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Trixie Hennessey for Optimum Family Wellness

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Trixie Hennessey for Optimum Family Wellness

Trixie is a Registered Mental Health Therapist

Trixie Hennessey is a Registered Therapist and Advanced Emotion Focused Family Therapist.
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She has received post Masters training in Neurosequential Therapy, Narrative Therapy and Emotion Focused Family Therapy and her clinical training has been focused on evidence-based attachment and interpersonal neurobiology techniques to treat a range of symptoms and challenges. To schedule a consultation, or to learn more about me please contact me at:

www.trixiehennesseycounselling.com
email trixiehennesseycounselling@gmail.com
phone 778.888.5735

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11/14/2025

there are loves that ask to be carried
and loves that ask to be named
and set back in the river.
this wasn’t a failure it was a tide.
we learned the shoreline of each other,
and then the water told the truth
my mouth wouldn’t
to keep holding would be to drown.
so i chose a different kind of staying
the kind where i don’t abandon myself.
i kept the music, not the room.
i blessed the doorframe on my way out.
some bonds aren’t meant to be kept;
they’re meant to be honoured
at a distance,
like constellations
close enough to guide,
far enough not to burn.
if my nervous system has to disappear
for love to live,
i let love travel and i remain.

11/12/2025

you’re not ruining good things
you’re guarding the door.
the part of you that hits the brakes
when life finally gets quiet isn’t cruel,
it’s loyal.
it remembers that last time peace meant ambush.
it hears calm and thinks:
this is the before.
so it pulls the fire alarm
and calls it “self-sabotage.”
i call it devotion
to the you that survived.
thank the guard dog.
let it sit beside you
while you try one tiny safe thing:
one unclenched breath.
one boundary you don’t over explain.
one moment you let good land without running.
this isn’t failure
it’s rewiring.
teach your body that softness
can be safe,
and it will stop screaming
and start listening.

10/21/2025

measure your love by what you’re willing to face
not the fireworks, not the filters, not the ease.
face the hard conversations you’d rather outrun.
the mirrors that show you your own mess.
the apology that costs you pride.
the boundary that saves the relationship.
the boredom between highs.
the grief that visits unannounced.
the slow work of repair when rupture has had its say.

love isn’t the performance; it’s the presence.
it’s staying honest when your nervous system wants to bolt.
it’s choosing curiosity over control.
it’s letting closeness change you
not into someone smaller,
but into someone true.

if it can’t hold truth, it isn’t love.
if it can’t survive repair, it’s a performance.
measure it by what you’ll face together.
measure it by what it refuses to avoid.

09/30/2025

not every goodbye is a hymn.
some are static,
missed beats,
and a final note that lands crooked but true.
you can grieve someone who never apologized. you can miss a person you kept at a distance.
you can mourn the version of them
that visited in flashes…
the almost,
the maybe,
the once.
people will try to tidy your story
so it’s easier to comfort.
let them tidy their own.
you get to say the complicated thing:
love and harm can share a roof;
loyalty and self-respect can argue in the same heart;
grief is not awarded for sainthood.
if your mourning sounds like “i wish”
and “i couldn’t”
in the same breath,
you’re not failing…
you’re accurate.
you don’t need anyone’s permission to hurt. honour what was.
name what wasn’t.

09/05/2025

you didn’t come here to be convenient.
somewhere back then, your body learned that safety lived in being helpful...
sharpen the mind, smooth the edges, read the room before the room reads you.
be useful. be agreeable. be loveable by earning it.

that wasn’t a personality; it was a shield.
the overthinking, the overgiving, the smiling-through...
all brilliant strategies from a time when you had to survive.

but this is a different season.
retire the costume. return the cape.
let “no” be a complete sentence and “i want” be a holy one.
love that demands your performance isn’t love
let it go.

you don’t have to audition for belonging anymore.
step off the stage. come back to your own voice.
let love arrive without an invoice.

08/21/2025

grief isn’t a task to finish;
it’s architecture
—quiet rooms your life now lives inside.
it won’t vanish on cue,
and you don’t have to evict it to be okay.
let the world be wrong about “moving on.”
you’re not a mausoleum;
you’re a house with an extra room.
some days you’ll sit with the ache.
some days you’ll open the windows and let joy pour in.
neither is betrayal.
this is the work:
widening your capacity,
not erasing your history.
let sorrow hold one hand and wonder hold the other.
breathe between them.
eat, laugh, weep, repeat.
this is how a heart learns to carry both light and weight
—and keep beating.

