of care that exists beyond the self.”
On Property by Rinaldo Walcott

05/14/2025

Recent greatest hits. Didn't even include the one about two wolves inside me and one's a feminist killjoy...

ID: The background is purple camas growing out of rocky ground. The text reads: "Overheard in a recent Selkie Counselling session... “You know, it’s like trying to polish a turd.”, “Sorry, I lost my train of thought when I said Buddhism and now all I can think of is Parker Posey.”, “NO WAY, I wrote down that exact thing you just said earlier in the session!” *excitedly shows client my notes”, “Can I be annoying for a second?”, the virtual specials: “Will you be my guinea pig and tell me if the mic
picks up the sound of my new fidget toy?”, Client: *has tea*
Me: OOOOOH what kind of tea?!, *the sound of a long string of magnetic beads crashing to the ground and me pretending nothing happened*)

05/05/2025

I'm teaming up with the wonderful folks at to host a fat clothing swap this July, and we need your help!

We need 6-7 volunteers to help receive, sort, and keep clothing organized throughout the day, and to help set up during the drop-off window the night before (pizza party included!). We'll also need a few folks who can take leftover clothing for donation.

If you'd like to volunteer, please send me an email at alexandra@selkiecounselling.ca 🥰

It's going to be a fun day of fat community. We'll have snacks and even a few door prizes!

02/19/2025

7 years after buying this copy and with 2 other people reading it before me, I finally finished Braiding Sweetgrass by !

There are too many moving and relevant quotes to pull here (one of my annotation tabs was "ah-hah moments" and there were at least a dozen).

This is a book that deserves to be savoured, read slowly, and punctuated with walks (that include bird and plant identification apps!). Trying to summarize my experience of this book honestly feels like doing it a disservice. You just have to read/listen to it!

I'm feeling extra motivated now to volunteer with the Saanich "Pulling Together" program. Have folks heard of it? Have any of you participated? Scotch broom and English ivy make me mad/sad and it's time to do something about it 🌿

In what ways do you put your hands in the earth? Gardening on your balcony? Growing plants inside? Walks by the water? Feeding birds? Swimming? Where do you feel most at home in nature?

01/15/2025

We deserve ACTUAL informed consent, not discrimination from doctors recommending (often harmful) treatments in an attempt to make us thin at any cost.
Sorry, how is that supporting our health...??????

Fat people experience incredible amounts of pressure and medical coercion to take GLP1s or have bariatric surgery.

This pressure and medical coercion increases drastically with body size. The larger your body, the more these interventions are used to gatekeep the actual care you need and deserve.

I will always stand by a fat person’s right to bodily autonomy. I will always rage at the medical industrial complex that wants us thin or dead.

We are in desperate need of informed consent for GLP1s and bariatric surgery. Doctors rarely provide this.

Thankfully, there are organizations like the Association for Size Diversity and Health , and the Medical Students for Size Inclusivity who are providing information about medical interventions and health conditions that is weight-inclusive!

My fellow fats:
We deserve to be heard and respected.
We deserve to make informed choices about our bodies and health.
We deserve unbiased care.

Check out MSSI and ASDAH health sheets if you want unbiased information! also has an amazing newsletter where she investigates anti-fatness in medicine and research.

(ID: there are 6 slides with a photo of waves crashing against driftwood on the shore. There is a cloudy sky above and wind-blown bluffs behind the waves. The text over each image is in the caption above.)

Selkie Counselling

12/10/2025

09/24/2025

09/10/2025

09/03/2025

08/27/2025

08/13/2025

06/04/2025

05/21/2025

05/14/2025

05/05/2025

02/19/2025

01/15/2025

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Featured

Share