The Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast

09/25/2026

New episode of The Trauma-Informed Lawyer is live today.

The Road to Liberation with Resmaa Menakem.

What does it mean to walk the road to liberation when the structures we live within have been shaped by extraction, extermination, and extinction?

Resmaa and I talk about racialized trauma, truth and reconciliation, kinship care, and tending to our wounds. We get into trauma zombies, proximity to whiteness, and bodies of culture, and how trauma lives in our bodies while colonial structures keep harm in motion.

The road to liberation is not simply a destination. It is an embodied, relational, and collective practice that asks us to face the truth, tend to our wounds, and nurture kinship.

Listen now: https://thetraumainformedlawyer.simplecast.com/episodes/the-road-to-liberation-with-resmaa-menakem

09/24/2026

ONE SPOT LEFT. WE BEGIN TOMORROW.

The Practice Sessions begin tomorrow, September 25, with Assume the Wound: Trauma-Responsive Foundations.

Five Fridays exploring trauma, psychological safety, nervous system awareness, workplace conflict, and the practices that make repair possible. You do not need to register for all five, you could pick and choose which topic speak to you, the list is in the link tree in my bio.

This is an invitation to rethink how we show up, how we relate, and how we create workplaces where people can belong and thrive.

I HAVE ROOM FOR ONE MORE PERSON.

📅 Sept 25 – Oct 23
💻 Live online | Fridays, 10 AM–12 PM PT
If you’ve been thinking about joining, this is your invitation. Link in bio.

DM me to claim the final spot.

09/24/2026

Lateral violence did not start with us. 🤎

It came from colonization. From residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, the Indian Act, and generations of being told who we were allowed to be. When harm is done to a people for that long, some of it turns inward. We carry it into our families, our communities, and our workplaces.

Healing is the way forward. And that healing has to reach every place we live and work. Not just ourselves. Not just our families. Not just our communities. Our workplaces too.

That’s why Natalie Y. Gutiérrez (@ your handle for Natalie) and I are gathering in Courtenay this February for the LoveBack™ Retreat: The Pain We Carry Into the Workplace.

Together we will work through the companion workbook to The Pain We Carry, name lateral violence for what it is, and practice repair in how we communicate, lead, and move through conflict.

🗓 February 2 to 4, 2027
📍 Kingfisher Pacific Resort & Spa, Courtenay BC
👥 limited seating

And a call out to organizations 🧡

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is next week. Wearing orange matters. Statements matter. But if you are truly about supporting us as Indigenous survivors, then support our healing.

Sponsor a seat for an Indigenous person to be in that room. A frontline worker. A community leader. Someone who carries the weight for everyone else and rarely gets to set it down.

Reconciliation is a relationship, not a statement.

To register or sponsor a seat, tap the link in my bio or send me a DM.

09/23/2026

09/23/2026

Every year in the week before September 30, I get the same question. "What can I actually do?"

Educate yourself, first and foremost. Then, if you have the means, support survivors and their children and grandchildren who work in your organization.

You can also immediately support someone you don't know someone who needs your support, right here, right now.

This February, Natalie Y. Gutierrez, LMFT and I are co-facilitating the LoveBack™ Retreat: The Pain We Carry Into the Workplace. Three days on complex trauma, lateral violence and repair, built for Indigenous communities and communities of colour, for those of us carrying intergenerational trauma, ancestral burdens and complex PTSD into demanding work.

Some of the people who most need to be in that room cannot cover the cost.

If you are an ally or an organization, sponsor a seat. You will not attend on that ticket. We match every sponsored seat with someone who has asked to come, and we let you know when your seat is filled. Organizations sponsoring more than one seat can be invoiced.

And you wanna know what else your money does? I am an Indian residential school survivor, and this is my business. When you sponsor a seat, you put an Indigenous person in the room and you invest in the survivor whose work built it. Reconciliation is also about where you choose to spend.

If you are Indigenous and you want to be in that room, email [email protected] and tell us a little about the work you do. No application form. No explaining your finances to us.

Sponsor a seat 🧡 https://myrnamccallum.ca/etn/loveback-retreat-the-pain-we-ca

If you want to understand why this work exists, there is an episode I recorded for my brother Ty. It is the rawest thing I have ever shared publicly.

Please take care with it. It speaks openly about residential schools, addiction, overdose, su***de, self-harm and sexual abuse, so listen when you have the room for it.

Once Were Warriors, In Memory of Ty (aka Clovis) Iron: https://thetraumainformedlawyer.simplecast.com/episodes/once-were-warriors-in-memory-of-ty-aka-clovis-iron

Reconciliation that costs us nothing is not reconciliation.

09/22/2026

Self sacrifice is not a virtue. It is often a wound.

We were taught to give until there is nothing left. To carry everyone else’s weight before our own. To call it strength when really it is survival.

This shows up everywhere, but especially in our workplaces. No boundaries. No rest. No room to say no. And underneath it, for so many of us, a colonial story that told us our worth was in what we could sacrifice, not in who we are.

Healing this is relational work. It happens in community, not alone.

That is what Natalie Gutiérrez and I are holding space for at our upcoming retreat. A place to unlearn self sacrifice and remember what it feels like to be held.

Link in bio for details.

09/21/2026

We carry more than we often name. Grief passed down through generations. Exhaustion we bring into our workplaces. Conflict that shows up when old wounds go unspoken.

This February, Natalie Gutiérrez and I are bringing LoveBack™ into a new space.

LoveBack™ Retreat: The Pain We Carry Into the Workplace
February 2 to 4, 2027
Kingfisher Pacific Resort & Spa, Courtenay BC

We will work through the companion workbook to Natalie’s book, The Pain We Carry, exploring how intergenerational burdens shape our communication, our leadership and our conflict at work. Honest conversation about lateral violence. Real strategies for repair, in our workplaces, our families and our communities.

Capped at 25 people, so we can stay close and present with each other.

If this speaks to you, or to someone on your team, we would love to have you with us.

09/21/2026

What if the silence we carry into the workplace isn’t our personality?

What if it’s something we learned to do to survive?

The freeze. The fawn. The shutting down when we don’t feel safe or like we belong.

These responses can be rooted in intergenerational and colonial trauma. And when we bring them into the workplace, they can shape how we communicate, how we navigate conflict, and how our teams function.

Over time, silence can contribute to silos, disconnection, and workplace cultures where people don’t feel safe to speak up.

In my latest video, I share an excerpt from Natalie Gutierrez’s The Pain We Carry and her companion workbook.

This is the work Natalie and I are bringing into our professional development retreat for communities of colour.

Together, we’ll explore how to recognize these patterns, address them in ourselves and our teams, and begin the work of repair.

February 2–4 | Vancouver Island

A retreat. A professional development training. A space to explore the pain we carry into the workplace—and what we can do with it.

Come join us.

🔗 Registration link in bio. Bring your team and please share this with a First Nation nation community of colour organization in your network. 🙏🏽

09/20/2026

Please share with your professional networks. 🙏🏽

Your team's performance has a ceiling, and it is rarely talent.

Burnout, unrecognized trauma, blurred boundaries and mental health struggles quietly drain productivity, retention and results. Sometimes it is not knowing what we don't know. Sometimes it is a workload nobody questions anymore. Sometimes it is a system we have all been propping up without realizing it.

Teams that learn to spot these patterns early tend to keep their people, make better decisions and perform better. The Practice Sessions gives you practical skills to do exactly that.

I have 3 seats left, starting this Friday.

Register at www.myrnamccallum.co

09/20/2026

Have we always been losing our humanity?