About Me
I spent most of my life not realizing that I was living with complex trauma, which showed up for me in chronic dissociation, anxiety, panic attacks, disordered substance use, high-risk taking behaviours, and obsessive intrusive thoughts. Despite all of these struggles, I was a straight A student, received early acceptance to a competitive program at university, and was the main caregiver for my younger brother and my disabled single father. I received consistent praise for my ability to go to school full-time, work 30-40 hrs a week, have relationships, and take on extracurricular activities.
When I began therapy at the age of 21, I’d left yet another abusive relationship and I was a hot mess of daily panic attacks. Despite having read all of the Freud, I couldn’t understand why I continued to find myself in relationships with humans who were emotionally volatile or emotional zombies. Turns out I was trying to heal the wounds in my family of origin. Eventually, I found my way to my first safe partnership.
It would take another decade before I realized that I needed to be in therapy that would specifically address the traumas I experienced: my mother’s death, rape and sexual assault, emotional abuse and neglect in my family of origin, becoming a young caregiver, and my family’s poverty. The past five years have been some of the most transformational of my life. I learnt that I have structural dissociation, and finally feel like I’ve come home to myself.
Growing up as a young caregiver to my brother and single-disabled father was a lonely existence.
At the age of 11, I lost my mother to cervical cancer. After her death, I became a primary caregiver to my younger brother and took on the role of surrogate mother in my home, responsible for the cooking, cleaning, and other chores. Shortly after, my father began to develop a rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. As his illness progressed, I supported him in running his business and took on the role of a primary caregiver for him as well.
During this time we moved slowly then swiftly into poverty. While I’m sure that my teachers noticed this bright human full of potential who was clearly struggling, they never asked if I needed support. What they didn’t know was that I was heavily dependent on substances, my main survival resource, and that I would leave school and enter a home of abuse and neglect.
Eventually, the stress of being a primary caregiver for my father and brother took its toll and I flunked out of university. When I returned to university a year later, I knew that I wanted to stop others from falling through the cracks. I went on to complete a PhD in English Literature and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto, where I had the honour of teaching over 500 students as a teaching assistant and course instructor.
These experiences have shaped me and the work I feel called to do in the world. I want to help others feel less alone. I want to ensure that we all have access to the forms of care we so need and deserve. And so in everything I do, I’m driven by the desire to build community and promote collaboration. I’ve organized symposiums, conferences, workshops, and storytelling events that centre the voices of marginalized communities and help those more privileged learn and grow as allies, including “Unruly Bodies: A Night of Storytelling,” recipient of the Ontario Arts Council Grant.
From protection to connection.
Before my mother’s death, my home was a place of love and belonging and connection. After her death, things changed dramatically. My home became a site of neglect, emotional and mental abuse, and a place where I was not allowed to have boundaries. I was starved for connection, but because the person who was supposed to love me most was also the person causing me the most harm, I learnt that connection wasn’t safe. I sought out relationships that reminded me of my home dynamics. I couldn’t handle being in loving and supportive relationships, and would engage in “self-destructive” behaviours to ensure their demise. Textbook disorganized attachment.
In my early twenties, I ended another abusive relationship and started to go to therapy. I knew that I wanted intimacy and care and connection. But my nervous system was hyperfocused on protecting me. I needed support in moving from protection towards connection. I was able to do so with the support of my therapist and my two dearest friends, Natalie and Varvara. It was with them that I learnt to practice the skills I’d never been taught: open and vulnerable communication, setting and affirming boundaries, and naming my mental health struggles.
I’ve found myself frustrated with the argument that trauma makes it difficult to foster intimacy. What makes intimacy so challenging is living in a world in which the only acceptable forms of intimacy are cisheterosexual monogamous partnerships, which are placed at the top of the relationship hierarchy alongside family, while friendship is at the bottom. What makes intimacy so challenging is the normalization of insecure attachment, which we see in every romantic comedy, where love, we’re told, should make you unable to eat, sleep, or think of anyone else but the beloved. We are told that we must accept harmful and abusive behaviors from our families and partners because love is apparently a scarce resource.
Moving away from protection and towards connection has enabled me to see that love is abundant — that we all deserve so much more love and care that what we’ve been given.
I believe it’s important to situate myself in the work I do.
The intersections of trauma, sexuality, and state- sanctioned violence, and their impact on Indigenous communities, must be named. It is our job, as settlers on this land, to name and to challenge the ways in which this history continues to be upheld today. I believe that unlearning white supremacy and white fragility is some of the most important work I can do in this life — and that this process of unlearning is always ongoing. I am an abolitionist, meaning that I believe in abolishing the prison system and carceral forms of punishment.
The work I do in the world is inspired and informed by the work of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, who have always been at the forefront of queer and disability activism, transformative justice, prison abolition, and healing justice. In order to recognize the ways in which I benefit financially from these teachings, it is my commitment to offering 50 free spots for BIPOC to attend my live webinars, unlimited free spots for the recoding, and 5 scholarships in my peer support groups.
I’m a nonbinary queer femme from a poor family, a trauma survivor and someone living with chronic illness. I’m also a white settler on the unceded Indigenous land of Treaty 6 Territory in Amiskwaciy Waskahikan or what is colonially known as Edmonton, AB. This is the traditional and ongoing territory of the nêhiyaw / Cree, Dené, Anishinaabe / Saulteaux, Nakota Isga / Nakota Sioux, and Niitsitapi / Blackfoot peoples. Edmonton is also the Métis homeland and the home of one of the largest communities of Inuit south of the 60th parallel. As a white settler on this land, and one committed to addressing and healing from trauma, it is vital that I acknowledge the ways in which settler colonialism has caused intergenerational trauma within Indigenous communities since first contact and continues to do so today.
