After years of working in not-for-profits and navigating her own journey with PTSD and anxiety, Michelle Mailloux is taking a new step toward building community
TIMMINS – Michelle Mailloux knows the importance of building a safe community.
“When I start to lose that connection, I know it can slip away really fast, because it has before,” she said.
That line of thinking led her to start the Owl’s Nest Centre for Wellness, which offers community yoga, art therapy, coaching individually and in group settings, and, Mailloux hopes, a safe space for those who don’t often feel that way.
Her own experience at Homewood Health in 2013 showed her a need that existed in the community. Homewood Health is a mental health service provider in Guelph that offers therapy, counselling, and inpatient treatment.
“When I came back though, there wasn’t a lot of safe spaces that I considered to be safe, and I always say, people and places are considered safe because they say they are,” she said. “So when I came back, I thought, OK, what now?”
Mailloux credits her family and friends for their support. She lives with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety, but she recognized that family support wasn’t something everyone had access to.
“Even with all the support I had, I felt alone,” she said. “So I can only imagine those who have nobody.”
Finding supportive places can make a world of difference, said Mailloux.
“That’s what Owl’s Nest is, it’s filling that gap,” she said. “People who don’t have family, who don’t have people on their side to advocate for them, who don’t have those relationships where they feel connected, and that safety, where do you go? And that’s hard!”
She said this year’s mental health week theme, Unmasking Mental Health, felt like the perfect way to start out on the right foot.
“This is just my time, when things align, it was just meant to happen this way,” she said.
The Owl’s Nest vision is to help people through trauma recovery through movement, mindfulness, and connection.
She signed up for a restorative yoga program in 2014, and that connection to her body and movement became part of her coping strategy. Mailloux is just finishing up her certification in somatic healing.
“I’ve always been intrigued with science and the body and the connection, and how it works,” she said. “There’s the movement piece, the mindful piece, and the creativity piece, and that has been my journey.”
She also sees art and expression as vital to mental health, and is planning workshops around creating patchwork dolls as a journey of self-awareness.
The dolls come from her own experience, where a friend told her that everyone should have someone like Mailloux who knows what to say or not say in a moment. The Mimi doll grew out of that conversation. The fabric patchwork from different points in her life makes the doll unique to Mailloux.
“I drew out this doll, this Mimi doll, and I wrote a story about what Mimi does, and it’s about helping folks find safety,” she said. “It literally is pieces of me.”
Mailloux also paints, sews, and writes poetry in what she calls ‘creation mode,’ and incorporating art into the Owl’s Nest programs is vital to her.
She said that meeting people where they are, whether at the Owl’s Nest office on Spruce Street North or anywhere else, means spending time out in the community.
“It sounds cliche, but kindness can go a long way,” she said. “We have to keep the conversation going, because if nothing changes, then nothing changes.”
Mailloux has worked in not-for-profit spaces for over 25 years, and she said the time was right for her to make this leap.
“I’ve always known I wanted to start something, I’ve been saying ‘I’m going to write a book one day’, and the title of my book and the story I’ve told myself has changed,” she said. “I was at a point now where it’s time.”
Anyone looking to get involved in her workshops can contact her at [email protected] or 705-262-8330. More information about what programs are available is on owlsnestcompany.com
link