08/02/2025

you are home to me.
not the place with walls
but the place i exhale.
the one who sees the worst of me and still leans in.
the one who doesn’t flinch when i fall apart.
who doesn’t try to fix what isn’t broken,
who knows the difference between silence and distance
and never confuses the two.

you are my person.
my friend before anything else.
we built something that isn’t perfect
but it’s real.
it’s honest.
it’s weathered.
and it holds.

you know how to sit in hard things
without making them harder.
you bring logic when i’m spiraling
and softness when the world is too sharp.
and in a field where we both hold so many stories,
you still make room for mine.

you are steady when life isn’t.
you are kind without the need to impress.
you are one of the smartest people i know
not just because of what you think,
but because of how you think.
how you pause.
how you wonder.
how you never pretend to know someone else’s pain,
but always make space for it.

this life with you isn’t loud.
it’s not polished or curated.
it’s ordinary in the most sacred way.
shared glances.
deep talks.
hard truths.
and love that holds
without needing to be held up.

you are my anchor.
my mirror.
my favorite kind of quiet.

happy birthday sweet v.
you are the poem i didn’t know i was writing
until every line rhymed with home.

07/23/2025

healing doesn’t turn you into a monk.
it doesn’t erase your triggers
or sterilize your rage.

you will still flinch.
still ghost people you love.
still cry over things that shouldn’t touch you anymore.

and that doesn’t mean you’re failing.
it means your humanity survived.
it means you didn’t abandon yourself
in pursuit of being palatable.

stop trying to become someone
who never cracks.
instead, make room for the version of you
that can shatter and still choose softness.
that can roar and still return to center.

you don’t need fixing.
you need a place
where your whole, chaotic, brilliant self
is allowed to breathe.

06/26/2025

dear one,
healing isn’t about reinvention.
it’s about reclamation.
you were never broken—just buried.
under expectations that weren’t yours,
under the weight of shoulds,
under masks you wore to survive.

this work we do?
it’s not about becoming someone shinier.
it’s about unbecoming everything that made you forget.
forget your softness.
forget your fire.
forget your name.

healing is the slow exhale after years of holding your breath.
it’s the moment you stop apologizing for taking up space.
it’s not a makeover.
it’s a homecoming.
and god, you are so welcome here.

— a therapist who knows
how much courage it takes
to come home to yourself.

06/12/2025

i didn’t grow up with a dad.
not really.
i grew up with questions.
with absence that hummed like a ceiling fan in a quiet room.
with birthdays that felt like minefields
and a heart that learned how to brace for impact.

i told myself i didn’t need a father.
told myself that maybe i was just built without that kind of wiring—
the kind that lets you be protected,
wanted,
chosen.

but grief is funny.
it clears space.
and sometimes, if you’re lucky,
life sends in someone unexpected—
not to fix the past
but to soften the present.

my father-in-law did that.
he didn’t rescue me,
he didn’t try to rewrite the story—
he just walked in quietly
and stayed.

he showed up with dad energy
when i didn’t even know how much i still needed it.
not loud. not flashy.
just there.
with love that was awkward sometimes,
but honest.
fierce.
real.

this one’s for the fathers who arrive late
but land like home.
who love your kids like they’re sacred
and love you in the cracks you stopped trying to hide.

this father’s day,
i honour the man who didn’t share my blood
but somehow carried the medicine
my little girl self had been aching for
all along.

thank you for choosing me.
for showing me what safe feels like
from the inside out.

— from someone who never thought she’d get to say “dad”
and mean it.

thank you John xo

05/30/2025

dear you,

Ohhhh my heart i won third place in Best of Kelowna for my work as a therapist! ✨✨✨
and while it’s not about winning a medal (although i am literally thrilled to bits!) it’s about what it means.

it means that somewhere along the way, the work i do—this gritty, tender, gut-deep work of walking people back to themselves—has landed in hearts.
it means that in a world that often asks us to numb, hustle, and pretend, someone felt seen.
and that… is everything to me.

thank you for voting, for trusting, for showing up, and for letting me hold space for the mess and the magic of being human.

i don’t take this honour lightly.
i carry it like i carry every story shared in my office—with reverence, and with fierce, quiet gratitude.

with love,
a therapist who feels deeply honoured to do this work.

05/26/2025

they’ll call you overreactive.
too sensitive.
dramatic.
but they don’t see the years you spent
bracing for impact.
how your body learned to live on edge,
to scan for danger in every silence,
to treat calm like the warning before the storm.

your nervous system isn’t broken—
it’s brilliant.
it kept you alive when it mattered most.
and now?
it’s learning how to exist
without the emergency.

that doesn’t happen overnight.
so if safety still feels unfamiliar,
if peace makes you flinch—
you’re not doing it wrong.
you’re just unlearning survival.
and that takes time.

Address

1510-1631 Dickson Avenue
Vancouver, BC
V1Y0B5

Opening Hours

Thursday	9am - 7pm
Friday	9am - 7pm
Saturday	9am - 7pm

Website

http://www.trixiehennesseycounselling.com/

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