I am a survivor of sexual violence, coercive control, and abuse. My healing journey changed when I began understanding experiences I had carried for years and connecting dots I hadn't been able to see before.

As I healed, I started asking questions.

Why is it so difficult for survivors to recognize what happened to them? Why can finding the right help be so complicated? And what happens when the systems meant to help us each see only one piece of a much bigger picture?

Those questions became the Healing the Heart Initiative, a Canadian policy initiative examining gaps across laws, healthcare, workplaces, courts, public safety, victim supports, and approaches to trauma and recovery.

The Initiative contains 13 specific policy recommendations designed to help Canada recognize harm earlier, improve protection and access to justice, strengthen trauma-informed responses, and create clearer pathways to safety and healing.

One of those ideas is the proposed Felt Safety Standard.

Too often, systems focus on questions such as:

“Did they threaten you?”

Healing the Heart asks us to also consider:

“Did you feel safe?”

That simple question may help reveal patterns of coercion, fear, psychological harm, or escalating risk that can be difficult to understand when incidents are considered individually.

You don't have to take my word for it. Read the Initiative yourself.

The complete Healing the Heart Initiative, supporting evidence, and ongoing updates are available at:

https://healingtheheartinitiative.com 

This work has already begun reaching Canadian decision-makers. Printed copies of Part 1 of the Initiative have been sent to selected federal, provincial, and territorial leaders and officials across Canada, with broader outreach directing thousands more people to the complete Initiative online.

Responses are beginning to come in, and conversations are beginning to open.

But meaningful change cannot depend on one person's voice.

Healing the Heart isn't asking Canadians to believe that one person has all the answers. I don't.

I'm asking Canada's federal, provincial, and territorial leaders to seriously review these recommendations, bring the right experts and lived experience to the table, challenge what needs challenging, improve what can be improved, and act where the evidence supports action.

Some solutions may require changes to law. Others involve healthcare, public safety, trauma-informed training, access to treatment, victim rights, prevention, and better coordination between the systems survivors rely on.

The common thread is simple:

Systems often see individual pieces. Survivors live the whole picture.

I started Healing the Heart because I kept wondering: if it took me this much time, support, research, and healing to understand what had happened to me and navigate the systems around me, how is someone without those resources supposed to do it?

This Initiative started with one survivor asking questions.

Now I'm asking Canadians to add their voices.

Please sign this petition and ask Canada's leaders to review and act on the 13 recommendations of the Healing the Heart Initiative.

Read the Initiative. Ask questions. Share it. Talk about it. Write to your representatives.

Because connecting the dots shouldn't be something survivors have to do alone.

Come curious. Leave with hope. 💜🇨🇦