We Are All Connected — Through Our Leaky Barriers
A reflection for Truth and Reconciliation Day, by Dee Anne Berry
Did you know childhood sexual trauma survivors are not just scarred emotionally; we are statistically among the sickest populations, facing a significantly higher risk of cancer and other chronic diseases living in constant fight or flight.
Chronic stress from c-ptsd drives our diseases because it causes chronic inflammation in our bodies along with toxins in our environments.
This happens because trauma doesn’t just live in our memories—it lives in our tissues. It compromises our ‘leaky body barriers’💜
Our body remembers what our minds try to protect us from and our stools keep the receipts.
We are all connected—not just spiritually but physically—and in our fragility. You, me, every person and every community carry 40 or more “leaky body barriers” — the membranes, tissues and systems we trust to hold us.
When those barriers are compromised—by toxins, mould, stress, trauma—they ripple outward. The trauma in our bodies becomes the trauma in our homes, our environment and our communities.
As I write this, I am co-facilitating a week-long silent retreat for Catholic nuns—a role that holds profound irony and deep sorrow. I once desired to be a nun myself; my path now leads me toward Buddhist teachings.
Today, we hold space in a faith that was weaponized, feeling the weight of this day deeply.
The Weight of Historical Wounds
On May 27, 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation revealed that ground-penetrating radar had detected what were believed to be the remains of 215 children at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. When this news broke, a part of my spirit broke with it.
We remember the children buried. To date, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has confirmed the deaths of over 4,200 Indigenous children who never returned from these schools. This number is a growing testament to a deliberate genocide.
This trauma echoes today. It lives in the child welfare system where Indigenous children make up over 50% of kids in care despite being only 7.7% of the child population.
My mission is simple: that no one expires before they desire.
This mission comes from my own lifelong struggles with suicidal ideation following childhood sexual traumas, including one with the Catholic church.
The same pain lives in our collective story too — in the statistics we cannot ignore. Among First Nations youth, the suicide rate is five to seven times higher than that of non-Indigenous youth. For Inuit youth, the rate can be up to eleven times higher.
I would like to bring attention to a gene I have, linked to misophonia. I have lived with suicidal ideation since I was five. When we have this gene, the risk of suicide is critically high—for girls at 16 and boys at 24. This is not just a statistic; it is a lived, physiological reality.
The Science of Suffering: It’s in Our Tissues
What if the suffering many call “mental illness” is in fact the body’s desperate attempt to speak? What if better mould-free homes, cleaner environments, trauma safe nutrition and somatic detoxification are part of the path back to peace?
The hurt is not only in what was done, but in what continues:
Generations of childhood sexual trauma
Overcrowded, mould-infested housing
Food insecurity and poverty
Toxic exposures from former military bases
The relentless grip of C-PTSD
This suffering is not weakness — it is the body’s physiological response to an unbearable load. Trauma tears at our protective barriers, leaving us with a leaky gut, a leaky blood-brain barrier, and inflamed muscles. Bodies designed for safety become prisons of chronic illness and fatigue, often through Chronic Inflammation Response Syndrome (CIRS).
For many, this begins before birth: first-born exposed in the womb, then raised in tense, low-income homes, carrying the weight of parentification. By midlife, our leaky, scarred bodies are no longer whispering — they are screaming.
And too often, what gets dismissed as “just menopause” or “just mental illness” is something else entirely. I know, because when I detoxed the toxins from my tissues and environments, my so-called menopause symptoms — and my mental health struggles — finally lifted.
Toward Breath, Toward Peace
But here is the hope: if the problem is in our tissues and our environments, then the solution must be too.
We do not have to expire before we desire. Healing becomes possible when we address the root causes. It is possible to breathe peace. This is the work of integrating Indigenous teachings on connection to land, Buddhist wisdom on mindfulness and lifestyle medicine that supports our body’s innate ability to heal.
To the Indigenous communities, to the survivors, to all who carry wounds: you are not broken.
You are not alone.
Your body is sacred; your breath is a prayer.
And if you yourself have known abortion, trauma, erasure — you are seen. I share the book Will I Go? by Meloni Materi, an Indigenous author, because stories heal and because sisterhood is real.
Her book and authors I have read to support my healing can be found here
as well Orange Shirt Day shirts and proceeds go back to the communities.
De-Stress With Dee’s Amazon Page
A Path to Bearing Witness
We must continue to listen, to learn and to demand better.
A Path to Bearing Witness
We must continue to listen, to learn and to demand better.
Watch Little Bird on Crave. This show, acted by a powerful Indigenous cast, unflinchingly confronts historical and present harms.
Watch the Global News The New Reality special series on Indigenous kids in care, which delves into the ongoing crisis.
If you are an Indigenous person in need of support right now, please reach out:
Hope for Wellness Helpline: 1-855-242-3310
(24/7 support in your native language, as well as French, English, Ojibway, Cree and Inuktitut).
If you have been in care and have concerns:
You can contact the Global News investigation team at investigate@globalnews.ca.
As I walk on the traditional, unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin people, I carry gratitude, humility and the promise to remember.
No child should be profited from.
No soul should carry a burden that was never theirs to bear.
In acknowledging the truth, we begin the reconciliation.
In healing our own tissues, we contribute to the healing of the whole.
Pause. Breathe. Remember.
In Loving Kindness from Canada’s capital,
Dee