Settler colonialism brought with it many weapons, including an investment in pathologizing trauma. This pathologization impacts Indigenous communities, who experience trauma and sickness at disproportionately higher rates than settlers.
Thanks to various trainings, workshops, and courses, I have had the great honour to learn directly from those in the social justice and healing justice movements, including adrienne maree brown, Sonya Renee Taylor, Kai Cheng Thom, Nkem Ndefo, Staci K. Haines, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Patrisse Cullors, Rusia Mohiuddin, and Resmaa Menakem. All of these humans have opened me up to challenging the ways in which white supremacy lives within me and directs my movements; they have provided me with their radical visions for a world that is interdependent, loving, pleasurable, and just. These teachers have helped me grow as a facilitator, showing me that it is possible to practice intentional adaptation and shift course from business as usual, that I do not need to offer closure or all of the answers to questions that are complex and, in many ways, unanswerable.
I am also deeply grateful to those working in the field of somatics, who I have learnt from formally and informally through their writing and work in the world, some of whom were listed above. This lineage also includes: Deb Dana, Prentis Hemphill, Janina Fisher, Peter Levine, Fran D. Booth, Arielle Schwartz, Stephen Porges, Richard Schwartz, Kekuni Minton, and Karine Bell. They have supported my own trauma healing and enabled me to craft ways of being in relation to others — as teacher, as friend, as partner — that are trauma-informed.
Those working in disability justice have also been such crucial teachers for me as I learnt what it meant to be a chronically ill, disabled human in the world. In particular, the work of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Patty Berne, Alison Kafer, and Mia Mingus. Unlearning the ways in which internalized ableism lives within me has enabled me to recognize that access needs don’t just benefit those of us who’re disabled, they benefit everyone. Disability justice helps us all see that the care deficit that exists has been manufactured by racial capitalism. We all deserve care that enables us to not just survive but thrive.
And finally, my gratitude to the abolitionists and those working in transformative justice. Finding those committed to TJ and police and prison abolition has given me the language I needed to express my deep desire to transform the conditions that enable harm and abuse to happen in the first place. I believe that there are no “bad” or “good” people — just people trying to survive. We all have the capacity for transformation. Thank you to Kai Cheng Thom, Mia Mingus, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, adrienne maree brown, and Rania El Mugammar for the examples you have offered the world.
My Lineages
Official Bio
Margeaux Feldman (they/them) is a writer, educator, and community builder originally from Tkaronto/Toronto, now based on Treaty 6 Territory in Amiskwaciy Waskahikan/Edmonton, AB. They hold a PhD in English Literature and Sexual Diversity Studies from the University of Toronto, where they also completed certificates in Community-Engaged Learning and Conflict Resolution. During their PhD, Margeaux spent three years as a peer advisor at the Graduate Centre for Conflict Resolution, completed a paid internship with Student Life’s Leadership and Development program, and organized various award-winning events including “Sick Theories: A Transdisciplinary Conference on Sickness and Sexuality.” Margeaux’s creative writing has been published in PRISM, GUTS: A Canadian Feminist Magazine, The Puritan, and the Minola Review, amongst others. In 2019, they started to self-publish their writing, and have sold over 800 copies of their zines to date. Margeaux is currently at work on three book manuscripts: Touch Me, I’m Sick (based off of their dissertation); The Bed of Sickness: Essays on Care; and Soft Magic: A Politics and Practice for Healing Ourselves and Our World. They live with their two cats, Roland and Baudie.
Trainings & Certifications
Integrative Somatic Parts Work Certificate, 16 hrs, The Embody Lab (in process)
Embodied Social Justice Certificate, 60 hrs, Transformative Change, 2022
Integrated Somatic Trauma Therapy Certificate, 60 hrs, The Embody Lab, 2022
PhD in English Literature and Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, 2021
Certificate in Conflict Resolution, University of Toronto, 2017
Certificate in Community-Engaged Learning, University of Toronto, 2015
Numerous transformative justice trainings with Mia Mingus, Karen BK Chan, and Rania El Mugammer.
Suicide and crisis intervention training with Carly Boyce, Project LETS, and the University of Toronto
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live”
Joan Didion
A lifelong lover of literature, I believe that stories have the power to change lives.
Growing up poor in the suburbs, I didn’t see others out in the world like me, with a dead mother and sick father. And so I found myself in literature. It wasn’t until my qualifying exams for my PhD that I realized that all of the books I planned to write about had girls with dead or missing mothers. In a way, literature helped me confront my trauma and my grief years before I would step into a therapist’s office.
It’s no surprise that I started to tell my own story, first through my old blog Floral Manifesto, and then in magazines including The Puritan Literary Magazine, GUTS: A Canadian Feminist Magazine, and The Minola Review. I’ve self-published over 10 zines and a book of affirmations and reflections, you are magic! and am currently working on three book-length projects: Touch Me, I’m Sick, Soft Magic: A Politics and Practice for Healing Ourselves and Our World and a memoir, The Bed of Sickness: Essays on Care.
Fun Facts About Me:
I have two fur babies, Roland and Baudie, who I regularly photograph in heart-shaped cuddle piles.
I’m happiest when surrounded by books, friends, and many cheeses.
Being near and in water soothes me in ways that nothing else does.
In an alternate universe, I could have been a personal shopper, interior designer, or project manager.
I’m a Cancer Sun, Sagittarius Rising, and Aries Moon, which I translate into #ZeroChill.
I first began university as a Criminology and Psychology double major before realizing that there were other ways I could explore the human mind.
Tarot and ritual are regular parts of my daily life.
I love dating shows. Bring on the horror!
