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About Connie Quayle

Counselling and Facilitation
gender exploration and transitions
LGBTQIA2S+ support and understanding
herbalism
somatic embodiment
post traumatic stress recovery
psychedelic integration
nature connection therapy
garden therapy
child, youth and whole family support

As a counsellor...

I'm not conventional.

I’m not an RCC, not a clinical counsellor. I’m not a cognitive behavioral therapist. My background is in conflict analysis, in learning and personal growth, in embodiment, in ceremony, in community, in conscious dance, in psychedelics and herbalism, in shamanism, in queerness, in transness, as a woman, as a parent, as a teacher, as a survivor who has come through my own healing journeys to live a beautiful life.

 

I see all of us as participants in the systems that hold us, recognizing the reality and impact of marginalization and privilege, and I believe that the healing work that we each can do changes our world. Moving through what holds us back to live in authenticity is a gift not only to ourselves but to everyone we connect with. 

 

I love somatic work, I love deep listening, I love following conversations of discovery and sparks of curiosity. I find deep joy when someone I have supported find deeper truth. I enjoy supporting personal planning for growth and development and am grateful for conversations with people from many walks of life about how we experience the world and make sense of it. 

As a facilitator...

I base my practice in over twenty years experience working with groups, families and individuals. How we learn and cultivate our best circumstances for learning, growth and development has been an area of fascination for me which I apply in facilitation work I do whether sitting with one person, running a workshop or facilitating a conscious dance space. 

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I believe that we expand our knowledge, capacity and insight when we feel seen and heard from a place of safety and belonging which lead to curiosity, engagement and fun. I hold spaces for diversity of opinions and perspectives with compassion and acceptance for where each of our life journeys has brought us and where each voice, each person’s expression, matters. We all have capacity for growth.

Transitions as Growth

For many queer and trans people, coming out or transitioning isn't a one-time thing, it's not like we just step through that closet door and it's a different world on the other side.  We're dynamic people capable of great change and self discovery, sometimes labels that once fit nicely can feel tighter as we grow.

I imagine it like breathing.

In every inhale we have an opportunity to accept the new and make it part of ourselves.

In every exhale we can release what no longer serves us.

Change, transitioning, learning, growing is part of daily life and deserves to be honoured and supported.

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My own earlier life explorations and challenges with being a queer and transgender person were lonely and isolating, from my early experiences in expressing my truth I began to believe that it was safer and easier to just conform to cisgender heterosexual expectations. And in some ways at some times it was easier to avoid discrimination.

But, for me, it just wasn't worth it because in the long term living with the pain and shame of denial wasn't safer or easier. I travelled down many difficult and sometimes dangerous paths and in doing so I opened my mind and heart and changed until I could finally choose myself and to embrace who I really am. This is a choice I make again and again. To learn and to grow and to become more myself. 

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As I look back over my life, transitioning in the ways that I needed was the best thing I have ever done for myself. I have found real happiness in who I am and people who love me for it. Since then I've walked beside many others in support and allyship sharing this beautiful journey of self love and acceptance. It's worth it to be real. It really is worth it to be true to our hearts. 

My Qualifications

  • M.A. in Conflict Analysis and Management including mediation and facilitation, systems theory and exploring roots of conflict within ourselves, families, organizations and society.

  • B.Ed. in Outdoor and Experiential Education with BC teacher certification and focus in Native Studies and Biology. 

  • B.A. in "Cosmologies of Nature", an interdisciplinary degree in how humans understand our connection with nature.

  • Additional college and university coursework in counseling, social work, psychology, anti-racism, LGBTQ+ inclusion, trauma informed practices and in understanding Indigenous realities.

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I have worked in support of families and individuals, often from neurodiverse and marginalized backgrounds since 2003 to approach learning on their own terms and in their own ways through alternative schools and learning spaces and in home learning.

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I have spent many years dedicated to my own healing, to recovering my nervous system from complex PTSD and learning how to move past cycles of dysfunction and trauma within myself. I have been a client of therapy for many years and in many modalities and know, from lived experience, that life really can get better and better and better.

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The journey of learning and healing can be long and complex. I have walked, and continue to walk, this path for myself and because of this am able to guide others through the places I have been and seen. Learning happens. Healing happens.

It really does.  

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