Offerings, Resources & Tools for Survivors
Please click on any of the images below to access shareables and quick tools created by our staff. Use the search bar to help you find something specific.
Staff Recommendations
Transgender Day of Visibility 2022
Today on March 31st we celebrate the lives of all transgender community members and loved ones. Please click on the link to explore the differnt organizations you can support or engage with during trans day of visibility or any other day.
A new training tool is now available to the public which provides a unique, interactive, arts-based learning experience to service providers across sectors which visualizes trauma informed approaches. "Her Brain Chose for Her" is now available in English and French as an online application and PDF download.
Developed in collaboration with the Aging Without Violence project advisory "Her Brain Chose for Her" is designed to increased the capacity shelter workers, counsellors, nurses, officers, allied health care professionals and a wide range of supports in relation to trauma informed support across the lifespan.
Access the tool in both French and English via: https://herbrainchose.oaith.ca/
In Decolonizing Trauma Work, Renee Linklater explores healing and wellness in Indigenous communities on Turtle Island. Drawing on a decolonizing approach, which puts the “soul wound” of colonialism at the centre, Linklater engages ten Indigenous health care practitioners in a dialogue regarding Indigenous notions of wellness and holistic health, critiques of psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses, and Indigenous approaches to helping people through trauma, depression and experiences of parallel and multiple realities. Through stories and strategies that are grounded in Indigenous worldviews and embedded with cultural knowledge, Linklater offers purposeful and practical methods to help individuals and communities that have experienced trauma. Decolonizing Trauma Work, one of the first books of its kind, is a resource for education and training programs, health care practitioners, healing centres, clinical services and policy initiatives.
Survivor Tools & Offerings from the Dandelion Initiative
Safety Planning Guide
This quick document helps you identify areas in your life or environment where you may need safety planning, support or a plan. Safety planning is vital and a necessary step for all survivors. download and print this document.
Survivors & Clinicians Guide Survivor-centric Medical Care
A fillable document along with a short descriptor please click on both to read and then download the document to share with your medical team next visit.
Triggers, Boundaries & Soothing, Oh my!
A short check-in activity with yourself to name the triggers out loud, create soothing, release, etc to manage those triggers and gain control, power and autonomy over our behaviours, bodies and hearts.
Safety Planning Toolkit
Your Safety is not your burden or responsibility alone. Survivors have the hard task of safety planning to ensure they are aware of their environments and spaces after sexual/gender-based violence or in general for women and feminized folks. Here is a short tip guide to safety planning at home, in public, at work and with friends/family.
Growing Outside
The sun may be out for some of us today which may mean an opportunity to go outside, even for a few moments and just breathe. The last few months have been significantly hard for survivors as services are full and trauma care is often inaccessible. Please remember how powerful your own ability is, you can soothe and heal and release through all kinds of practices, especially outside among nature. Here's an offering and some resources. Thank you to the community members providing survivor centric movement care and practice and Thank you survivor, for considering this care.
Self-Regulation & Soothing Trauma
A personal repetition is something you say, read, or think when you're feeling challenged, triggered, in need of clarity, or in need of fortification. It may be a quote, a concept, an idea, a verse, etc, that guides you, recalibrates you, etc. Finding personal repetitions that are helpful and true to you is a process and everyones is different. You can start preparing this tool by recording quotes, concepts, and words that you find comforting, powerful, and/or clarifying. Pairing your repetition with a physical action is also powerful.
Mother’s Day Support
On this day and everyday may we honour, acknowledge, celebrate, grieve and empower mothers. Mother can mean many things to many different people and mother’s are not all the same. It is the beauty and struggle in motherhood that we take a moment today to pause and give respect to. You are not alone, you are not forgotten, we love you.
Triggers & Trauma
Your reactions and coping mechanisms are working to keep you safe right now and there is always room for healing, new learning and supports. We don't have to suffer or struggle alone or in shame. Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence often live with the complex long term impacts of trauma and often times experience re-traumization through services, systems and relationships. Triggers are real and we believe you, take a look at some of the resources shared in the post and reach out to us or any of our incredible partner organizations serving survivors and their families.
Resource Guide
There are over 200+ organizations listed throughout this resource guide. All services are for many different survivors and their many different needs. We will updating this guide annually, the newest edition will be released November 2021. Click on the image to find some services and supports near you or visit this link.
Managing Social Media “Advice”
There are so many beautiful and important offerings and advice from lots of different people and organizations and sometimes certain offerings or advice can make us feel, lots of complex feelings. This is a normal reaction to processing and absorbing information and you have total control over what you take in, keep or leave behind. You also deserve to have people, friends, family and service providers hold space for your interest or aversion to some tools or offerings. Go slow and trust your intuition and curiosity. Stop or discard if it does not serve you right now. We wish you all safety and warmth this weekend, take a break from social media and do what brings you comfort or joy
Affirmations & Grounding
A trigger is a strong and often negative emotional and physical response to trauma or a traumatic event we have experienced. This trigger will pass and it deserves acknowledgment, time, and healing. Sometimes you don’t know what triggered you and sometimes the trigger seems small or insignificant. Sometimes your triggers will be things that other people relate to and sometimes they won’t. No matter the trigger, it is real and it will pass. Here are some resiliency and grounding techniques to try:
🌼 Run your hands under cold water and count to 5
🌼 Tap your feet and feel them on the ground, feel your toes and move them around
🌼 Try breathing exercises (see our past post)
🌼 Text someone you love to check-in
🌼 Pull up pictures of something you like (what comforts you? What makes you laugh? What interests you? What distracts you?)
🌼 Name things you see around yourself, one by one and stop at the things you really like, or make you happy
🌼 Self-soothe (this can be drinking a cup of tea, glass of wine, having a smoke, calling a recovery meeting, going for a walk, wrapping yourself up in blankets and decompressing)
🌼 Journal it, write it out, paint it out, sing it out, let it out- release in a safer way, you don’t need to suffer or struggle in silence
Informed Consent
This year for sexual and reproductive health awareness week 2021 the DI team is sharing some information and resources on informed consent.
You have the right to ask questions, set boundaries and needs, say no and stop, to any health practitioner. You also have the right to know all the information you need to know before making a decision. Consider using this tool to help you navigate systems and services as a survivor.
INFORMED CONSENT IS YOUR RIGHT!
Covid-19 & Survivors
Written March 14 2020-
survivors & Allies during the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus-
We acknowledge that many survivors are losing wages, contracts and access to child care. We sadly acknowledge many survivors are quarantined with their abusers currently and have limited access to supports.
We have created a short series of suggested supports, while not extensive we hope it brings unity, care and support to survivors who need it most right now, please share.
A Valentine for Survivors
Today there are so many feelings and voices needing to be heard throughout our communities. We feel and see the pain of not being able to be physically near one another right now, in community. We hope these little survivor cards resonate with some of you. Pretend like we placed it in your hand and gave you a big hug. If you have safety and love in your life perhaps you could take today to check in with friends, survivors, community. Consider donating to an Indigenous organization or family who have experienced the injustice of their daughters, mothers, sisters, healers and friends being murdered or gone missing. Perhaps there is time and space today to learn about the Strawberry Ceremony today happening across Turtle Island and what this means for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Consider caring for yourself today In whatever way you can or need.
