Red Deer therapist pens book on connectivity of our shared trauma

“Because of the fractures trauma causes everyone internally and externally, the healing comes in holding space for each other, sharing our stories, and witnessing other stories.”

Rachel Freeman, founder and CEO, Wild Oak Trauma Centre in Red Deer.

What Freeman also hopes to offer, be it at Wild Oak, or between the lines of her book, is a connectedness and togetherness to counteract the world’s divisiveness.

And her passion to strive for that comes, largely, she admits, from being raised by therapists who worked in the area of domestic violence treatment.

Freeman, who grew up in Red Deer County, joined their practice once she obtained her Master’s Degree from Yorkville University in 2015.

“I worked with both court-mandated and voluntary clients, and I watched the healing that happened with the clients in the specialized area of domestic violence. Then COVID happened, the funding for the domestic violence programs were cut and moved, and I needed to pivot – this also came at a time when I was going through my own therapy and trying to heal past trauma and hurt,” she shares.

“The centre then became my dream, my passion – bringing together passionate practitioners from different modalities and specialities to build a collaborative approach to healing trauma – talk therapy, energy healing, somatic healing, spiritual healing, etc. I found self-love, healing and acceptance in talk therapy, reiki, yoga, somatic breathwork, chiropractic adjustments, tuning forks, sound therapy, inner child work – so I became and am becoming what I think I needed when I was a 16-year-old trying to find healing.”

When she was a kid, she says, there wasn’t a lot of help for kids like her who were experiencing abuse.

“This is also what fuelled my passion to work strategically alongside the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre,” she adds. “I am honouring all the younger versions of me every day I pour myself into this work.”

Freeman’s latest book is available on Amazon and Kindle, and she anticipates it will soon be for sale at Indigo in Red Deer. In the meantime, she’s working on a poetry/prose book, and a collaborative co-parenting book with her reiki and yoga practitioner Charity Tally.

The Wild Oak Trauma Centre has several team members focusing on a range of things, from men’s mental health, to reiki and yoga, to equestrian therapy.

by Josh Hall

Red Deer therapist pens book on connectivity of our shared trauma

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