I love the intersection of my social locations + counselling practice

Hi pals! As the end of my program creeps closer, I am struck by how much my social locations and lived experience enhances my ability to show up as a counsellor. Lately, I’ve felt so grateful to be a Canto, chronically ill, queer, nonbinary counsellor of colour.

Most clearly, living at these intersections allows me to connect with people with a deep knowing. It’s the same alliance that underlies the look that two poc give each other across a room when whiteness runs amok. These community affiliations go far beyond having a shared vocabulary. To me, there is something so precious about being able to critically talk about queer culture or joke about immigrant parents with the people I serve. I am so honoured to bring relief to people when they realize they don’t need to explain a whole bunch of context just for me to get it.

Furthermore, my experiences of marginalization fuels my imagination to envision a world beyond colonial destruction and oppressive constraints. I’m not just talking about conceptualizing gender outside of the binary, but truly dreaming of a world where the gender binary and all other oppressive systems and structures are abolished and replaced with communities of justice and liberation. Because of this ability to imagine, I believe I can better be in solidarity and act in right relationship from a place of love and care. (Of course, I will not get it right all the time; mistakes and accountability are part of the process.)

All of this is because my social locations have facilitated countless meaningful relationships in my life. I am privileged to have formed relationships of solidarity with friends, community members, classmates, neighbours, and other artists. Whether we are delighting in cultural similarities or using humour to get through a painfully white degree program, these people, my people, teach me every day and build up a significant part of the foundation of who I am in every interaction, including my counselling practice.

In addition, as a person of colour who grew up with my Cantonese culture in a settler colonial state, I hold a worldview that is necessarily fluid, dialectical, relational, systemic, and permeable. Growing up, I received many contradictory messages regarding value systems (collectivism / individualism), history (racist / virtuous), kinship (family as priority / disposable), and more. Although it was confusing at times, I believe it now helps me to expansively relate to and understand people with vastly different perspectives on multisystemic levels with humility. When I speak to someone with a different perspective, I don’t necessarily oscillate between our worldviews. Instead, I endeavour to hold both.

However, even beyond this knowledge and ability, my relationship with ancestry provides a rootedness upon which I find a landing place. This allows me to not become engulfed in another person’s experience, but rather share and hold space with them while simultaneously remaining grounded with my ancestors. I am so grateful for the resilience of these connections.

Living with social locations that are multiply oppressed can feel heavy and hard. At the same time, I also see them as gifts as I enter into my counselling practice. Thank you for witnessing my process.

With gratitude,

Macayla :)

Incense coil from a relative’s home in

my 婆婆 village (中山).

Elder Dr. Skip Dick (Songhees) said, “I know my family and I know my land. I can go anywhere in the world and know I belong somewhere.”